Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Silicon Valley Loves Bernie Sanders
Almost half of the top 20 employers whose workers contributed to the Sanders campaign last year were companies in Silicon Valley, the Wall Street Journal reports, including Google, Apple, and Microsoft. He received almost $105,000 from the five largest tech firms in the last three months of 2015.
The wider trend of smaller donations making up a preponderance of contributions to Sanders’ campaign held true for tech employees—in the last quarter of 2015, no more than 150 donors gave the maximum individual contribution ($2,700).
The Sanders campaign, of course, is happy to take the tech industry’s money (and their time—lots of folks out there seem to have come to the candidate through a volunteer organization, Coders for Sanders). From the Journal:
Michael Briggs, a spokesman for Mr. Sanders, said he wasn’t surprised at Silicon Valley’s support for the senator. He said the area has long been one of the places most engaged with Mr. Sanders online, even before his presidential campaign.He added that Mr. Sanders’s message about income inequality is particularly resonant in San Francisco, where tensions have intensified between the city’s wealthier tech community and its poorer residents. “That’s something that people there are very well aware of,” he said. “It makes sense that it would be part of the reason that people are drawn to Bernie’s message.”
This is a little bit of an odd thing to say, however, as it is those very Silicon Valley workers who have contributed to said tensions. But! The world is a complicated place.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment