Google’s board of directors donates six times as much money to Democrats as it does to Republicans, according to the conservative site NewsBusters.
Ten of the 13 board members of Alphabet, the parent company to Google, have given more than $3.9 million to political causes, which includes candidates and groups of both political affiliations. Roughly $3.1 million of that total went to Democrats and around $509,00 went to Republicans, with the rest going to groups deemed as “neutral,” according to NewsBusters, which gets its data from OpenSecrets and Bloomberg.
Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt gave the most money altogether, with approximately $842,900 given to Democrats, $291,500 to Republicans, and $35,808 to neutral groups. Schmidt was a fairly unabashed supporter of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, evidenced by him donning a Clinton “staff” badge during her election night party. Schmidt also told employees earlier in the year that he predicts the Trump administration is “going to do these evil things as they’ve done in the immigration area.”
The disproportionality is not only potentially significant for its starkness, but can also perhaps explain, at least partially, why former engineer James Damore was ultimately fired. Damore was canned, according to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, for a memo he wrote in which “portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful genders stereotypes in our workplace” — an assertion he makes while saying “people must feel free to express dissent” in the same breath. While also referencing personality differences between genders, Damore advocated for, among other things, the company to “stop alienating conservatives” and to “stop restricting programs and classes to certain genders or race.”
After hearing of Damore’s firing, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange used the opportunity to plug his book that has a chapter detailing allegations of a “special relationship” between Google (particularly Schmidt) and Clinton.
Google, both as a general company as well as its leaders, though, appear to either hedge their bets, or genuinely support certain conservative and Republican figures and causes. Along with the aforementioned statistics, the tech conglomerate donated $285,000 to Trump’s inauguration, according to official Federal Election Commission filings.
Google declined to provide comment to The Daily Caller News Foundation, but did refer the organization to a New York Times report claiming that “Google’s Washington office is now roughly split between Republican and Democrats.” The office in the Capitol deals with policy issues, but is only a fraction of the size of its offices in both California and New York, respectively.
The story, which Google highlighted, also cites a statistic from the Center for Responsive Politics, which states that Google’s political action committee (PAC) gave more to Republican congressional candidates than to Democrats for the first time last year.
[contentcards url=”http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/09/google-higher-ups-love-donating-to-democrats-not-republicans/” target=”_blank”]Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].