Trump-vs.-Clinton Race Scrambles Silicon Valley Vote

In 2012 venture capitalist Marc Andreessen publicly abandoned the Democratic Party, announcing that he’d back Republican Mitt Romney. “I turned 40 last year, and so I figured it was time to make the switch,” he said in an interview with CNBC. He gave $100,000 to a super-PAC supporting Romney. But on May 3, after Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, Andreessen sent a brief tweet indicating that this year he plans to throw his support behind Democrat Hillary Clinton: “#ImWithHer.”

Clinton needs public support from people like Andreessen, who co-founded the early Web browsing company Netscape and remains a hero to many in the industry, more than she needs their campaign contributions. “Andreessen was a pretty strong signal,” says Joe Trippi, a Democratic political consultant who pioneered the use of technology to reach voters as Howard Dean’s campaign manager in 2004. “You could see a lot of unanimity and support for Hillary.” (A spokeswoman for Andreessen’s venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, declined an interview request. Bloomberg LP, which owns Bloomberg Businessweek, is an investor in the firm.)