I think you're making a set mistake. The set of "techies" doesn't as a whole dislike Rice's politics. The set of "people who live around San Francisco and Seattle" dislikes Rice's politics. Elsewhere I think techies tend to lean more to the right... certainly on university campuses the most likely place to run into a Republican is in an engineering department... <flamebait>...probably because engineers have to understand math!</flamebait>