“Marc Andreessen Eats Washington”, 2024-02-22 ():
After a long political “spirit walk”, Silicon Valley’s most famous VC is starting PACs, hiring elite political consultants, messaging with his favorite right-wingers and once again spreading capital across DC—all to pump up his investments and spread the gospel of Marc.
Late last month, Marc Andreessen was holding court in the Waldorf, the site of the former Trump hotel in downtown DC showing off one of his new initiatives in town, “American Dynamism”—his firm’s investment thesis for backing startups in patriotic fields like manufacturing and defense tech. As the speaking list suggested, Andreessen hasn’t lost his ability to pull: sprinkled about were Governor Wes Moore, F.B.I. director Christopher Wray, and GOP senators including Bill Cassidy and Todd Young. Later that evening, Andreessen Horowitz held one of those classic DC wine-and-dines at the National Portrait Gallery.
…His firm has quietly hired high-powered Republican and Democratic consulting firms to help them navigate Washington while hosting fundraiser after fundraiser at its Sand Hill offices for crypto-friendly candidates, setting up new political-action committees, and preparing to spend its founders’ fortunes to boost their portfolio companies.
Behind closed doors, executives from Andreessen Horowitz have communicated the firm’s willingness to spend tens of millions of dollars on campaigns. Currently, the firm is primarily focused on the deregulation of the crypto industry, where a16z has invested considerably over the past few years. The firm has also quietly provided millions for a new pro-crypto dark-money 501(c)4 group called Digital Innovation for America, per sources. The group, which has strong ties to the Republican-aligned consulting shop Targeted Victory, has attacked politicians seen as skeptical of cryptocurrencies.
More publicly, Andreessen Horowitz’s management committee—under the names of Marc and his co-founder, Ben Horowitz—has also put $22 million into a network of super PACs, called Fairshake, that would oppose anti-crypto legislators, such as current congresswoman and Senate hopeful Katie Porter of California. Willed into existence by Democratic powerbroker and former Gore-ite Chris Lehane, the group has collected similarly sized checks from crypto companies Ripple and Coinbase, and currently has some $85 million to spend, a staggering sum.
Meanwhile, Andreessen, Horowitz, and their other top partner, Chris Dixon, are cultivating their foot soldiers. According to recent filings, they cut personal max-out checks to a number of pro-crypto Democrats in the second half of 2023, including Rep. Ritchie Torres, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (a former crypto investor), and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, all of whom the firm counts as key allies. Last month, I hear, a16z quietly hosted a fundraiser at its Menlo Park offices for Tom Emmer, the powerful House Republican who briefly pursued the speaker’s gavel last year, that raised about $200,000. Marc, Ben and the firm are also hosting a big fundraiser on March 1 for Wyoming GOP Senator Cynthia Lummis, alongside the crypto investment firm Paradigm.
The guy running point on all of this, Collin McCune—a former top aide to GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry—was recently promoted from overseeing a16z’s crypto political portfolio to plotting the firm’s entire political strategy. He is a Hill rat, not a political fixer—no Lehane is a phrase I’ve heard a few times now—but his job is to figure it out. So he has hired Democratic power consulting firm SKDK, as well as individual consultants like Heather Larrison, a prominent GOP fundraiser who most famously banked over $100 million for Jeb super PAC Right to Rise, to work closely with the firm while it makes this new political push, I’ve learned.
Last fall, McCune and Larrison started what could be considered the firm’s very first, homegrown PAC: Keep Startups in America, which got all of its funding from Andreessen, Horowitz, Dixon, and their spouses. Keeping startups in America is indeed an important cause for Andreessen. He visited the White House in late 2022 to talk with President Biden’s head of national cybersecurity, Matt Cronin, according to visitor logs. And when Mike Gallagher, the retiring, hawkish Wisconsin congressman, visited Silicon Valley last year, Andreessen unwound a 20-minute soliloquy over dinner about how tech is a national resource and the US is conceding its leadership role to China, a source told me…(His other pet causes are crypto, of course, and AI “accelerationism.”)
…Indeed, Andreessen is now unabashedly a right-winger, and a terminally online one at that. He counts as friends the conservative podcasters Coleman Hughes, anti-D.E.I. crusader Christopher Rufo, and the (allegedly) reformed white nationalist Richard Hanania, all of whom have had the chance to interview him on their platforms. Like his close friend Peter Thiel, Andreessen is an up-all-night group-chatter and Signaler. “His information flow is terrific”, said one of the online influencers who talks to him regularly. He also corresponds with everyone from Nate Silver to the economist Tyler Cowen, with whom he attended the most recent meeting of the Koch network to deliver a talk on AI
…Andreessen Horowitz has a long history of influence-peddling in the District—the firm once hired former mayor Adrian Fenty to do God knows what—even if they were always careful to say it wasn’t technically lobbying. But now they’ve discarded that fiction. In 2022, a16z began hiring lobbyists for both the House and Senate, becoming particularly associated in Washington circles with Mehlman Consulting. Last year, McCune himself registered as a lobbyist, becoming the first a16z staffer ever to do so. Overall, in 2023, the firm spent $1 million on lobbying—and that’s just the official number.
…In December, seemingly out of nowhere, Horowitz wrote in a blog post that he and Marc were back, but this time that they would pledge to be “single issue” donors. “We believe that advancing technology is critical for humanity’s future, so we will, for the first time, get involved with politics by supporting candidates who align with our vision and values specifically for technology”, Horowitz wrote, eager to outline the broader context for why they might suddenly support, say, an anti-abortion candidate. A few days later, they announced Fairshake.
Andreessen even patched things up with Khanna, thanks to the firm’s American Dynamism portfolio. Marc and Laura maxed out to his campaign for 2024. “We share a view that we need a bold economic mission for our nation. Marc is someone who is very passionate, has a strong point of view, but is open to being challenged and conversing with people like me who come from a different ideology. He is also a deep patriot”, Khanna told me.