And truth be said, some Silicon Valley executives even expressed the hope that things might work out with Trump being in the White House, at least, that’s what Newsweek said back in January this year.
But that happy balance was never to materialize after President Trump signed his bombshell executive order on January 27, immediately blocking all refugees from entering the U.S. and also denying entry into the U.S. of citizens of seven predominantly-Muslim countries.
Besides the outrage felt by any number of tech companies, including Google, Airbnb, Apple and Microsoft and many others, CEOs, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey posted their opposition to the order and their public support of immigrants on social media.
But you and I know that Silicon Valley is not just a conglomeration of companies without an agenda, be it business oriented or otherwise. The tech group has discovered they can do battle with President Trump in a very politically savvy way, and that is through the use of what they know best – Technology.
Whittling down the Trump vote in Montana
Donald Trump carried the state of Montana in the November 2016 election by almost 21 percentage points, and Republican businessman Greg Gianforte, running for the At-Large House race has been holding Trump close to the vest, peppering his rallies with Trump stickers and all his other paraphernalia.
However, Democrat Rob Quist, a guitar-toting first-timer, doesn’t have Trump in his corner, nor does he have a lot of help from the Democratic Party’s official organs. But what he does have will surprise you. Quist has become Silicon Valley’s latest tech project, and it just may pay off big, not only for Quist and the Democratic party but for Silicon Valley.
Like any number of the congressional races across the country, there hasn’t been a lot of tech expertise on many campaign staffs. This is where Jessica Alter, a Bay-Area resident comes into the picture. In January, Alter, along with a friend, Pete Kazanjy, formed Tech for Campaigns, and started linking progressive candidates and causes with savvy tech types.
Their goal was simple: They would be a go-between, a conduit of sorts, between Democratic office-seekers who needed some quick digital talent and the engineers and designers in San Francisco and the country’s other tech hubs. A lot of the tech talent is new to politics, so it has turned out to be a good match all the way around.
Today, Tech for Campaigns has over 3,000 tech savvy volunteers on its digital Rolodex file. There are digital, data analytics and design experts from companies like Facebook, Netflix, Slack and Salesforce. Volunteers are working with candidates in Virginia, a federal office-seeker in Kansas, and Quist in Montana, to name just a few.
And even if Quist should lose the very lose Montana race, Alter told Recode they already have their sights set on the 2018 elections and Democrats will be campaigning aggressively, thanks to Silicon valley’s battalion of tech volunteers.
“I think he was sort of a wake-up call,” Alter said during one of her conversations with Recode, weeks before the Montana special election. “We do have this very large group of people who are interested in being involved, and the biggest travesty … is there just hasn’t been great resources for Democrats on the tech side that are available to a lot of people.”
Silicon Valley has embraced agriculture in America’s Heartland
Trump’s hard-line stance on immigration has also spurred a big surge in high-tech investment in the agricultural sector where farmers are trying to cope with a labor shortage and slumping profits. And while Trump’s actions on limiting foreign workers may be taking a toll on an industry that relies on cheap labor, it has become a boon for tech companies.
Already, in the first quarter of 2017, there has been a lot of cash poured into agricultural technology companies. Start-ups have already received about $200 million through 29 deals. Start-up companies have received backing from the likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Sam Altman’s Y Combinator, Sun Microsystems Inc. Founder Vinod Khosla and many others.
Mark Kvamme is a tech veteran who co-founded Columbus, Ohio-based Drive Capital in 2012. Drive Capital invested in FarmLogs, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based company that gives farmers data about the health of their fields in a digital mode. “In Silicon Valley, nobody understood farming,” Kvamme said in a telephone interview. “But now, more investors are looking at the industry as another type of ‘data science,’ where gains and losses are quantifiable,” he said.
The stakes are greater than any one campaign
Looking at the political agenda from a tech point of view, it’s not just one House race that’s at stake, but the whole of the Democratic Party. As Alter’s group points out, not only are the Republicans running the show in both houses of Congress, but they also control the legislatures in 32 out of 50 states.
And it isn’t just a matter of who’s in charge, but the fact that the GOP controls major decisions over our health, environmental, housing, and energy policies. They also play a role in the drawing of congressional district lines. Republicans also hold the keys to governor’s mansions in 33 states, while Democrats hold the keys to 16.
