FC: Why does Silicon Valley vote against itself? by J.Glassman

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.spectator.org/archives/0103TAS/glassman0103.htm
   
   The American Spectator -- March 2001

   Smart Nerds, Foolish Choices
   Why Silicon Valley votes against its interests
   by James K. Glassman
   
   One of the deepest mysteries of this New Age is why Silicon Valley --
   as a geographic metaphor for smart, productive high-technologists
   around the country--prefers Democrats to Republicans. In the
   presidential election, for example, voters in the two counties in the
   peninsula south of San Francisco--Santa Mateo and Santa Clara -- chose
   Al Gore over George W. Bush, 63 percent to 32 percent, with 4 percent
   for Ralph Nader.
   
   Republicans have given far more support to the issues that high-tech
   executives say are dear to them: expanding visas for skilled
   immigrants, giving China the same trade status as other countries,
   limiting the power of trial lawyers to blackmail technology companies
   for damages over Y2K software failures and practically anything else.
   "If you look at all these issues," says Rep. Dick Armey, "Republicans
   are their friends."
   
   So what's the problem? Rick White--the former Republican congressman
   for the Washington state district that includes Redmond, home of
   Microsoft -- told me that shortly after the GOP sweep in 1994, Bill
   Gates sat down with Newt Gingrich. "Why don't more high-tech execs
   support us?" the new speaker asked. "We are the party of
   entrepreneurial values."
   
   Gates replied: "We do agree on business and economic issues, but we
   have hesitation on social issues."
   
   A few years later, when Bill Clinton's Justice Department went after
   Microsoft on antitrust charges, Gates learned that, for a high-tech
   CEO, business issues trump social issues. But most of his colleagues
   haven't absorbed that lesson yet.
   
   Last year, Armey, the House majority leader, went to Silicon Valley to
   drum up support for his "e-contract"--a set of bills to help tech
   firms, including setting a standard for digital signatures and keeping
   a moratorium on new Internet taxes. Armey spoke for half an hour, then
   invited questions from the floor. The tech executives ignored the
   substance of his talk and instead asked questions that might have come
   from a gathering of the Urban League or the National Organization for
   Women. The final question to a flabbergasted Armey: "Why is it that
   you Republicans are so obsessed about abortion?"
   
   Why is Silicon Valley oblivious to the policy concerns that can shape
   the economy and their own businesses? "My explanation for it," Armey
   told me, "is that they have prospered for all these years, independent
   of government and indifferent to it.... They came at politics from a
   personal point of view. Then, all of a sudden, things changed, and
   they didn't seem to be able to make the transition from the politics
   of the heart to the politics of the brain."
   
   In other words, the opposition to Republicans appears almost
   aesthetic. Yes, Democrats may have tastes that fit better with Silicon
   Valley lifestyles. Democrats and Valley technologists may like the
   same music, drink the same latte, drive the same model of Volvo. But
   they don't share Silicon Valley's ideas about the New Economy. In the
   end, Democrats want to run your business. They are on the side of
   higher taxes, more regulation, more lawsuits. It is snobbish and
   shortsighted for Silicon Valley technologists and entrepreneurs to
   shun a party that shares their free-market values but, perhaps, not
   their styles and tastes.

[...]




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