Google’s long-term hack wants to become a progressive influencer. First step: becoming progressive.
Adam Kovacevich, CEO and Founder of Chamber of Progress.
Picture this: you’ve spent your career working as a de facto lobbyist for tech companies (primarily Google) but were pushed out of the search engine’s public affairs shop and you took a job working for an electric scooter company. After two years of convincing local governments to allow your devices to be strewn about the sidewalk, people in wheelchairs be damned, you’re tired and you want back in the game. What do you do? That’s right, you start a tech-focused trade group that’s modeled after the Chamber of Commerce, but with a progressive facade. After all, someone’s got to use that elusive 501c(6) tax-exempt designation, why not you?
That’s what Adam Kovacevich did when he started Chamber of Progress in 2021. Now the group, which has been growing in terms of both financial resources and influence, has the perfect opportunity to enact its goals: turning Silicon Valley’s policy preferences into the Democratic platform.
The tech industry was not happy with the Biden administration. Despite having an almost comical amount of influence (the former CEO of Google literally paid the salaries of over a dozen White House staffers), Silicon Valley felt as if they were not listened to. Joe Biden appointed an FTC Chair who dared to enforce antitrust law, an SEC Chair who boldly regulated digital assets as the securities they are, and the Biden NLRB redoubled efforts to protect worker’s rights. The disastrous June debate that led Joe Biden to eventually withdraw from the race offered Silicon Valley a chance to reverse this concerning trend. With Harris, a Bay Area politician with personal ties to tech firms, the tech world felt there was an opportunity to expand their influence.
No one made this more clear than Kovacevich and Chamber of Progress who tweeted nearly incessantly about how Harris was friendly to business unlike the Biden regime.
Almost immediately, there were reports that LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a major Harris donor, requested that the VP fire FTC Chair Lina Khan upon her election. Billionaire Mark Cuban began pushing the VP towards more cryptocurrency friendly stances. Harris’ debate prep team was even headed up by Karen Dunn, a lawyer actively defending Google from an antitrust lawsuit. But this influence either didn’t work enough, or it didn’t work at all (we believe the latter). Harris lost.
Without a second look at the influence the industry had over the campaign (Uber’s Chief Legal Officer is Harris’ brother-in-law and perhaps her most trusted advisor), Silicon Valley pivoted to the great blame debate. This is where Chamber of Progress and its CEO, Kovacevich have truly excelled. With a base reeling from a stinging defeat, Kovacevich’s Democratic-alligned trade group has had the perfect opportunity to pounce upon the supposedly anti-business left of the Democratic Party that stymied his organization’s lobbying efforts.
In the time since the election, Kovacevich has levied attacks on Biden staff, a false report about “lefty” staff in the Harris campaign, and, of course, the anti-crypto left. Before the election he even preemptively blamed us here at the Revolving Door Project for Biden’s unpopularity because we had “torpedoed Biden nominees with business experience.”
Portraying himself as a staunch Democrat angry at the progressives who led the party astray, Kovacevich has worked to present his tech industry agenda as the only pragmatic path forward. With an organization that describes itself as “devoted to a progressive society, economy, workforce, and consumer climate,” a bio flaunting a quote that Kovacevich is apparently “a significant voice in the progressive movement” (a claim that we have been unable to verify), and not-so subtle name in an allusion to its progressive stances, Kovacevich has worked to worm his way into the Democratic Party as the humble progressive who was left behind by the party’s supposed jarring leftward shift.
Kovacevich praises Rep. Richie Torres’ friendliness towards tech as a model other Democrats should follow. Torres has been amongst the most crypto-friendly Members of Congress, going so far as to threaten the SEC for asking questions of crypto companies like FTX.
This strategy is not a new or particularly creative one. The approach has been replicated by the Progressive Policy Institute as well as the libertarian-connected Institute for Progress. But that doesn’t mean it’s ineffective. With plenty of Silicon Valley influence in the Trump-led Republican Party, Kovacevich’s role is to be tech’s voice to partisan Democrats. And to those unaware of him or his history, this weak bait and switch might work. That is why we have decided to prepare a quick resource for those interested in big tech’s flack in DC. Kovacevich is the latest addition to our growing list of hacks profiled on our Hackwatch website.
Interested in how Kovacevich continues to tout his college activism of crossing picket lines to this very day? Or how he used Google’s vast funds to pay right-wing “academics” like Joshua Wright to defend the company from any allegations of antitrust violations? Perhaps you’re more interested in how a staunch Democrat like Kovacevich wrestles with the fact that he donated to Jim Jordan’s campaign? We’re still trying to pin down that contradiction.
Perhaps you just want to read about the vast swathe of Mountainview, Sunnyvale, and Cupertino that fund his salary, or to read about his heartwarming friendship with Senator Tom Cotton. We have all that in one easy to access place. Give it a look over, maybe you’ll be surprised what Democratic politician used to employ this principled man (most likely not). But under no circumstances should you refer to this biography when consuming his work. It’ll completely ruin the illusion that he’s pursuing what he genuinely believes is right.
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