McCain Stops By Google
Presidential hopeful speaks to Google employees.
May 7, 2007
By Herbert A. Sample
redherring.com
It wasn’t exactly the lion’s den, but when Republican presidential hopeful John McCain stepped into the cavernous Google cafeteria last Friday, he must have known that his audience was going to differ from the one he entertained at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University two days before.
But a funny thing happened along the way to the left-wing, high-tech behemoth whose officers, managers, and minions donated nearly $290,000 to political candidates last year—91 percent of which went to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Far from being booed and hissed for his stand opposing abortion rights or his insistence on increasing troop levels in Iraq, Sen. McCain was rewarded with frequent applause during a 28-minute chat on stage with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and a 35-minute Q&A with employees.
McCain’s appearance may have swayed few minds among the standing-room-only crowd of about 1,000 workers. After all, as one employee said in prefacing her question, “Most of the people I’ve met in high tech are either liberals or libertarians.” Still, the 21-year Arizona senator got points from the audience for his seeming forthrightness, employees said afterwards.
“He took stands,” said Jeffrey Oldham, a 37-year-old programmer. “He was willing to take positions and not be wishy-washy.”
“He seems very wise,” said Akira Hangai, 37, a software engineer. “He seems to have a lot of experience, of course, because of his age.”
McCain, 70, was the second candidate to visit Google’s Mountain View headquarters this year, part of a first-of-its-kind effort by the company to have the presidential candidates speak there. The leading Democrat, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, stopped by in March. Both appearances are available on Google’s web site and on YouTube.com, the video web site that Google purchased last year.
Though many of the Google employees toiled away on laptops as they waited for the event to begin, few asked about anything tied to the Internet. Rather, they wanted to know about genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan; health care; Iraq; McCain’s coziness with Christian conservatives that he denounced during his 2000 presidential run; Russia, and the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gay service personnel.
Even Schmidt, sitting on stage in director’s chairs with the senator, started off asking McCain about his years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, and then moved on to Iraq, Iran, global warming, and government spending.
“I think it's a reflection of the fact that Googlers are interested in a lot of different issues, not just those issues related to the technology industry,” said Adam Kovacevich, a Google spokesman.
McCain, though, did touch on other issues of importance to the computer industry, including immigration and free trade.
“I know there are people in this room right now … that disagree with me on a specific issue, whether it be Iraq, whether it be abortion,” McCain told the crowd. “But I promise you I will take these positions because I’ve thought about them, talked about them, and believe in them.”
For McCain, the appearance was an opportunity to showcase himself before a more skeptical and Democratic audience than he might otherwise see as he seeks the GOP nomination. It also provided an entrée into a sector of the economy that has a lot of money to donate and which his opponents are arguably mining better than he is.
For example, while McCain can count one Silicon Valley mover and shaker as a supporter—John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems—former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani can point to a handful of bigwig backers, including Floyd Kvamme of Kleiner Perkins.
Further, McCain has raised much less from the computer and Internet industry, $61,500 so far, than one of his main rivals, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who garnered nearly $220,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
McCain held two private fundraisers in the San Francisco area prior to his Google appearance, but aides would not release their details.
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