"Cole is quick to downplay his alligence to the tech industry, which is increasingly under fire for being out of touch with the rest of the country. “Software developers aren’t the only ones under represented in congress,” he says. “Teachers, people in business other than CEOs, service workers, lots of people don’t have a voice in government because it’s really expensive to run a campaign."
The US Chamber of Commerce doesn't represent non-CEO businesspersons, it represents businesses-qua-businesses (and, increasingly, businesses of a very particular political preference set, which is why the CoC has been harshly criticized for many of its political stands by a number of large businesses that don't share its particular political orientation.)
I'm not sure I agree. I think that this industry provides tremendous potential to bring real change to our society. Politics does not. Maybe politics has potential in some remote, hypothetical scenario, but in the real world it is more of a dead end, than anything. Imagine how much the potential of someone like a Gates or Jobs would have been wasted, had they pursued politics, rather than the things they actually did, that changed the world.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2014/01/10/260572933...
I'll admit I'm a little surprised there wasn't some legal ramification
I applaud anyone who's willing to roll up their sleeves and get involved with the democratic process. It's the only way we're ever going to get this country moving again.
That being said, however, it's generally not a great idea to build a campaign around issues that 99% of the electorate has never heard of and/or cares nothing about. NJ-2 is pushing 9% unemployment -- all those jobless people are going to be worried about things other than Bitcoin or patent reform. Not to mention their friends and families, and all the people who aren't unemployed but are teetering on the brink.
Cole's campaign site (http://coleforcongress.com/) is long on bio and short on issue positions, so it's possible that Wired is misrepresenting his platform, of course. (I hope they are! I'm a Democrat, I would love to see the Dems pick this district up.) But it's also possible that they are not; not articulating issue positions cuts both ways.
This is a classic mistake that techies keep making when throwing their hat into the ring -- assuming that the issues that techies are buzzing about are the same ones that everyone is buzzing about. (For an example, look back to the 2002 campaign of Tara Sue Grubb in North Carolina: http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2002/08/54693, http://books.google.com/books?id=5DMSVPEv86gC&pg=PA92&lpg=PA...) Maybe that's true in a few tech-heavy districts, but in the vast majority it's very, very far from the mark. And being out of touch with what your would-be constituents are buzzing about is not how you win elections.