Grover Norquist's visit to the Burning Man festival got a lot of press. The LA Times used it as a jumping off place for an exploration of Republican strategies to woo the votes and checkbooks of Silicon Valley techies.
Republicans gaining traction in push to turn Silicon Valley red
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, challenged left-coasters not to dismiss him as another dull D.C. politico when he marveled over the event's ceremonial "Burn" of a giant sculpture. He took to Twitter to laud Burning Man's "wonder of creativity and hard work."It seems pretty accurate to describe most of the cutting edge tech industry as having a libertarian orientation. The billionaires at the top of the pile certainly have some affinity with traditional Republican policy positions on issues such as tax and business regulation. People further down the latter are predominantly white and Asian men who are able to command better than average pay. Their personal lifestyles tend to have an antipathy to the rigid traditional values pushed by the social conservatives who make up a major segment of the Republican base. This as much as anything has kept a majority of them voting Democratic.Creativity and hard work also describe conservatives' efforts to make inroads with the Bay Area's innovation economy. Republicans, after musing about the possibility for more than a decade, have finally found a footing in Silicon Valley, ingratiating themselves with tech entrepreneurs who had long eschewed politics in general, conservative politics in particular.
Democrats haven't yet lost their advantage, but Bay Area techies are writing increasingly sizable checks to GOP candidates and causes, sometimes with great fanfare, as when Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg hosted a fundraiser at his house last year for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Google is helping bankroll some of the most conservative think tanks in Washington, including Norquist's group. A bromance of sorts has kindled between Elon Musk and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield.
People with libertarian tendencies seem to make up a particularly unstable element in US politics. At this point most of the politicians who are making a point of branding themselves as libertarian are operating from within the Republican party. There they are forming very uneasy and unstable alliances with social conservatives. The libertarian philosophy is fundamentally opposed to government interference and this is often focused on personal issues such as abortion rights and various forms of sexual identity and choice. That puts them in direct conflict with social conservatives. The present working rhetoric is to talk in terms of taking those issues out of the control of the federal government and following a traditional state's rights position of letting decisions be made at the state level.
There are left libertarians who are connected to the Democratic party. They find a comfortable fit with progressives on the issues of personal lifestyles. The are less comfortable with traditional liberal policies of protection for the rights of minorities and women, consumer protection and government programs of economic assistance. There is maneuvering room for both parties to court them.
The Obama administration's willingness to allow the NSA to snoop on electronic communications, exposed by former security contractor Edward Snowden, created a public relations crisis for social media firms and threatens to cost the cloud-computing industry billions of dollars in lost business.In state houses, Democrats are championing online consumer protection efforts that expose tech companies to new liabilities. At the behest of organized labor, Democrats are pushing measures that undermine ride-sharing firms such as Uber, one of the most lucrative new businesses spawned by Silicon Valley.
"Balancing the need for innovation against entrenched special interests has become a difficult thing for the left," said Joe Lonsdale, a venture capitalist. Lonsdale, a relative political neophyte with the liberal social views typical of the Bay Area, has been donating mostly to Republicans, including hosting a fundraiser in his home for McCarthy.
The techie vote isn't large enough to make big shifts at the ballot box. If they all switched at once, it wouldn't turn California red. However, there's gold in them thar hills. Also their command of new media and innovation has major implications for political influence.