Obama Vs. Romney: The Valley Technorati Choose Up Sides

Covering the intersection of tech and investing.

I’ve just been spending a ridiculous amount of time wading through lists published by Palo Ato Online of all of the people in the Silicon Valley towns of Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Woodside, Portola Valley, Atherton, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills who have given at least $2,500 to one side or the other in the 2012 presidential election. Those 7 towns are a target-rich environment, over-flowing with tech executives, venture capitalists, Stanford professors and various other people who can write $2,500 checks without batting an eyelash.

Here’s a sampling – and I stress, just a sampling – of some familiar names who have been giving money to one side or the other:

Obama Backers:

John Doerr, venture capitalist, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of the late Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple
Mark Chandler, general counsel, Cisco Systems
David Drummond, chief legal officer, Google
Tony Bates, president of Microsoft’s Skype division
Weili Dai, co-founder, Marvell Technology
Frank Quattrone, founder, Qatalyst Partners
John Warnock, co-founder, Adobe Systems
Diane Greene, former CEO, VMware
Donna Dubinksy, former CEO, Palm
Jeff Jordan, former CEO, OpenTable; partner, Andreessen Horowitz
Vinod Khosla, founder and partner, Khosla Ventures
Ann McNamee, wife of Elevation Partners founder Roger McNamee
Dan Rosenswig, CEO, Chegg
John Thompson, former CEO, Symantec
Pegi Young, wife of musician Neil Young
David Goldberg, CEO, Survey Monkey, and his wife…
…Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg
Omid Kordestani, former Google executive
Gary Lauder, venture investor; grandson of cosmetics industry titan Estee Lauder.
Brooks Byers, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Shervin Pishevar, partner, Menlo Ventures
Judy Estrin, former CTO, Cisco Systems.
Jeff Weiner, CEO, LinkedIn
Dick Swanson, president emeritus, SunPower

Romney Backers:

Charles Munger, vice chairman, Berkshire Hathaway
Safra Catz, CFO and co-president, Oracle
Samuel Collela, partner, Versant Ventures
James Morgan, chairman emeritus, Applied Materials
Michael Boskin, Stanford economics professor; chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President George H.W. Bush.
Scott McNeally, former CEO, Sun Microsystems
G. Kirk Raab, former CEO, Genentech
H. Raymond Bingham, former CEO, Cadence Design Systems
Kenneth Fisher, founder, Fisher Investments
Robert Kagle, partner, Benchmark Capital
Ann Livermore, former executive, Hewlett-Packard
Mary Meeker, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Larry Sonsini, chairman, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Carol Bartz, former CEO, Yahoo and Autodesk
Bruce Dunlevie, partner, Benchmark Capital
Jennifer Fonstad, partner, Draper Fisher
Jeffrey Housenbold, CEO, Shutterfly
Pierre Lamond, partner, Khosla Ventures
Vivek Ranadive, CEO, Tibco
Margaret “Meg” Whitman, CEO, Hewlett-Packard
Arthur Zafiropoulo, CEO, Ultratech
Steven Laub, CEO, Atmel
David Marquardt, co-founder August Capital; Microsoft board member
Geoff Yang, founding partner, Redpoint Ventures
J. Sanford Miller, partner, Institutional Venture Partners