California’s Kamala Harris is pushing California’s lobbies, advisers, funding, and political priorities into the top ranks of the Democratic Party.
Her newly announced top aides include Californian Tony West, who is her brother-in-law and the top lawyer at the Uber ride-sharing firm. “He has served as a critical point of contact for business leaders and major donors, according to several people with knowledge of his role,” the New York Times reported.
California’s tech investors are backing Harris because of her “familiarity with the needs of the tech industry,” says a technology investor and a member of the board at Microsoft.
The rise of California’s interest groups in Democratic politics is a PR problem for the party that portrays itself as a champion for economic equality and middle-class families.
California’s economy of wealthy investors and lower-wage migrants is squeezing out California’s once-envied middle class, ensuring that California’s economic inequality is higher than in states such as Arkansas and Mississippi
For example., California’s housing prices are inflated by elite support for legal and illegal migrants: “Apples to apples, a mid-tier home, in the 35th to 65th percentile of home values, costs more than twice as much in California as elsewhere in the U.S. — $784,000, versus $354,000 nationally,” Capital and Main reported in July. “This translates to a budget-choking average monthly payment for Californians of nearly $6,000.”
“Everybody feels they’re being squeezed by the cost of living, even affluent people,” Zev Yaroslavsky, the former longtime county supervisor and city councilmember, told the Los Angeles Times in April. “Fewer than a quarter of renters said they thought they would ever be able to buy a home in a part of L.A. where they would want to live,” the newspaper reported.
Harris spent her childhood in Canada’s wealthiest community but moved to California to begin her political career as a black-identifying politician. She was elected to the jobs of San Francisco District Attorney in 2003, as Attorney General of California in 2010, and federal senator in 2016, giving her a wide range of Californian allies and donors.
Harris’s new top aides include David Plouffe, who runs Mark Zuckerberg’s pro-migration FWD.us lobbying group for West Coast investors. He was born in Delaware but was hired as a political expert in 2017 by the California-based Zuckerberg-Chan Initiative. In 20202, he paired his expertise with Zuckerberg’s cash to help win the 2020 election for the Democratic candidate.
Her top pollster is David Binder, based in San Francisco. Californian Brian Nelson is also working as Harris’s top policy official. Harris has not posted an economic platform on her website.
The Californian takeover of the Democratic Party is pushing many of President Joe Biden’s East Coast deputies into exile, including Tom Donilon and Anita Dunn. Those East Coast deputies have political roots in unions, government agencies, and anti-poverty programs.
Hoffman sketched out the hopes of California investors in his New York Times article
Whoever assumes the presidency in 2025 will do so when AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles, genetic engineering, blockchain and decentralized finance, advanced manufacturing and other key innovation industries will be playing an even greater role in creating economic prosperity and ensuring global competitiveness than they do now …. In this moment, we need a leader who recognizes that innovation is the key to economic prosperity, national security and breakthrough progress on climate change and other pressing issues.
Tellingly, the op-ed does not mention the tech sector’s support for the Extraction Migration economic policy that has been supported by Harris during the Biden administration. That policy uses the government to inflate the sector’s consumer economy with imported consumers, renters, and workers.
Nor does the Hoffman article mention the goal of raising Americans’ productivity, which would translate into higher wages and greater prosperity for ordinary Americans. That productivity option is being pushed by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
The article does mention the international trade that allows Americans to sell more products to foreigners — but only to complain about how President Donald Trump pressured foreign governments to open up more opportunities for U.S. manufacturers and farmers.
Hoffman’s op-ed predicts Harris will keep the taxpayer dollars flowing into investors’ projects, despite her lack of any policy platform:
As Vice President Harris defines her vision for how best to lead the United States in this moment in time, she has an opportunity to take the torch passed to her by President Biden in an explicitly pro-innovation direction. Instead of governing by tweet, Mr. Biden passed bipartisan legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that authorized hundreds of billions of dollars for new manufacturing construction and investment.
In contrast, Hoffman slammed President Donald Trump, complaining about a “carnival of chaos that has defined his tenure as a presidential candidate, president, ex-president, and now, once again, presidential candidate.”
“Mr. Trump spent much of his time as president meddling in the business affairs of iconic American companies … he regularly appeared to threaten Amazon, who he claimed was avoiding taxes and antitrust regulations,” Hoffman complained.
Under Trump, California’s tech lords also complained that tariffs to help U.S. manufacturers also hindered their ability to digital products and services overseas and that curbs on cheap-labor migration chopped $100 billion off the stock values of Fortune 500 companies.
Some investors are backing Trump and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, who has worked in the Valley’s investor sector. For example, Trump’s backers include Elon Musk, whose X social media firm will gain from Trump’s expected support for free speech.
But Hoffman’s op-ed reflects the shift by most West Coast investors to back Harris, who is expected to fund the Valley’s priorities with taxpayer funds plus more migrants. For example, hundreds of the people in the California-centered Venture Capital sector have for a group — “VCs for Kamala” to boost the Harris campaign:
We spend our days looking for, investing in and supporting entrepreneurs who are building the future. We are pro-business, pro-American dream, pro-entrepreneurship, and pro-technological progress …. we can solve [political issues] through constructive dialogue with political leaders and institutions willing to talk to us.
Harris’ elite-backed campaign is also pulling in support from wealthy investors in New York, Florida, and other wealthy districts. “I’ve had conversations with Tony [West] and people on their team, and I find them very smart, very open to all business ideas,” said the billionaire investor Mark Cuban.
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