SAN JOSE — When it comes to seven-term incumbent Mike Honda, Silicon Valley’s tech titans want a lawmaker update.
His challenger, fellow Democrat Ro Khanna, has collected checks and endorsements from some of the technology industry’s biggest names, including Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and investor Marc Andreessen. Many in the industry view Khanna, a lawyer with Valley ties who is half Honda’s age, as more in tune with their views.
Rep. Honda, though, has the support of virtually the entire Democratic establishment, including President Barack Obama and top members of California’s congressional contingent. The race is shaping up as a key test of the tech industry’s growing political ambitions, as it seeks to install a friendlier lawmaker in its own backyard.
“We feel for a long time that Silicon Valley hasn’t been represented at the federal level,” said Sean Parker, former Facebook president and co-founder of Napster, at a recent Khanna fundraiser. “We haven’t had the young, dynamic, hard-driving candidate who understands the unique issues facing Silicon Valley right now … To a certain extent we are starting to come into a realization of our own power, and our own capability, not just as innovators and technology pioneers but also in a political sense.”
Some tech leaders complain that Honda, 72, doesn’t understand their industry as well as he should. They don’t have a beef with any one decision he’s made, but fault him for not being a more influential tech advocate in the House. The leaders see Khanna as a vehicle for what they call a pro-innovation agenda more in line with their interests. They also favor the 36-year-old challenger’s relative youth, saying Silicon Valley could amass more political clout if the Facebook mantra – “move fast and break things” – extended to more of their representatives in D.C.
Honda isn’t taking the onslaught lying down. A former educator who came up through the ranks of local politics, he rejects the notion that Khanna’s support is representative of the entire tech industry and says he has a long history supporting the sector. Tech workers do appear on his fundraising rolls, and an invitation his campaign shared with POLITICO showed that Applied Materials PAC and Intel PAC hosted a fundraiser for Honda in Sunnyvale, Calif., in April.
“It’d be safe to say that the tech industry is a very broad community,” Honda said. “They know my work and the depth of my work.”
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Honda continues to hold a wide lead in the race, topping Khanna 49 percent to 15 percent in a poll commissioned by the pro-Honda Progressive Change Campaign Committee and released Thursday. But Khanna has jumped ahead in fundraising as he taps his tech connections. He had $1.7 million on hand at the end of the second quarter, compared with Honda’s $375,000. The two face off in California’s new jungle primary system, with the top two vote getters in the June 2014 primary advancing to the general election that November.
The battle over California’s 17th district is one example of how Silicon Valley’s heavyweights are seeking to leverage their wealth and success to reshape Washington. Tech leaders have in recent months backed Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s Senate bid and lined up behind the pro-immigration reform group FWD.us founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
But the Honda-vs.-Khanna race may be the most direct example of the industry wielding its increasing political clout as it seeks to advance its agenda.
Khanna, an intellectual property lawyer and former Obama administration official, wrote a book titled “Entrepreneurial Nation” and is teaching a class this fall at Stanford on American competitiveness. He says he’s not basing his campaign on the tech industry’s narrow interests but instead advocating a broader, Silicon Valley ethos.
“We’re trying to do something grander in aspirations, which is to say, what are the underlying principles of openness, citizen participation, risk taking and meritocracy that have allowed Silicon Valley to create some of the greatest innovations in the country and world … and how do we take that value to politics and elevate the quality of public debate, improve the ability to work together and achieve things in American politics,” he said.
With his growing war chest, Khanna has tapped Obama campaign veterans as he digs in for the long haul. They include top Obama campaign fundraiser Steve Spinner and Jeremy Bird, Obama’s national field director, who is serving as Khanna’s chief strategist.
Honda says he’s been attentive to technology issues, touting his work on STEM education, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office funding, semiconductor manufacturing and the R&D tax credit — all important topics to the industry. He recently attended a roundtable held by Zuckerberg’s FWD.us on the struggles of foreign-born entrepreneurs. Tapping an Internet trend, he has even crowdsourced the redesign of his congressional website.
Honda’s supporters say his experience in Congress is a plus.
“Silicon Valley, we’re not that caught up on the policy side, anyway, and one of my concerns is if we send a rookie to Congress we’re going to lose a lot of ground,” said Enscient CEO Shelly Kapoor Collins, citing the congressman’s seat on the House Appropriations Committee as one valuable toehold.
Some have criticized Khanna for undercutting a fellow Democrat and trying to jump in line by seeking a congressional seat without first winning a race at the local or state level. (In his 20s, Khanna ran and lost against the late Rep. Tom Lantos). But many tech leaders aren’t interested in party tradition.
“People in Washington are consumed with protecting entrenched interests for fear that they could lose their seat,” said Ron Conway, a prominent tech investor. “That ethos is completely antithetical to Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial spirit. The technology leaders that have endorsed Ro believe that the currency of one’s ideas is what matters. They want their representatives to be thought leaders.”
And for some, the desire to replace Honda is less abstract.
“I wrote Mike a check. I like the guy,” said Gary Kremen, an entrepreneur and founder of Match.com, who now supports Khanna. “But where’s our bacon? Has he brought the bacon to the Valley for the technology guy?”
Honda has dismissed both the age and fundraising gaps with Khanna.
“I think having cash on hand is important … but it’s not the core of a campaign,” Honda said, citing Republican Meg Whitman’s expensive and unsuccessful gubernatorial run in the state in 2010. “The core of a campaign is what have you done, how have you helped people.”
Honda, a native Californian of Japanese descent, enjoys long-standing ties to the Asian-American community, which makes up half his district’s population, according to the Census Bureau. He’s the chairman emeritus of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and lists most of the caucus members as supporters.
Khanna, for his part, has talked about the experience of his parents, who are immigrants from India, a similar background to many tech workers in the Valley.
Rusty Rueff, a former executive at video-game company Electronic Arts, said the person representing this district would have a “pedestal to set forth the innovation agenda for the future of the country.”
“Mike Honda has been a very good congressman. But I also think the world is changing,” he said. “There are different leaders for different times. It is no different than a tech company that you might have the right CEO for the start up and the right CEO for the expansion.”
