India’s Silicon gurus chip in with campaign money in world’s most expensive election

Information obtained from the Center of Responsive Politics based on Federal Election Commission listings show Indian-American digerati contributing money to the electoral process both at the state and national level. The total amount involved is close to $ 3 million, just a drop in the $ 3 billion that is being spent on this election, but more than what they haveever given before.

Sabeer Bhatia’s $ 600,000 fund-raiser for Al Gore and Ample Communications’ Vish Akella $ 1 million contribution to Clinton’s Democratic nominees on behalf of the Indian techies, has been well-chronicled in these columns. What’s less well known is scores of individual contributions to both parties.

Some of these contributions come from well-known political activists like Vinod Gupta of InfoUSA in Omaha, Nebraska. He has contributed more than $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee, besides individual contributions through other family members to an assortment of Congressional candidates.

For his troubles, Gupta not only got a call from the Clintons for the dinner banquet during Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit, but he also got to sleepover at the White House.

Several other contributing Indians haven’t been particularly known for their political interests or inclinations, but they have given money to bothparties.

They include Vinod Khosla, the celebrated venture capitalist and founder of Sun Microsystems, who has given $ 25,000 to the Republican National Committeeand George Bush. His Silicon Valley contemporary Kanwal Rekhi has given $ 60,000 to the Democratic National Committee and an assortment of Congressional aspirants.

Besides his fund-raiser, Vish Akella also gave $ 20,000 to the DNC.

Many of the amounts are a token $ 1000 contribution but they signal the start of an involvement in the political process. Once a contributor’s name gets on to the donors list, the parties are relentless in their pursuit of money.

Some Indians have also split their contributions to candidates from both parties, while other donation patterns show an interest choice of candidates spread over an ideological range. Thus a CRP list shows Roehm and Haas CEO Rajiv Gupta contributing to Bill Bradley (when he was in the race) before switching to George Bush.

Similarly, Keynote System’s CEO Umang Gupta, whose mother Ramnika Gupta was a long time legislator and trade union leader from Bihar’s Dhanbad area, chipped in with $ 1000 for Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic Senate Candidate from California, and $ 1000 for George W. Bush.

Although predominantly inclined towards the Democrats, many Indians are backing Republican Tom Campbell, who is contesting against Feinstein for a Senate seat. Campbell’s contributors include Sabeer Bhatia ($ 1000)who has otherwise raised money for Gore, and Exodus Communications’ B.V.Jagadeesh ($ 2000).

Some other Indians are evidently hard core Democrats. Yahoo’s content editor Srinija Srinivasan has contributed $ 1000 each to Bill Bradley and Al Gore.McKinsey CEO Rajat Gupta has given similar amounts to Bill Bradley and Hillary Clinton.

The First Lady has also attracted money from InfoUSA’s Vinod Gupta and Soros’ Group’s Purnendu Chatterjee.

Indians also gave to her opponent Rick Lazio, with a contribution coming from Berkshire Hathaway’s Ajit Jain, who is among the candidates tipped to succeed Warren Buffett.

“It’s time for Indians to be more active in both American politics and society. We have been insular and withdrawn for too long,” Cirrus Logic founder Suhas Patil, who has contributed $ 5,000 to the Democrats this year, said in a recent interview to this correspondent. Patil’s cry seems to have been heard by his peers.

Other prominent Indian-Americans have their own individual favourites. Former IBM-mer Kailash Joshi and Vinod Dham of the Pentium fame have bothcontributed to Gary Ackerman, the outgoing chairman of the India Caucus. Microsoft’s Vijay Vashee has given to Slade Gorton, the incumbent Republican Senator fighting to retain his seat from Washington State. paraStill others, like Mayfield Ventures’ VC Yogen Dalal, have given to umbrella organisations (in this case the National Venture Capitalists Association) that lobby in their line of business. Vashee also contributed $ 4,000 to the Microsoft political kitty. The Redmond giant is one of the most active lobbyist in Washington.

The Indian effort is small change compared to the big bucks that characterise the US election, but it is emblematic of the coming of age the community. More than the big individual contributions, it is the across-the-board routine donations that suggests they are becoming part of the political process.

Silicon Valley itself wasn’s particularly gee’d up about politics till recently. But recent surveys show San Francisco Bay Area ranked fourth nationwide for political contributions, with $29 million from January1999 to October 1, 2000.

Top contributors included Software tycoon Tom Siebel, who gave $500,000 to House Republican campaigns, and former Netscape Communications executive MarcAndreessen, who doled out $392,000, mostly to Democrats.

The upshot: Both Al Gore and George Bush swung by Silicon Valley on Tuesday looking for votes and endorsement from the country’s high-tech community.

Among the Valley heavyweights who have thrown their lot with Bush: Cisco CEO John Chambers, Sun Microsystems’ Scott McNealy, Intel CEO Craig Barrett,Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, ex-Hewlett-Packard CEO Lew Platt, and ex-Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale.

Gore backers include Apple’s Steve Jobs, Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr, 3Com CEO Eric Benhamou, and Novell’s CEO Eric Schmidt.