It’s a cool thing to be an elected official (Vice Mayor, City of Mountain View) in a presidential election year. Especially when your Silicon Valley home town is an official ATM for Democratic Party fundraisers. All the big wigs come to town to schmooze with the Google, LinkedIn, Tesla, and Facebook executives of the world. And I typically get invited. So far, I’ve met President Obama and Hillary Clinton, in addition to their subordinate big wigs who travel with them. Next week, Bernie Sanders is making his California debut at a hush hush private event in the Palo Alto Hills Country Club. The sponsoring host is Fred Anderson of Elevation Partners, Bono’s venture capital firm. I was talking with Fred recently at a cocktail party for local officials about how I have been to 46 U2 shows and am among the biggest U2 fans there is and how I was lucky to run into Bono at Google nearly a year ago and that I was so happy to take my 14 year old son to his first U2 show last year in San Jose. I showed him the photos on my phone. He laughed and invited me to the fundraiser. I’m not really a Bernie fan (I’m with Her), but I joked if Bono was going to be there, I’d show up. Fred’s response was, “Well make sure your evening is free, because Bono is a Bernie supporter, and he’ll be in town for a few meetings.”
“What?!!” I said. “Bono is the consummate networker and I know that he doesn’t play favorites with politicians. His work is above politics.” Fred laughed at me and said that its true Bono has to play diplomat to get his causes passed by the various governments he lobbies, but he really does favor some over others. And he is hoping Bernie gets elected. Who knew?
So I happily accepted the invitation and told him I’d be there! My wife has to take our son to debate practice that night (Thursday April 7), so I have a “plus 1” I can bring. I figured it should be a local Kossak. If you’re interested, please let me know by KosMail. To select the person, I’ll make a list of everybody who responds by the end of today. Even’s will be Heads, Odd’s will be Tails. I’ll keep shortening the list until I get to the last person. If you don’t get a response, it wasn’t you. Good luck!
Rgds,
Ken
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Bono is feeling the BERN!
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