SAN FRANCISCO — President Joe Biden is building support among tech industry Democrats, some of whom are putting aside their reluctance to seek a second term for former President Donald Trump instead of preventing a second term.
Biden toured the wealthy enclaves of Northern California on Friday collect money for a re-election campaign that gave him a chance to meet face-to-face with some of the Democratic Party’s wealthiest donors and key allies in the business community.
Although the technology industry always leaned to the left compared to other sectors of the economy, there are few vocal tech billionaires, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk. they changed their policies to the right in recent years. It gave the impression that all of Silicon Valley might have moved into conservative territory with them, but the available evidence suggests otherwise: The tech sector is clearly breaking for Democrats this year, as usual.
While some tech executives and investors tried to oust Biden as the Democratic nominee a few months ago, pushes for an alternative Many of the skeptics, such as Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota, now strongly support Biden as the only reasonable option, according to two tech industry figures who have raised money for Democrats and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private financing efforts.
Biden has never been the tech industry’s favorite politician, and the three years of his presidency so far have been tough on his stance on regulation. He pushed aggressive antitrust agenda including vs Big Techpotentially signed into law prohibition Along with unionized auto workers over TikTok and Musk, alienating The head of Tesla and some of Musk’s friends.
But some technologists say Biden is good for industry, including microchip manufacturing. Back to US shoresand they say there are fears that a second Trump term could bring its own setbacks potential tariffs for the threat of political violence.
Neil Malhotra, a professor of political economy at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, said it was always likely that the tech industry would eventually rally around Biden because he is liberal on many other issues, such as abortion rights.
“Political science studies generally show that people eventually go home,” he said. “People may be upset in May and June, but come October and November, people will realize it’s the only option.”
In 2017 paper, Malhotra and two co-authors conducted a survey that found elite tech entrepreneurs have a unique mix of views compared to other political donors or rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans. They are skeptical of government regulation, but favor higher taxes for redistribution, and favor racial tolerance and other liberal social values.
Malhotra said tech progressives may not have pushed the Biden administration to the right on regulation, but they were still able to find common ground elsewhere.
“These are usually very left-of-center people, and I think the message he’s going to deliver is one that will probably resonate with them: Political institutions are on the ballot, liberalism and liberal values are on the ballot, democracy is on the ballot,” he said.
One of Biden’s tech backers echoed those sentiments. Vinod Khosla, a billionaire investor in companies like DoorDash, was scheduled to host one of Biden’s fundraisers in the San Francisco area on Friday and said democracy was the most important thing to him.
“My message to the public is that I’m a big supporter of President Biden and we have to make sure that that ass-back Trump doesn’t get elected and destroy democracy at all costs,” Khosla said. he said on stage at a Bloomberg News event on Thursday.
A second fundraiser in Palo Alto on Friday was scheduled to include a variety of tech figures, including former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, by invitation. has been published By Puck News.
These funders are in addition to other big tech industry names who has already given Biden this election cycle, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a Tesla investor Steve Westley and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings.
Campaign finance data shows the tech industry remains broadly Democratic. Tech workers, political action committees and outside groups have raised money for Democratic candidates over Republicans by more than 4 to 1 so far this election cycle, according to Transparency International. OpenSecrets.
The naysayers have sometimes been louder than the technological progressives. Musk, who has 182 million followers on the social media app X, said he would not vote for Biden this year and met with Trump in Florida in March, though Musk did not say how he would vote. Musk’s close allies, including David Sacks, a former donor to Democrat Hillary Clinton, have been unrelenting in their criticism of Biden, and Sacks attended a Trump fundraiser in March. Punchbowl News.
But it’s hard to find outright support for Trump in the tech world. Billionaire investor Peter Thiel, who was almost alone among major tech figures in endorsing Trump in 2016, said The Atlantic last year said that he is out of politics and will not give money to Trump or any other politician this cycle.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, often is listed among the world’s richest people supported the presidential campaign of Sen. Tim Scott of RSC and called on Trump to choose Scott as his running mate, Puck News informed.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy has limited support in the small tech industry. Last year, he won the endorsement of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, and in March Kennedy chose Nicole Shanahan, a Bay Area lawyer and ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, as his running mate.
Adam Kovacevich, CEO of the Chamber of Progress, a left-leaning tech industry group, said Biden may suffer from comparisons to former President Barack Obama, who is widely embraced in Silicon Valley. Obama was welcomed as a star at the time visited As the headquarters of Google a candidate In 2007.
“A lot of people in tech saw themselves in President Obama, and I think in some ways Obama’s tech support was almost the high water mark for any tech politician,” Kovacevich said.
“There are a lot of people in tech who wish Biden would take a different approach to the tech industry, to be more of a tech champion, and are disappointed that he isn’t, but I don’t see many people embracing Trump. is the result of this,” he said.