EAST PALO ALTO, Calif. - Silicon Valley to Washington: Keep your paws off the Internet.
That was the message heard loudly and clearly last week at a gathering of technology executives who came to talk about the impending presidential election over pan-fried noodles and pork buns at Ming's restaurant.
At first glance, this looked to be a crowd of fresh-faced, overeducated eager beavers you'd imagine finding on the cover of college catalogs. But make no mistake; these executives are considered chieftains of the new economy, and therefore new money. In other words, this is a fund-raiser's dream focus group.
So what issues resonated here? The overwhelming consensus, cutting across all party affiliations, was education. Most agreed the country's educational system was in shambles.
A close second was a probusiness cry for minimal government regulation of Internet activities. Several mentioned privacy, the granting of more visas to immigrant workers, and more business-friendly export regulations.
While education inspired the most eloquent speeches, it is also the area that is least likely to be influenced by the country's next president.
The reason: Less than 5 percent of national spending on education comes from the federal government, as Chris Kelly, Excite@Home's chief privacy officer, pointed out. (Kelly, a Harvard Law School graduate, used to work at the US Department of Education.) The task of enlightening young minds, it turns out, falls almost exclusively on local governments.
That leaves business regulation as the next big issue. The majority sentiment here was best summarized by Sonia Arrison, director of the Center for Freedom and Technology at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco.
''Who's going to do the least harm?'' Arrison asked.
Mark Ludwig of ServOn Inc. echoed her comment, saying that the role of government was to be an umpire, to make sure everyone plays by the rules. Where it goes astray, Ludwig said, is when lawmakers try to ''legislate morality.''
''I like the idea of gridlock at the federal level,'' Ludwig said. ''They produce delays that keep everyone in Washington from running amok.''
It's an idea tacitly endorsed by most attendees since no one advocated adding regulations, at least not directly.
Ridding market monopolies turns out to be a government function, as is using diplomacy to open up foreign markets to US exports, protecting intellectual property, and maintaining immigration flows.
This crowd leans toward libertarianism nourished by tales of heroic entrepreneurship.
The monthly get-together, for example, was started by Auren Hoffman, a twenty-something graduate of the University of California who started a political consulting business in his junior year of college and whose clients included the mayor of Berkeley. Hoffman is now president of BridgePath, a San Francisco-based online exchange for staffing firms.
Bottom line: Which presidential candidate will win ''mindshare'' among Silicon Valley-ites?
An informal show of hands solicited by Hoffman yielded the following results. Democratic Vice President Al Gore received 12 votes, Texas Republican Governor George W. Bush got 10 votes, and Green Party candidate Ralph Nader got four. That mirrors most statewide polls, including the non-partisan Public Policy Institute's latest California poll, which showed Gore in the lead with 44 percent, Bush with 39 percent, and Nader with 6 percent.
How does Nader, a self-made crusader for stricter business regulations, jive with this group's preference for minimal government? Scott Bonds, a Republican who founded a Berkeley-based technology consulting firm, explained his unlikely support of Nader, expressing a second Silicon Valley bias - a love for fresh, contrarian views.
''I found it extremely offensive that Gore and Bush excluded him from the debates,'' Bonds said. ''I thought we needed to hear him. I felt we needed alternatives.''
Alex Pham is a Globe reporter covering Silicon Valley. She can be reached by e-mail at pham@globe.com.
