Bill and Hillary Clinton will visit the San Francisco home of CNET CEO Halsey Minor for a little ahi tuna tartare with the cyberelite on Saturday night. Among the guests: John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins; Marimba CEO Kim Polese; investment banker Sandy Robertson; Novell CEO Eric Schmidt; and the CEO of RSA Data Security, Jim Bidzos.
"It's another notch in the belt for us," said Wade Randlett, political director for Technology Network, the industry's new political action committee. Randlett, who also set up the dinner for Clinton last year in which Silicon Valley executives were initiated into the ritual of the $50,000 plate, said the president's return soiree signifies the maturing of the high-tech/Democrat alliance.
"When he comes to the Bay Area," Randlett pointed out, "who does he see? He sees techies."
This weekend's intimate dinner, a fund-raiser for the cash-strapped Democratic National Committee, is expected to bring in close to US$1 million - "a substantial amount of money" is all Randlett will say - with guests reportedly paying up to $100,000 for a place at the table.
Clinton, in the Bay Area to drop off his daughter at Stanford University, will also attend an education roundtable at a San Carlos charter school. He will join Polese and other Net entrepreneurs in a discussion of the prospects for electronically networking classrooms.
The courtship of Silicon Valley by the administration has taken off dramatically in the past year. During the 1996 campaign, Clinton won industry support after reversing himself on Proposition 211 and promising to back securities litigation reform. For Clinton's inauguration, Doerr, Polese, and six other prominent high-tech figures were flown in to meet the president and share their thoughts about the coming four years with Vice President Al Gore.
By spring, the vice president, whose daughter Kristin worked for Minor at CNET, was meeting monthly with Silicon Valley CEOs. And while Doerr joined Gore's kitchen cabinet as an adviser on "the New Economy," Polese, Jerry Yang of Yahoo, and Marc Andreessen of Netscape were enlisted to advise the administration on its school-reform agenda.
Polese, who dined with Clinton earlier this year at Sandy Robertson's house, says she found the president to be "a great listener."
"He's well-informed on the general issues," said the 31-year-old executive, "and he doesn't stand on protocol. He's there to learn from us, absolutely."
Polese said the purpose of Saturday's dinner is "to continue and strengthen the great communication we've been developing between the high-tech community and the administration."
Some cybercynics disagree, and see the Democrats' passionate attention to Silicon Valley as just one more example of politicians blindly following the scent of dollar bills. But other industries are much bigger political donors. In the Valley, there's an another kind of currency at stake, too: image.
To New Democrats Clinton and Gore, the start-up entrepreneurs who hacked their way to zillionairedom on Clinton's watch represent the success of the economy and the glamour of the future. Schmoozing with high-tech celebrities like Minor and Bidzos while savoring the wasabi creme fraiche is one way politicians can build their own bridge to the 21st century.
