• Business Week, Wednesday, September 19, 2007 11:01 AM

Understandably, the 2008 presidential candidates' have their eyes trained on Iowa and New Hampshire now, but Silicon Valley figures prominently in their campaign plans. The cash-rich Valley is a tremendous source of fund-raising, having raised $1 million more in the first six months of '07 than it did in 2004 and 2000.

More broadly, California, with its early primary date of Feb. 5, provides a chance for the candidates to tackle issues other than the war in Iraq and economic concerns, such as Net neutrality, job outsourcing, competition in the Internet service industry, open standards for wireless, and the U.S. patent mess, particularly with respect to software. Venture capitalists, the Valley's other influential, cash-rich faction, fear that higher taxes for private equity would discourage investment in tech startups.

As former Palo Alto mayor Gary Fazzino, now vice president of government affairs at Hewlett-Packard, says, "There has never been this degree of attention paid by presidential candidates to the Valley." Industry giants agree that the next Presidential election is crucial for the tech sector. "We want to make sure the next President is a 'tech President'," says Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich, "that they ... have some concrete ideas about how to keep the tech economy growing."

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