The chips are up for Dole and GOP in computer land

Insight on the News, Nov 11, 1996 by Gayle M.B. Hanson

The emergence in California of a coordinated campaign by Silicon Valley chief executives in support of the Dole/Kemp presidential ticket may have resulted from Clinton's antibusiness attitudes.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the photograph hanging in Cypress Semiconductor founder T.J. Rodger's office provides all the commentary the Silicon Valley chief executive officer needs about the ability of President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore to lead the nation into the 21st century The photo was taken last March at NetDay, an event at which volunteers were supposed to wire classrooms for access to the Internet at schools throughout the country It features Clinton and Gore rolling several spools of red, white and blue wire down the corridor of a local high school, all the better to plug schoolchildren into the information superhighway

"The entire photo is a sham," says Rodgers, the self-styled Silicon Valley bad boy whose face has graced the cover of BusinessWeek. "There's Bubba and A1 and they have their boat shoes on, and the wire is red, white and blue. First of all, the wire is only 110-volt wire, which would not be sufficient for any kind of Internet connection. Secondly, they're running the wire down the middle of the school corridor, which is certainly not the place you'd put it. The first time I saw the picture I grimaced, but I keep it in my office in order to demonstrate the point that, when it comes to technology, Clinton and Gore don't know what they are talking about."

Rodgers speaks with a combination of anger and frustration. His anger is aimed at the fact that after wooing the executives of Silicon Valley in 1992 the Clinton administration deserted the region's booming high-tech industries when it came to making policy, particularly in the areas of securities litigation and encryption. And Rodgers is frustrated that, while many of the top executives in Silicon Valley either never belonged to or since have deserted the Democratic camp, the Democrats continue to advance the notion that it is they who have won the loyalty and support of the nation's high-tech community.

"We became very frustrated at the media reports that Silicon Valley was supporting Clinton," says E. Floyd Kvamme, a partner in Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. "The San Jose Mercury News printed a story in which the Democrats listed 80 individuals who had come out in favor of Clinton, many of whom were not top people at all. Well, people started making phone calls to each other and we realized that we needed to do something to counteract what we saw as a basic fallacy. The truth is, the vast majority of Silicon Valley businesses support [Bob] Dole and [Jack] Kemp, and we set out to prove it."

Using the kind of energy usually reserved for meeting a looming deadline for a new-product introduction, Kvamme and Rodgers, along with Scott McNealy, the powerhouse president and CEO of Sun Microsystems, set out to correct the record. If the Democrats could have their list of names, then the CEOs would counter with their own list of Republican supporters.

By the end of September more than 245 signatures had been gathered from executives supporting the Dole-Kemp ticket. These are not the names of rank-and-file engineers but a list of many of the best and brightest in what may be the most forward-looking entrepreneurial environment in the country The men and women who inked their names in support of Dole are, without question, true leaders of the industries that indeed will be building the bridges to the 21st century

If the Democrats had the name of Apple founder Steve Jobs, the Republicans had Apple CEO Gil Amelio, along with a host of other illuminati including Jim Barksdale, the president of Netscape Inc. -- the company that virtually has redefined America's relationship to computers with the introduction of software for browsing the World Wide Web, as well as being one of the stock market's biggest success stories of 1995.

To show his support for the GOP ticket, Barksdale invited both Dole and Kemp to visit Netscape's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, where a few weeks ago Kemp gave an impassioned speech about the role of technology during the next century, and Dole called the executives to thank them for their support.

"Both candidates asked to visit us, and I told both of them if they would get behind us on encryption-export control, they were both welcome," Barksdale says. "The Dole-Kemp group was quick to endorse it."

Encryption -- the use of secret codes to protect the flow of information over the Internet -- has been a stumbling block with the Clinton administration. It has favored a policy that would prohibit U.S. companies from selling such tools overseas -- all the better for protecting national security, or so the argument goes. However, Barksdale and others argue they should be able to export their encryption technology or they will lose to the Europeans what is a rapidly growing market.

Kemp declined to discuss the issue at Netscape, though he has said that barriers to exporting encryption technology should be removed. "There's a federal barrier put in place by this administration, and it is counterproductive in a post-Cold War world," Kemp said later during a four-day trip to California.