In less than two decades, the biggest names in Silicon Valley have effectively built their own seat of power in Washington. A big reason for their rapid success has been personnel, poaching dozens, if not hundreds of political veterans to run their communications and public policy shops. Under Barack Obama, some 197 people left the administration to work at Google alone.
That may be part of the reason why a coalition of 33 progressive organizations sent President Joe Biden a letter in November urging him to close the Silicon-Valley-to-D.C. revolving door, calling out Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft by name.
“The time to hold these companies accountable and rein in their power is now,” wrote the coalition, which included Public Citizen, Open Markets Institute and Demand Progress. “However, we can only bring these companies to account if you do not rely on affiliates of these very companies to make up your government.”
Silicon Valley came around to Democrats, and Democrats cashed in
Bill Clinton was the first Democrat to hit it big in Silicon Valley back in 1992. Campaign budgets were exploding and usual Democratic funding sources (i.e., unions) were drying up, so Democrats chased dollars from the ascendant tech and finance industries. But it was during Barack Obama’s presidency that tech companies stopped solely trading campaign cash for favorable policies, and started to swap personnel, as well.
As the West Coast behemoths began to build up their operations out east, they enacted a time-tested strategy: Find friendly people on the inside and hire them or their friends. To list all of the former Obama flacks now working for big tech would be unreadable, but the big hitters include Press Secretary Jay Carney, now getting yelled at for Amazon; campaign manager David Plouffe, who spent time at Uber before landing at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative; and former Attorney General Eric Holder, who was retained for cleanup work after scandals at Uber and Airbnb.
Lisa Jackson, the former EPA administrator, is now vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives at notorious polluter and tax dodger Apple. Former Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx later took a job with Lyft as chief policy officer. Teaming up with other tech giants, Lyft spent millions last year to pass a ballot initiative to gut a California labor law protecting gig workers.
Even the Clintons and Obamas themselves could be considered part of the revolving door. Both Hillary and Bill raked in millions in speaking fees from tech companies like eBay, Cisco and Nexenta after leaving office. In 2018, Michelle and Barack Obama inked a deal with streaming giant Netflix to produce shows and films. The details of the deal aren’t public, but as Newsweek noted, big-name showrunners have signed on to work with Netflix for sums well into nine figures.
Can politicos turned techies ever make a comeback?
Though Biden is widely seen as less sympathetic to big tech than his former boss, he and Vice President Kamala Harris are not without their own Silicon Valley connections. Cynthia Hogan, a longtime Senate aide to Biden, served as vice president of public policy at Apple, leaving this summer to join his campaign. Lartrease Tiffith, Harris’s former senate senior counsel, now lobbies for Amazon, while Tony West, a former associate attorney general and the vice president’s brother in law, is now Uber’s top lawyer.
The Biden administration has a chilly relationship with Silicon Valley so far, one that tech companies are trying desperately to repair. Liberal advocacy groups have painted a target on monopolistic and tax- and regulation-skirting companies, while progressive media figures see platforms like Facebook and YouTube as enabling or even boosting their right-wing adversaries. As for Democratic politicians, sheltering in place while a social-media-poisoned mob ransacked the Capitol likely didn’t leave a great impression.
For the former politicos hoping to return one day to government after they finish cashing out, the odds of getting hired are currently pretty low. So will Democrats allow any tech alums to come back into the fold?
It depends on a few factors. The first is time, and how these individuals choose to use it. If their stint in the tech world is short and followed by many years of more scrupulous work, perhaps progressives will look past their indiscretions, or at least forget about them. (But probably not—time may heal all wounds, but memories on the left are long. See: Biden, Joseph.)
The second is fame, in the past, present and future. The biggest names, people like Carney, Plouffe and Holder, will be some of the most maligned, but they are also the least likely to return to government, having peaked in their respective fields. Those ascending to top jobs in the future but who are at present largely anonymous (like West) will still be subject to a high degree of scrutiny. As for those with low name recognition seeking mid-level jobs (especially those without confirmation hearings), the path will be easier.
The final factor is a tricky one: contrition. It may be the rarest and most dangerous resource in all of politics, a feeling (or at least a convincing expression) of genuine reflection and regret, paired with meaningfully corrective actions. Apologizing for mistakes and changing paths is a complicated maneuver. Even if a former Uber lobbyist truly believes, in her heart of hearts, that ridesharing monopolies should be broken up and that union-busting is counterrevolutionary, it will take a monumental amount of good work to convince anyone on the left.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg—who earlier worked in the Clinton administration—is an example of someone with all three strikes against her. Five years ago, she was mentioned as a possible treasury secretary if Hillary Clinton won the White House. Now, after two decades in Silicon Valley and involvement in a string of Big Tech scandals—with little apparent remorse about any of it—she'll be lucky if she gets her calls returned by Biden officials.
But redemptions are not without precedent. Gary Gensler, Biden’s nominee to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, spent 18 years at Goldman Sachs, then helped advance heedlessly pro-Wall Street policies in the Clinton Treasury Department. A decade later, he was nominated to run the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and confessed to the sins of his previous government work. Gensler went on to become possibly the most aggressive financial regulator of the Obama era, but only after suspicious progressive senators held up his nomination for months, unconvinced of his come-to-Jesus moment.
For any tech execs hoping to return to Democratic administrations, now might be the time to start praying—and preferably not to Jeff Bezos.
