Pelosi Plugs Into Silicon Valley for Policies, Cash (Update1)
July 29 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg Businessweek's Patrick O'Connor talks about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's ties with corporate leaders in California and donations from these unofficial advisers. Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Aug. 2 issue that Pelosi regularly seeks out corporate leaders for their take on the economy and talks frequently with Bay Area business titans such as Eric Schmidt, the chief executive officer of Google. O'Connor speaks with Matt Miller and Carol Massar on Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart." (Source: Bloomberg)
In two weeks, Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul, will host a two-day retreat at a Mediterranean- style inn in Napa Valley, just down the street from the legendary French Laundry restaurant. The guests, as in years past, will include some of her biggest benefactors and some of the most prominent names in corporate California; often they are one and the same.
The financier Bill Hambrecht, who helped Apple Inc. and Google Inc. go public, usually attends the annual conference, as do Charles Geschke, the co-founder of San Jose-based Adobe Systems Inc., and George Marcus, the chairman of the Palo Alto- based commercial real-estate developer Essex Property Trust Inc. The retreat is part thank-you, part intellectual gabfest. Last year’s theme was the economy; guests were briefed by White House adviser David Axelrod.
Foes have long called Pelosi “bad for business,” but she’s not the anti-business ideologue of the typical Republican caricature, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Aug. 2 issue. She regularly seeks out corporate leaders for their take on the economy and talks frequently with Bay Area business titans such as Eric Schmidt, the chief executive officer of Google. Her brain trust includes numerous chief executives and venture capitalists.
‘Supportive’
“I have found her to be supportive of Silicon Valley and the entire technology industry and always open to a healthy give-and-take on key issues,” says Cisco Systems Inc. CEO John Chambers, who helped Pelosi develop an innovation agenda in 2005 that included a permanent research and development tax credit, education funding, and universal broadband access. She even counts some Republicans in her network.
Many of these unofficial advisers are her biggest donors, and the policies she advocates often benefit their industries. To hear Pelosi, 70, tell it, she’s sowing the seeds of an economic revival that wouldn’t be possible without a big nudge from the government. Her state’s high-tech and clean-energy industries could benefit from that push, as could the rest of America, she says.
‘Have to Compete’
“We don’t have any choice. We have to compete,” Pelosi said in a July 14 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “These other countries have made their decision,” she said, referring to China and Europe, where governments have plowed billions into renewable fuels such as wind and solar. “We had an Industrial Revolution, we had the Technological Revolution, and the Green Revolution,” Pelosi said. “Are we going to check out of this? I don’t think so.”
Pelosi is unabashedly liberal, supporting higher taxes for the wealthy and government competition in health care to lower costs to consumers. She tried and failed to charge financial firms for the Wall Street overhaul.
These views have made her a favorite target of Republicans, who say policies she has helped push into law cost the economy jobs. They argue that she picks winners and losers by heaping new regulations on existing industries while setting aside taxpayer funds for chosen sectors such as renewable energy and biotech.
“Her agenda has added 500,000 government jobs and lost 2.5 million free-enterprise-sector jobs,” says Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, who chairs the House Republicans’ campaign committee.
Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly, in disputing such claims, cited Bureau of Labor Statistics figures showing that the U.S. economy added 600,000 private-sector jobs this year, including 83,000 in June. Daly said the figures show that the U.S. economy lost a net 670,000 jobs during eight years of Republican George W. Bush’s presidency.
Legacy as Speaker
Judging by the legislation she’s gotten through with few, if any, Republican votes, Pelosi is arguably the most effective speaker since Sam Rayburn, the Texas Democrat who served on-and- off in that role for 16 years between 1940 and 1961. Some Democrats facing tough re-election contests in November say she is, perhaps, too successful. Last year, when vulnerable members balked at voting to cap carbon emissions, she and the administration said Senate Democrats would follow the House’s lead, allowing lawmakers to boast they had slowed global warming and reduced dependence on foreign oil. The Senate never voted, and some House Democrats are unhappy that they must defend a vote that their Republican challengers say would have raised homeowners’ energy bills.
Venture Capitalists
Listen to her long enough, and Pelosi starts to sound like the venture capitalists in her circle, which includes Silicon Valley pioneers such as Hambrecht and John Doerr of Menlo Park- based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who also helped with early funding for Cupertino-based Apple and Mountain View-based Google. She chats frequently with Chambers, of San Jose-based Cisco; he and Doerr are not among her donors.
Vinod Khosla, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc., says she invited him to breakfast in 2005 after both spoke at a forum in Fremont, California. She wanted to pick his brain about renewable energy and innovation. “She didn’t worry that I was a Republican,” Khosla says. “She is very open-minded. That impressed me.” The two have been close since.
Such relationships have an obvious benefit for Pelosi, who raises millions from her corporate confidants. In the years since Khosla first had breakfast with Pelosi, he and his wife have given her and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee almost $170,000. Her donors’ companies often benefit from Pelosi’s advocacy for research tax credits, visas for engineers, and government funding for clean-energy startups. Stion, a maker of thin photovoltaic solar cells and backed by Khosla, received $37.5 million in tax credits through last year’s economic stimulus measure.
Pelosi isn’t shy about asking the tech community for help in return. “They want H-1B visas for immigration, and we’re saying ‘help us have a comprehensive immigration reform and we can help you with that,’” Pelosi said in the interview. “But we’ve got to do things together.”
To contact the reporters on this story: James Rowley in Washington at jarowley@bloomberg.net; Patrick O’Connor in Washington at poconnor14@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
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