Wooing Wired Workers
The article starts out like so.
Call them the wired workers, PalmPilot professionals, or Yahoo yuppies. They are, in general, socially liberal and economically conservative, according to recent surveys. They're also young, have few children, are not religious, and have spent most of their working lives in a growing economy under a Democratic President-all factors that distance them from the Republican Party. But President Bush is pursuing their votes, and he may be making headway.
Then Grover Norquist and Harris Miller make suggestions as to how to go about winning over that demographic.
Grover Norquist, head of Americans For Tax Reform, suggests another way Republicans can overcome the social-policy hurdle: demand that high-tech executives put their shareholders' interests first, instead of their personal beliefs. For example, when Republicans visit executives in Silicon Valley to talk about legislation and business issues, Norquist said, they frequently are criticized for their stance against abortion rights. In such cases, Republicans should "laugh at them [and reply,] `I am talking about issues that are of concern to you and your shareholders. And you want to waste my time talking about your personal preferences?' " The liberal tilt in the executive ranks, he said, "is one of the reasons why the high-tech community has not done as well as it should" have in Washington. During Clinton's presidency, the industry "had to beg to get diddly on H-1B visas" for immigrant tech workers or to ensure deregulation of encryption exports, Norquist said.
An appeal to pocketbook issues can also work for Republicans, said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America. For example, Republican James S. Gilmore III won Virginia's governorship by vowing to eliminate the state's unpopular car tax, he said. The proposal won over many high-tech workers in Northern Virginia.
And we know how much Gilmore helped Virginia, don't we?