[I was mostly offline over the long weekend and I'm just catching up on Politech now. You can expect most of the backlog to arrive overnight. --Declan] --- http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5159153.html Piercing a Silicon Valley stereotype February 17, 2004, 4:00 AM PT By Declan McCullagh A minor mystery is afoot in Silicon Valley, where tech workers who claim to adore Democratic politicians are quietly backing other candidates. Conventional wisdom holds that area denizens are latte-sipping, tofu-snacking liberals as likely to vote for someone like Newt Gingrich as they are to wear mink. This is, after all, the region that birthed the Burning Man festival, celebrated an illegal gay marriage last week, and whose political beliefs presumably would give Pat Robertson a case of the heebie-jeebies. There is some truth to that. In November's race for San Francisco mayor, for instance, the Republican candidate garnered 4 percent the votes of the Democratic and Green candidates. Registered Democrats and Greens in Berkeley outnumber Republicans by over 10 to 1, according to the California secretary of state. In Palo Alto, Mountain View, and San Jose, the divide is not as stunning, but the ratio remains about two registered Democrats for every Republican. But those numbers don't come close to telling the real story. Sift through the heaps of data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics and you'll find that people who work for technology firms actually disliked Al Gore even more than they disliked George W. Bush. ... _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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