Vice President Harris finds herself in the middle of a battle between major Democratic donors and progressive activists who want to rein in big tech companies whose business practices have become the target of political attacks.
Big donors are pushing for Harris to replace Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who has led the Biden administration’s antitrust policy.
But progressives have warned that Harris would face an “infuriated” reaction from the party’s left if she ousted Khan from the FTC or withdrew her support from aggressive efforts to block mergers the FTC deems anti-competitive.
“The tech industry and Wall Street M&A crowd are certainly putting maximum pressure on Harris,” said Jeff Hauser, founder and executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a group that vets executive branch appointees to counter the influence of U.S. companies in the rule-making process.
“Lina Khan and [Assistant Attorney General] “Hiring Jonathan Cantor, who has a strong reputation for fighting corporate price gouging, would be completely at odds with Harris’ message,” he said.
Hauser warned that Harris would face strong backlash from the left if she allowed big donors to use pressure to oust Khan and other administration officials leading the effort to crack down on big tech companies.
“It’s going to be infuriating. Khan is considered one of the best decisions President Joe Biden has made as president. She’s turned around an agency that’s been dormant for almost half a century,” he said. “They’re starting to win some victories in court, and they’re also blocking a lot of mergers that would have been initiated if the FTC hadn’t stepped in to investigate.”
A Harris campaign spokesman declined to comment on personnel decisions she would make if elected.
In a letter to Republican lawmakers last year, Khan noted that under his watch, the FTC has taken action against 38 mergers since June 2021, and companies have abandoned 14 mergers while the FTC was investigating them.
The Department of Justice and the FTC won a major victory earlier this month when U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., ruled that Google had violated the Sherman Act, an antitrust law, by maintaining a virtual monopoly on internet search services and advertising.
The FTC filed an amicus brief in a separate case against Google, urging the court to use its power to restore competition in the marketplace and recommending that the search giant be broken up.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., ranked among the leading donors to the Biden-Harris 2020 campaign, with employees reportedly donating more than $5 million to help Biden win the White House. Open SecretA website that tracks campaign fundraising.
Some progressives are suspicious of Ms. Harris, a former senator from California, home of Silicon Valley, and her tech ties. She recently raised more than $12 million at a fundraiser at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, where tech billionaires, CEOs and venture capitalists paid between $3,300 and $500,000 for tickets.
“She hasn’t been an independent politician for the last four years. She’s been Joe Biden’s loyal vice president at a time when the party has grown increasingly angry and disconnected with big tech. Is she still the California Democrat she was, or has she changed? That’s an open and debatable question,” Hauser said.
“While the continued reliance on Silicon Valley by parts of the Democratic Party is problematic, I would like to believe that Ms. Harris understands that California has interests that are independent of the narrow interests of the state she arguably once represented,” he added.
The Harris campaign has received funding from some of the biggest names in tech, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, former Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, Melinda French Gates and Barry Diller, chairman and senior executive at IAC and Expedia Group.
Hoffman and Diller have led the campaign to have Harris replace Khan as FTC chair.
Hoffman, a Microsoft board member who has accused Khan of “waging war on American companies” and said he wants Harris to take over as FTC commissioner if elected, has donated $7 million to support the Biden-Harris campaign and organized a Silicon Valley fundraiser for Harris.
Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia are facing antitrust investigations by the FTC and Department of Justice related to their dominance in the emerging artificial intelligence market.
The FTC is also suing Microsoft over its acquisition of gaming company Activision Blizzard.
Diller has pledged to donate his maximum contribution to Harris and said he would urge her to replace Khan if elected president.
“California is home to Silicon Valley, so it’s always been close to technology,” said Gil Duran, a journalist who has written critically about the tech industry and served as Harris’ communications director when she was California’s attorney general.
Duran said it was “not surprising” that Harris has close ties to the tech industry, but said the vice president, who rose through the political ranks in San Francisco and California state government, “understands the need to balance relationships with responsibilities.”
“Not all ideas coming out of Silicon Valley are bad. Technology has positively transformed our lives in many ways and has created jobs and important innovations. But as these people get richer and richer, we’ve also seen that their egos can get huge and sometimes they go too far,” he said. “I think Vice President Harris is wise in thinking that we shouldn’t allow a handful of donors to take money to fire someone who’s doing a great job of holding Silicon Valley accountable.”
“Firing someone who is doing a great job as a regulator would be devastating,” he added. “It shows the ego of these people that they think they can simultaneously sign checks and publicly call for someone’s fire.”
Ashley Woolheater, a Democratic strategist who previously worked for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), said there was “significant backlash” to Hoffman’s comments and he later walked back his comments that he would influence policy decisions in a Harris administration.
Woolheater also noted that Harris will unveil a plan on Friday to crack down on high fees and junk charges, calling it “part of the antitrust and fair competition plan that Lina Khan was one of the leaders of.”
But she acknowledged that “if there are probably large donors, that’s definitely a concern.” [influence] It’s an important event.”
“if [Harris] She added that “the FTC needs to change course on how it cracks down on tech monopolies.”
Harris has remained silent about Khan’s future and other major personnel decisions that would have a major impact on her administration’s policy if she defeats former President Trump in November.
Governor Harris is scheduled to speak in North Carolina on Friday, where she will call for a federal ban on corporate price gouging in the grocery and food industries and promise to direct the FTC to fine companies that exploit consumers to make profits. She is also expected to announce policies to curb the skyrocketing costs of prescription drugs and housing.
But Democratic lawmakers and progressive activists have questioned whether Khan would have the same freedom to stand up to the tech industry, a major source of Democratic donor funding, in a Harris administration, especially as he faces growing pressure from tech giants.
One Senate Democratic leader said Harris “must demonstrate that Biden’s signature industrial policy will continue because it is the backbone of building a care economy.”
“We’ll see how the team changes,” the source said.
