How startups, volunteers, activist groups, and other organizations from Silicon Valley are trying to spark a Democratic wave during the midterms
Tony Romm / Washington Post : Tweets: @ronaldklain , @sacca , and @shomikdutta . Thanks: @tonyromm Tweets: Ronald Klain / @ronaldklain : Still a lot of work to be done before next Tuesday, but proud that @highergroundlab is helping so many Democratic candidates get it done with new digital tools! http://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Chris Sacca / @sacca : Last election, I had a hard time getting people in tech to give a damn. I'm happy to report that a bunch of folks have stepped up this time. Thanks to everyone who is pouring their time, talent, and dollars into this critical election. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Shomik Dutta / @shomikdutta : “Amassing a roughly $5 million war chest, Higher Ground Labs set about trying to seed the next generation of tools that might help Democratic campaigns...on Election Day.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Thanks: @tonyromm
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece lands at the end of a 2018 cycle that began with money: an August look at ten of Silicon Valley's biggest Democratic donors found them not just writing checks but rethinking how their money gets spent. The Washington Post's account extends that shift from dollars to labor and product — Higher Ground Labs assembling roughly $5 million to seed campaign tools, with figures like Ronald Klain and Chris Sacca publicly recruiting tech talent into the effort.
What makes the story more than a midterm snapshot is what came after: Tech for Campaigns grew into a ~13,500-person volunteer corps that has worked on hundreds of election projects and flipped three state chambers since 2018, while Mobilize became near-ubiquitous volunteer infrastructure on Democratic campaigns — evidence the ad-hoc mobilization described here hardened into standing machinery.
First-order effects
- Democratic candidates in the final week before the midterms gain free or cheap access to digital tools, engineering volunteers, and activist networks that previously required paid consultants.
- Higher Ground Labs' roughly $5 million war chest flows directly to early-stage toolmakers building for campaigns, giving Shomik Dutta and Klain a gatekeeping role over which products reach Democratic operatives.
Second-order effects
- Campaign vendors like Mobilize convert one-off midterm adoption into default infrastructure, raising the bar for any Democratic campaign that tries to run without them.
- The party apparatus responds by upgrading its own stack — the DNC's later move to replace its aging Vertica repository with a BigQuery-based Data Warehouse shows institutional buyers absorbing the tools-first approach rather than ceding it to startups.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Silicon Valley's political role shifts from episodic check-writing by a donor class to a permanent supply side of software, volunteers, and venture-funded tooling embedded in Democratic campaigns each cycle.
The trend: Tech-industry political engagement is consolidating from ad hoc donations into durable campaign infrastructure — volunteer corps, venture-backed tool funds, and party data systems — that recurs every election cycle.