Minnesota For Sale: The Silicon Valley connection

Tech giants from the left coast were big donors to state Democrats in this last election cycle.

The names of some Silicon Valley heavyweights can be found among the big-dollar donors to Minnesota Democrats in 2021-22, giving more than $1.6 million to state efforts. More than $637,000 of that amount went directly to the state DFL party.

The biggest name from the above list is former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who gave more than $117,000 to MN Democrats in 2021. His wife, Wendy, gave $136,000 to the state DFL party back in 2020.

The largest single Silicon Valley donor in 2022 was Gloria Page, the mother of Google founder Larry Page, who gave more than a half million dollars. Doug Edwards, Google employee No. 59, also gave.

Oracle executive Evan Goldberg gave $300,000.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer donated $25,000 to state Democrats. He now owns the NBA’s LA Clippers.

Allen Blue, Linked-In co-founder, gave $29,000

Columnist Victor David Hanson recently wrote about the huge amounts of Silicon Valley money going into Democratic politics. Hanson notes,

“For example, of those seventeen U.S. tech companies claiming a value of $100 billion, 98 percent of their aggregate donations are directed to Democrats.”

He adds,

“Some fifteen Silicon Valley rich people sent more than $120 million to left-wing candidates between 2018 and 2020 alone.”

The money kept flowing in 2022. The above table is not meant to be an exhaustive list of the Silicon Valley donors to Minnesota politics. We’ve excluded, for example, those giving exclusively to national groups where the money may or may not have been ultimately spent in Minnesota. All of the above donations have a direct Minnesota tie.

But as impressive as those totals are, they are chump change when compared to the Zuckerbucks.

Back in 2020, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg showered hundreds of millions of dollars on local election authorities across America to fortify the electoral process to favor Democrats. His nonprofit, the Center for Election Innovation and Research, sent more than $7 million of that amount to Minnesota, as reported by AlphaNews.

You can see the Minnesota donations for yourself in the Center’s 2020 IRS tax return (pages 104-106). Here is screenshot of some of the donations to Minnesota.

One footnote to the high-tech story. Minnesota Democrats claim to be trying to drive foreign corporate money out of state politics. But in the Sam Bankman-Fried crypto donation listed above, the state’s highest ranking law-enforcement officer (A.G. Keith Ellison) accepted a donation from a foreign company (FTX) with a foreign address (Bahamas).

Rules for thee, but not for me.

In Part 12 of this series, we broaden the scope to include all of the Forbes 400 top billionaires.