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Romney benefits from ties to eBay president |
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By Ian Swanson and Alexander Bolton
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Posted: 09/06/07 07:51 PM [ET] |
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has parlayed the support of an influential chief executive to surge ahead of his GOP rivals in the race to raise money in Silicon Valley, home to one of America’s fastest-growing industries.
Although the socially liberal valley has been the stomping ground of high-profile Democrats such as President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, Republican White House hopefuls are spending a lot of face time there. That’s because the burgeoning tech center south of San Francisco is awash in money and has become much more politically attuned in recent years. As Republican candidates see it, there are many lucrative political alliances yet to be forged.
“We’re there almost every month,” said an aide to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who attended a town hall-type meeting at Google earlier this year and will return to the area later this month. “We have a broad base of support in Silicon Valley.”
While McCain and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) have courted donors aggressively, Romney has raised substantially more than both combined.
Romney has raised $608,798 from the Silicon Valley region through June 30 compared to $233,735 for McCain and $206,076 for Giuliani. While Romney trails Democratic front-runners Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack
Obama (Ill.), he’s earned more than former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.).
Silicon Valley officials credit Romney’s good showing in the region’s fundraising race to eBay President and Chief Executive Meg Whitman. Years before she became the head of the online seller, Whitman worked in the San Francisco office of Bain and Company, where Romney was a vice president from 1978 to 1984.
“Meg is incredibly well respected by her peers,” the president and chief executive of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, Carl Guardino, said. He said Whitman has solicited several fundraisers for Romney and described her as an integral part of Romney’s leadership team.
While Romney’s fundraising pales in comparison to that of Clinton and Obama, Democrats in Silicon Valley say the region can be a fruitful fundraising environment for Republicans. While employees of high-tech firms in the valley are “overwhelmingly Democrat,” according to one high-tech executive who asked to speak without attribution, “at the executive level, I think you’ll see a significant advantage for Republican candidates.”
Wade Randlett, who helped set up a Silicon Valley trade association in the 1990s and is now a fundraiser for Obama, said that Republican presidential candidates have more of a presence than in previous years.
“I do think there has been a significant step-up of bipartisan activity,” he said. “You see a whole lot more of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, as well as the Democrats.”
Randlett attributed the inroads GOP candidates have made to liaisons in the business sector, such as the chairman of Cisco, John Chambers, who is supporting McCain, and Floyd Kvamme, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Chambers helped President Bush raise his profile dramatically during his first White House run. At a 2000 fundraiser held just after he announced his candidacy, Bush collected only $650,000. A few months later, in March 2000, Chambers hosted an event for Bush that raised between $3.5 million and $4 million.
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