Giving up Google wasnt easy for Stephanie Hannon, if its easy for anyone. A person can get used to the big salary, cushy perks, and creative time Silicon Valleys top employers offer. Plus, she was working on cool, potentially life-saving stuff, like tools to assist in natural disasters. The tech life was good.
Then, in February 2015, Democratic digital guru Teddy Goff asked her to serve as chief technology officer for Hillary Clintons yet-to-be-announced bid for president. And Hannon remembers thinking, Is this the leap I want to make?
The thing is, political campaigns come with all of Silicon Valley’s gruel but none of the glory. You barely have time to sleep, much less innovate for the sheer joy of the technology. And resources are limited. But as someone who worked for so long in an industry that has so few women at the top, Hannon knew what her decision had to be. “The journey to put the first woman in the White House was just too big not to be part of,” she says.
Now shes trying to convince Silicon Valleys finest to do the same. And so far, its working. Clintons tech team is already shaping up to be the largest in campaign history, and possibly the smartest. With the general election four months away, Hannon has assembled a team of more than 50 engineers and developers who left lucrative careers at places like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to help code Clintons way to more votes, more dollars, and, if all goes according to plan, the White House.
That Clinton would have a sizable tech team this year isn’t at all unusual. In 2012, President Obama’s campaign attracted technologists with similarly stacked resumes, and his tech advantage helped him win the election. Today, a solid tech foundation is an expectation for any presidential aspirant.
At least, that’s what one of the two major candidates this year seems to think.
‘What technology does is gives us an edge in places where things are close.’Kyle Rush, Deputy CTO, Clinton Campaign
While Donald Trump has used the cable news cycle and social media masterfully to garner attention over the last year, he only hired an in-house digital director last month. And that, people familiar with the campaign say, is about the extent of his tech team. (The Trump campaign wouldn’t comment.) In other words, with just four months until election day, Trumps chances of catching up tech-wise are slim. Clinton’s tech team is already the size of a well-staffed startup and has had a year-long head start testing itself in primary contests across the country.
Yet, as with so much else this election cycle, a niggling doubt remains: maybe the conventional wisdom is wrong. Maybe you don’t need to spend all this money on industrial-grade tech to become president. Maybe you just need a killer Twitter feed. Yet even if that’s trueand it probably isn’tTrump’s tech deficit presents a bigger problem for Republicans. The GOP has persistently lagged Democrats when it comes to good tech tools. The Trump campaign’s apathy may only leave the party farther behind.
That’s not just bad for Trump. It’s bad for the party, the Romney staffer says. Presidential campaigns tend to serve as political research and development incubators. These campaigns are the only time when the parties have access to both big budgets and the opportunity to try out new tools on a national scale. Thanks to the Obama campaign and the Howard Dean campaign before it in 2004, the Democrats have tended to have a head start on campaign tech, passing their knowledge on from one campaign to the next.
After Romney lost to Obama, the Republican party acknowledged it needed to invest in tech, and a series of startups spun out of the Romney campaign to help GOP candidates do just that. This cycle, Trump has ignored that lesson (and so many others). And he has ridden that iconoclasm to success, in part because his fame and outsized personality transcend political norms. But just because it’s worked for Trump doesn’t mean it will work for other Republicans down the line.
For those GOPers who still care about the future of the party, that’s a scary thought.
“The Democrats are going to come out of this, win or lose, with another 1,000 people who have really big ideas about campaigns and tech,” the Romney staffer says. “It’s almost like a lost cycle for Republicans.”
In the meantime, Hannon says she’s hiring.
