Meet the Most Powerful Political Players in Silicon Valley

In New York or Los Angeles, political fundraising visits have a predictably transactional quality: The candidate shows up for an event, poses for a photo with a donor and leaves with a contribution. Not in Silicon Valley. The region’s technology elite expect to spend time -- lots of time -- with a candidate to understand the politician’s views on a range of social and environmental issues before ever writing a check. Sen Mark Warner (D-VA) once attended a dinner in the Bay Area where he expected to discuss rural education, but instead fielded questions about his stance on abortion, the death penalty and marriage equality. Aides are known to prep for weeks in anticipation of a visit to the Bay Area -- in part because there is no set of technology issues that unites the industry’s disparate players in the same way that, say, Hollywood rallies around copyright protection, according to veteran fundraisers.

“We’re like an ATM, but for the ATM to work you have to answer some questions,” said Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist in the Bay Area who advises billionaire Tom Steyer and other major donors. “It’s like an ATM with a pop quiz before you get the money.” Plenty of candidates are willing to subject themselves to the Bay Area’s billionaire exam. The effort can be richly rewarded, as was the case for Republican presidential candidate Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL), the beneficiary of a recent fundraising party at Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s 21-acre Woodside estate, where attendees paid $2,700 per person. But who will help the tech rich get there? Who makes the introductions? A little-known group of consiglieres, with contacts in Washington and Silicon Valley, connect the technology industry’s affluent, socially conscious donors with like-minded candidates.