While Valley politics stories have been focused on the presidential candidates visits to Google, we can soon expect plenty of coverage on who is giving to who in the race.
And, so far, the techie giving/support is more wide open than I can remember in a battle for the White House. Back in 2000 -- the last incumbent-free election -- Valley Democrats retained their loyalty to Vice President Gore and Valley Republicans didn't take much time in deciding that Governor Bush was their man after vetting the other candidates.
This year, not only are the big names all over the place with their support, but there are also several notables with a past history of being big campaign players who are on the fence.
On the D side, some are waiting for a guy who's name rhymes with "more". This is an inconvenient truth to some of the candidates who have already declared.
And, on the R side, there seems to be bit of a wait and see going on as the money men and women determine who has the most chance to break from the pack.
Still, there has been plently of dollars and pledges of support tossed about thus far. Eric Savitz at Barron's took the time to do an unscientific assesment of where Silicon Valley is leaning so far....
I recently spent some of my ample spare time (Ha!) goofing around with a handy database of 2008 presidential campaign donations on the New York Times web site. I wondered how some of the Valley’s more famous denizens were investing their political dollars. The Times database lets you search by zip code; I scoured the list for interesting donors from towns like Woodside, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Atherton, Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Saratoga, where for a million bucks you can get a super nice townhouse; I also checked out Marin County and the tonier areas of San Francisco.
What I found, in short, is that while both John McCain and Hillary Clinton have fans in the Valley, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama draw the most star power. The Sand Hill Road crowd seems to especially like Romney, who once worked in private equity at Bain Capital.
I'll paste the Democratic results below, but go to Savitz's post to see the Republicans.
One observation: It's interesting that YouTube's Chad Hurly is the only new notable giver among the post-2001 millionaire set... Where is the rest of the TechCrunch gang?
A tangent: Sure, the "interesting donors" are relevant, but what about the plain-old rich donors who have, say, millions in Google dollars, but are essentially anonymous to curious journalists?
The Dems....
Barack Obama:
* Lehman Brothers banker Stuart Francis
* Morgan Stanley banker Michael Grimes; Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello
* HRJ Capital partner and former San Francisco 49er Ronnie Lott
* Bill Davidow, partner and co-founder, Mohr Davidow
* Elevation Partners founder Roger McNamee
* Genentech COO Myrtle Potter
* Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell
* Ram Shriram, billionaire investor at Sherpalo Ventures
* Adobe co-founder John Warnock
* Steve Jurvetson, venture capitalist at Draper Fisher Jurvetson
* YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley
* Steve Westly, former eBay exec and defeated candidate for California governer
* Michael Moritz, partner, Sequoia Capital
* Mitchell Kertzman, venture capitalist with Hummer Winblad, former CEO of Sybase
Hillary Clinton:
* SpikeSource CEO Kim Polese
* Ann McNamee, wife of Elevation Partners founder Roger McNamee
* Gary Lauder, venture capitalist and grandson of cosmetics billionaire Estee Lauder
* Nancy Heinen, former general counsel, Apple Computer
* Lise Buyer, former Wall Street analyst and venture capitalist, now IPO consultant
* Former Piper Jaffray Internet analyst Safa Rashtchy
* Brook Byers, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers.
John Edwards:
* Andy Rappaport, partner at venture firm August Capital
* Joe Costello, chairman, Orb Networks and former CEO of Cadence Design Systems
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