The Selling of the Presidency

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Obama dines with tech stars of Silicon Valley

(02-18) 04:00 PST Woodside - --

President Obama - on his first official trip to the Bay Area that didn't involve political fundraising - held a dinner meeting Thursday to talk job creation and education with a star-studded team of Silicon Valley executives and leaders, many of them past generous contributors to Democratic causes.

Crowds lined the streets in tiny downtown Woodside, waving and cheering encouragement as the president's motorcade passed through on its way to the secluded estate of star Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr and his wife, Ann, who have both been ranked among the country's most deep-pocketed political donors.

Obama's guest list for the dinner, which lasted about two hours, was short and exclusive, a hand-picked sampling of a dozen executives with connections to powerhouse Internet firms that touch the lives of billions of consumers around the globe. But several of the guests on the list, in addition to being big political contributors, also head firms that rank among the biggest spenders in the nation on computer industry lobbying, according to new campaign finance reports.

Dining with Obama along with Doerr, a partner in Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, were Carol Bartz, president and CEO of Yahoo; Cisco Systems' CEO John Chambers; Twitter CEO ####### Costolo; Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

Attendees also included Stanford University President John Hennessy; Apple Chairman and CEO Steve Jobs; Genentech Chairman and former CEO Art Levinson; Google CEO Eric Schmidt; former state controller and venture capitalist Steve Westly and Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Many of the guests have worked with Obama in the past on key issues, and all of them - except for Costolo of Twitter - are high-profile members of TechNet, a high-tech advocacy group founded in Silicon Valley more than a decade ago.

The organization's leadership has been engaged since the Clinton administration in pushing for what the group describes as policies to boost American leadership in the global arena - including "tax policy, free trade, broadband and Internet policy, basic research, patent litigation reform, and health IT," according to the group's website.

Critics see an agenda

But critics - who suggested that the president was paving the way for his 2012 re-election campaign with the stop - noted that the invitees were also generous political givers, mostly to Democratic causes. Ten of Obama's guests donated a total of more than $900,000 to Obama and candidates for Congress in the past decade, according to research from MAPLight.org, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in Berkeley.

Doerr and his wife have donated $312,300 to candidates in the last decade, 85 percent of them Democrats. Chambers of Cisco gave $179,700 to candidates in the same period, 56 percent to Democrats, while Westly gave $77,100 to campaigns, all of it to Democratic candidates. By contrast, Facebook's Zuckerberg, who is repeatedly described as the world's "youngest billionaire," had not donated a cent to political campaigns, according to the MAPlight.org findings.

In addition, many of the CEOs invited to dine with Obama Thursday head firms that ranked among the biggest-spending lobbyists in the computer industry nationwide last year, according to a report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Google, led by Schmidt, spent $5.1 million on lobbying last year, making it the nation's third-biggest lobbyist in the computer industry, the report said. Oracle, headed by Ellison, came in fourth, spending $4.8 million; Yahoo, headed by Bartz, spent $2.2 million; Cisco, managed by Chambers, spent $2 million; Apple, led by Jobs, $1.6 million; and Facebook, headed by Zuckerberg, spent $351,000, the report said.

The president landed just after 5 p.m. at San Francisco International Airport, where he was met by California Attorney General Kamala Harris, an old friend and longtime supporter, as well as San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom.

SFO to Woodside

Obama then traveled by helicopter to Cañada College in Redwood City, where athletic fields were closed off, some classes were canceled and teams of Secret Service roamed the grounds. The president landed just after 6 p.m. and his motorcade traveled through Woodside to Doerr's expansive estate.

The trip was Obama's eighth to California since his 2008 election, and his fourth to the Bay Area - but only the first that didn't involve political fundraising.

Still, California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring issued a blistering statement on the visit, calling it an Obama 2012 re-election campaign effort that will highlight "just how his failed stimulus program has left our state with 12.5 percent unemployment and tens of thousands of dollars in new debt for every California taxpayer."

Talk of investments, jobs

After the dinner, White House press secretary Jay Carney, who came along for the West Coast trip, said the group talked about ways to invest in innovation and how to increase jobs in the private sector.

"In the president's State of the Union address, he called on us to win the future by out-innovating and out-educating the rest of the world and increasing American competitiveness," Carney said in a statement. "The president believes that American companies like these have been leading by investing in the creativity and ingenuity of the American people, creating cutting-edge new technologies and promoting new ways to communicate."

He said Obama also discussed proposals to invest in research and development and his goal of doubling exports in five years.

Tech leaders give big to Obama, Democrats

Ten Bay Area technology leaders who dined Thursday with President Obama have contributed nearly $1 million in the past decade to Obama and candidates for Congress, most of them Democrats, according to an analysis by MAPLight.org of Berkeley. Two of the president's guests Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Stanford University President John Hennessy, did not contribute to those campaigns from 2001 through 2010, the analysis found. Donations to President Obama are included in the contribututions to Democrats.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/02/17/MNDJ1HPCHC.DTL