Why Silicon Valley’s Right Flank Wasn’t Watching California On Election Night

SAN FRANCISCO — Silicon Valley’s “tech right” could be found on election night railing against Zohran Mamdani, cheering the renomination of Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, or both.

Few, however, spent their time on California’s vote to redraw House districts and sideline state Republicans — even though the push was largely billed as being about thwarting their ally, President Donald Trump.

Rather than tapping the president’s coterie of ultra-wealthy tech elites, Proposition 50’s opposition relied on the likes of megadonor physicist Charles Munger Jr. and watched in retreat as the Yes side’s fundraising lapped them.

“It’s not a majority of Californians, but it’s a majority of Democrats that provided the blast furnace with its burst of energy,” Shawn Steel, the Republican National Committee member for California, told POLITICO of the redistricting campaign. “Nobody else really cares, and that includes Silicon Valley.”

Although Prop 50 is set to deepen Democratic dominance in the state, a different race fired up the usual chronic critics, who accuse California of being a poster child for “woke” liberal overreach.

Elon Musk’s frustrations with the regulatory environment in California drove him and his companies to pack up for Texas. Yet he reserved an eleventh-hour endorsement for former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral election against Mamdani, the ultimate winner.

His America PAC, too, spent the days ahead of the vote posting clips that cast Mamdani in a negative light, plus some content against Virginia’s victorious Democratic candidates, Abigail Spanberger and Jay Jones.

Mamdani continued to be something of an off-year bogeyman, not only for some New York billionaires like Bill Ackman, who donated $1 million to block him, but also for techies that don’t even live on the same coast.

Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire’s earlier anti-Mamdani remarks led hundreds to sign an open letter demanding the storied Silicon Valley firm denounce the venture capitalist. Sequoia’s decision not to discipline him prompted its COO to resign. The backlash didn’t stop Maguire, a San Francisco Bay Area resident, from doubling down this week. “Dear New Yorkers,” he wrote. “Vote like your lives depend on it. Because your livelihood does.”

Maguire did not respond to an inquiry about his views on Prop 50.

Former PayPal President David Marcus, now a Bitcoin startup CEO based in Los Angeles, also rallied New Yorkers to “get out and vote.” He declared last July that he was “crossing the Rubicon” to back Trump and the Republican Party after years as a Democrat.

Silicon Valley-based startup investor Mike Maples Jr. took a jab at California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna for his support of Mamdani.

Meanwhile, Prop 50 didn’t register a blip from the faces of Silicon Valley’s pro-Trump set, both those in and out of government. Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Keith Rabois, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Airbnb co-founder turned U.S. chief design officer Joe Gebbia, White House artificial intelligence czar David Sacks and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey were among those who stayed silent during the final stretch this week.

None had donated to the fight. Despite their prominence, the most recognizable figures of the tech right have invested relatively little in statewide campaigns here.

Software entrepreneur Thomas Siebel had cut the No on 50 side a $1 million check. He’s a relative of first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and once hosted a fundraiser for then-presidential nominee Trump. Another $250,000 came from Doug Leone, a longtime Republican donor who used to run Sequoia and split from Trump following the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Had national Republicans or Trump tried to mobilize others, that list might’ve looked different. White House allies had said Prop 50 was a low-ranking priority for Trump, and the president left it alone for weeks — until giving the issue a last-minute cameo on Truth Social.

In a telling sign, Alex Bruesewitz, a senior figure at Trump’s PAC, posted: “Big elections today in New Jersey, New York, and Virginia. Get out and vote!” notably leaving California off.

Steel argued that the ascendant center-right techies are rightly treating California as an electoral outlier and focusing their sights on 2026.

“I don’t think Trump needed to pull in his chips and say, ‘hey, help me here,’ because he’s doing well in other places,” he said. “State Republicans sadly just don't have any power in Sacramento because they're an extreme minority party, so they don't know the tech community in Silicon Valley particularly well.”

There didn’t appear to be much of a concerted effort from the No on 50 operation to get them involved, either.

“Our committee was solely funded by Charles and we were focused on persuadable and no-voting NPP and Democrat voters,” said Amy Thoma Tan, spokesperson for Munger’s committee to oppose the measure. “It wasn’t our focus.”

A version of this story first appeared in California Decoded, POLITICO’s morning newsletter for Pros about how the Golden State is shaping tech policy within its borders and beyond. Like this content? POLITICO Pro subscribers receive it daily. Learn more at www.politicopro.com.