Harris juggles Silicon Valley, Progressive on the Issue of Lina Khan

“There are a number of factors that would shape the vice president’s thinking,” said William Kovacic, a former FTC chairman and current law professor at George Washington University. “One is, in isolation, what kind of politics do I want?”

For now, it seems no one is quite sure of the answer.

Since President Joe Biden named Khan president in June 2021, she has taken on an ambitious antitrust agenda, relying on seemingly forgotten federal laws to reign in monopoly power and corporate mergers. Her actions have drawn the ire of some big names in Silicon Valley, namely billionaire and Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman. At the same time, economic progressives like Elizabeth Warren praised Khan’s positions. Harris finds herself stuck between the two camps, struggling to determine how to be both a pro-business candidate and sufficiently progressive.

Hoffman turned heads when she went on CNN in late July and said Khan was “waging war on American business” and that she would prefer Harris to replace her. Barry Diller, a media mogul, called Khan “a dope” and said he would advocate for her removal if Harris won in November.

Khan’s term as chairman ends in September, although FTC rules stipulate that she will remain in her position until the president appoints and the Senate confirms someone else. The confirmation process is involved and time-consuming, according to Kovacic, who has experienced it firsthand. Although Biden will be in office when her term expires, Kovacic anticipates taking Harris’ wishes into account when deciding whether to replace Khan. Presidents are not required to appoint a new president within a certain period of time.

“My intuition would be that, as a general protocol, the president in this circumstance would respect the prerogatives of the vice president,” Kovacic told Business Insider. “Another approach the president can take would be to say, ‘I’m not going to take the seat.’ I won’t act on this because the FTC chair will remain the chair until her successor is qualified so I won’t play Kamala either, it’s all yours after you’re sworn in.

As with many specific policy positions, Harris has remained relatively tight-lipped about her plans for Khan and has so far avoided ruffling too many feathers. Kovacic anticipates that he may try to move more to the center when it comes to mergers, but not temper the administration’s stance on monopolization.

When asked for comment for this article, the Harris campaign told Business Insider that Harris plans to propose a federal ban on corporate price gouging and give the FTC authority to investigate corporations that break the rules in a speech on Friday. They did not comment on whether she would replace Khan as FTC chairman.

“Usually by this point, the candidate would have made more specific policy proposals because they would have to do that to secure the support of the various factions in their party’s coalition,” said Sanford Gordon, chairman of the policy at New. York University. “Harris really didn’t have to do that.”

Her vagueness probably stems from the awkwardness of her positioning—she’s close to Silicon Valley, while also trying to attract advancements. Harris earns money from venture capitalists, has named her brother-in-law and Uber chief executive as a campaign adviser and is originally from the Bay Area.

While some on Wall Street grumble about Khan, members of the business and technology community hope Harris will be open to restoring a more relaxed relationship between the FTC and big corporations. However, that same belief is a source of concern for economic progressives, whom Kovacic called the “Warren faction,” referring to the Massachusetts senator.

Compared to Biden, Harris has more leeway to relax the FTC’s regulatory stance, Kovacic said. In 2020, the president promised Warren a big say on economic regulatory agency appointments, and he’s kept his word.

“That was Biden’s promise. That’s not Harris’s promise,” Kovacic said, noting that Harris needs to evaluate his relationship with the Warren wing of the party. “How much loyalty does she feel to them? How much does she think she has to pander to their tastes in order to maintain a harmonious political relationship?”

A coalition of progressive and consumer advocacy groups sent a letter to the Harris campaign in response to Hoffman and Diller’s comments and urged her to keep Khan.

Hoffman and Diller have since tempered their positions, but Harris still seems stuck between the risk of alienating donors and inflaming economic progressives in her party.

In a lengthy post on X, Hoffman said he never spoke to Harris about Khan and would support her campaign regardless of her FTC appointments. Diller qualified his comments to Bloomberg, saying, “I said, ‘It’s a drug.’ She is not. She’s smart, but I think she excels at disrupting sensible business combinations.”

Harris will likely continue to try to strike a thin, almost invisible middle ground between the two wings of her party by deflecting specific questions, Gordon said.

“I don’t think (Hoffman) will bring it up, publicly, making any kind of commitment,” Gordon said. “I think that would be extremely politically astute of her.”

Despite Hoffman’s public comments, it remains unclear what Silicon Valley thinks at large. The world of venture capitalists and tech billionaires has suffered partisan divides this election cycle, and it appears there may be differing views among area Democrats as well. Kovacic said some tech companies likely approve of Khan precisely because she targets their nemeses.

“We know that Reid Hoffman has grabbed the headlines, but we also know from our own work that there is a diversity of opinion in Silicon Valley and among venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who want to encourage innovation and fairness in the sector,” said Taylor Joe Isenberg. , the executive director of the Economic Security Project, a progressive nonprofit focused on economic issues and antitrust action.

“It’s tempting to SYes, there’s this sort of progressive wing of the Democratic coalition, and then there’s the donors, and the donors come from the kind of people like venture capitalists connected to Silicon Valley,” Gordon said. “However, as with many issues of regulation and especially antitrust. , it’s not very clear to me that there wouldn’t be divisions in business and venture capital.”

To make matters more complicated for Harris, the issue is one of the few areas of bipartisan blur. Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee with his own ties to Silicon Valley, praised Khan, who was approved with bipartisan support in a 69-28 vote.

As Harris struggles to define herself as a candidate and be specific enough in her policy proposals, the Khan question becomes a particularly sensitive one, and it remains unclear how she will discuss the thorny issue on the campaign trail.

“There’s an opportunity to pay attention to the diversity of voices talking about this,” Isenberg said. “But campaigns are a difficult time for nuance.”