LinkedIn founders Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman are launching a project called Win The Future to try to help the failing Democrat party gain back more political power in the United States. They are attempting to recruit a famous 90’s rock frontman to run for congress. Read an excerpt from a Recode article below.
WTF is also eyeing more audacious efforts: Initially, Pincus had planned to solicit feedback at launch on recruiting a potential challenger to Democrats’ leader in the House, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, in a primary election. That idea is on hold — for now — but Pincus and Hoffman are still trying to solicit candidates to run elsewhere as so-called “WTF Democrats.” For Pincus, one of his early targets: Stephan Jenkins from Third Eye Blind. The two have met in recent months, in fact.
Together, the Zynga and LinkedIn leaders have contributed $500,000 to their still-evolving project, they said, and they’re aided by Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major Democratic donor and former chairman of Disney, as well as venture capitalists Fred Wilson and Sunil Paul.
Of course, there is something of an irony in a new populist political platform backed by wealthy tech and media moguls who despise big-money politics yet historically have donated regularly and generously to Democratic candidates and causes.
Pincus sees it differently. “If you look at the ethos of Silicon Valley and look at the ethos of our companies … it’s not about me, it’s not about Reid, it’s about us getting out of the way,” he said. “My only agenda is, I would like to see mainstream America more empowered to set an agenda.”
That means joining the so-called “resistance” — that ever-growing collection of groups that oppose Trump — while challenging Democrats from the inside.
“We wanted to move beyond just thinking about this moment of resisting and get to what comes next,” Pincus said during one of our conversations. “What could it look like for our country for the parties to be more open or inclusive, and get to a web-based process that puts more aggregated power into the voters’ hands? And that’s a big part of the genesis of WTF.”
