Hitting the gold ceiling

Why aren't young female entrepreneurs making it into the upper echelons of Silicon Valley wealth?

By Janelle Brown

When Carly Fiorina was fingered in July as the new CEO of Hewlett-Packard, she blithely blew off the reporters that called her appointment a victory for women. “I hope that we are at a point that everyone has figured out that there is not a glass ceiling,” Fiorina explained at the time. “My gender is interesting, but really not the subject of the story here.”

Perhaps Fiorina, 44, should take a look at some of the latest statistics to come out of Silicon Valley, like America’s Richest 40 Under 40, a chart accompanying “The Young and the Loaded,” the latest Fortune cover story about technology wealth. Despite Fiorina’s belief that gender is irrelevant and the frequently heard assertion that the Internet evens out the playing field for female entrepreneurs, the list of the wealthiest young executives in America includes not a single woman.

The list, which is primarily made up of technology executives (although it includes a smattering of other richies, like sports star Michael Jordan and Master P of No Limit Records), begins with Gregory Reyes, the 37-year-old CEO of Brocade Communications, whose net worth hovers around $243 million, and tops out with Michael Dell, the 34-year-old CEO of Dell Computer, who is worth a cool $21.49 billion. The youngest on the list is Paul Gauthier, CTO of Inktomi, who has accumulated $418 million at the tender age of 26; the oldest executives are 39.

Clearly, the wealthiest young executives are riding on their stock market valuations, rather than actual cash in the bank. But it still bodes badly for the role of women in the industry. Despite the fact that increasing numbers of young women are starting up their own companies and landing the title of CEO, those companies are not the ones valued by the stock market and the venture capitalists who bankroll those start-ups into the moneyed limelight.

In fact, the wealthiest women in the technology industry — women like Meg Whitman, who was granted a fortune in eBay stock as its CEO, and Carly Fiorina herself — are over 40, and have spent years working their way up the executive ladders. And even they aren’t nearly as well compensated as their male counterparts, according to a recent San Jose Mercury News report.

“It’s another indication that women are just not making it to the top — and they’re not only not making it to the top in terms of title, but in terms of top-dollar packages,” says Carolyn Leighton, chairwoman and founder of Women in Technology International, a nonprofit whose aim is to promote female entrepreneurship. “I hope this makes enough of us angry that we say we aren’t going to take a lesser package anymore, we’re going to negotiate what we deserve.”

Wealth isn’t everything, of course, but it’s certainly an indicator of who’s being taken seriously by the business world — and who’s not. The ceiling Fiorina has dismissed is, perhaps, not made of glass at all, but of crisp green bills.

: Janelle Brown is a contributing writer for Salon. More Janelle Brown

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Linda McMahon shows surprising class and Crazy Carl breaks out the bat: Six memorable moments from Tuesday night

By Emma Mustich

Carl Paladino holding a baseball bat during his concession speech Tuesday night.

Topics:2010 Elections, War Room, Carly Fiorina, Democratic Party, Republican Party

Most election night speeches from winning and losing candidates follow a simple, bland formula. But occasionally, for reasons good or bad, there’s a surprise. Tuesday night produced a few of them, which we recall here.

THE BEST SPEECHES

1. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky.

Yarmuth took his surprising win — as an incumbent Dem from a GOP-friendly Kentucky district, he was widely considered a goner — as an opportunity to deliver one of the most passionate and generous speeches of the evening. In a campaign that saw many House Democrats sell out Nancy Pelosi (with her blessing!) in an attempt to appeal to right-leaning voters, Yarmuth was happy to stand by the speaker (granted, it was after the polls closed):

“I almost wish there were another podium here tonight, because I feel like Nancy Pelosi has been in this campaign the whole time. And Nancy ought to take a victory lap with me. And maybe President Obama as well. The disservice and disrespect that has been leveled on them has been so outrageous and so unjustified that it makes me really fear for this country. When you have two people who work every day to make life better for every American and they put up with the nonsense … [I]t’s not only unjustified, it’s un-American.”

2. Linda McMahon (candidate for Senate in Connecticut)

McMahon, the WWE executive who spent over $40 million on her own campaign, suffered a solid defeat. The general tone of her aggressive campaign attacks on Richard Blumenthal might have led viewers to expect a bitter concession; however, her performance was surprisingly classy. On a night when platitudes about “Pennsylvanians,” “Nevadans” and “the people of Delaware” largely came across as tinned, her profession of “love” for the people of her state sounded genuine. And perhaps most significant, in a year of rabid partisanship, she was one of the only losing candidates to insist that her followers transfer their support to a victorious rival, projecting her voice over a booing crowd to say: “Each of us, because we [carry] a love for this state and for our country, in our hearts, we are all going to be supportive of our newly elected officials. Because we want them all to succeed; because if they succeed, we succeed.”

3. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.

With his three-term run in the Senate coming to an involuntary end, Feingold’s concession speech was short and sweet. “Being your senator has been the greatest honor of my life,” he told a disappointed crowd, before offering a quote from Bob Dylan’s “Mississippi”: “But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free/I’ve got nothing but affection for those who’ve sailed with me.”

THE WORST

1. Carly Fiorina (candidate for Senate in California)

Strictly speaking, Fiorina’s speech to supporters last night was not a “concession,” since she didn’t actually concede. Though every network had already called the race in favor of Barbara Boxer by the time Fiorina took the stage, the Republican still told an audience in Irvine that she and Boxer were in a “dead heat tie.” In a performance entirely consistent with the snarky tone of Fiorina’s television ads (not to mention the “sooo yesterday” jab at Boxer’s hairstyle that an open microphone picked up earlier this year), she said of those who had called the race for Boxer: “Maybe that was probably not a smart thing to do.” Words she’s probably regretting right about now.

2. Carl Paladino (candidate for governor of New York)

No one with any knowledge of the Paladino campaign could have been surprised by the eccentric nature of his concession speech. Brandishing an orange baseball bat, “Crazy Carl” issued his victorious opponent, Andrew Cuomo, a bizarre threat:

“I have a message for Andrew Cuomo, the next governor of New York. I’ve always said my baseball bat is a metaphor for the people, who want to take their government back. But this isn’t my bat, after all. As our next governor, you can grab this handle, and bring the people with you to Albany. Or you can leave it untouched, and run the risk of having it wielded against you. Because make no mistake, you have not heard the last of Carl Paladino.”

The bat comes out around the 5:55 mark.

3. Christine O’Donnell (candidate for Senate in Delaware)

One of the earliest concessions of the night, O’Donnell’s speech began on a decidedly positive note. “We have won,” she announced, “because the Delaware political system will never be the same.” (This apparently confused O’Donnell’s brother, who could be heard remarking, “We won, did I miss something?”) Soon, though, O’Donnell was lecturing the candidate who defeated her (by 16 points), Chris Coons, about his responsibilities in the years ahead. Among other things, O’Donnell said she had already asked Coons to watch a 30-minute infomercial produced by her campaign. “We can only hope and pray that he chooses to go against his party leadership and do what’s right for the people of Delaware,” she said.

: Emma Mustich is an assistant editor at Salon. Follow her on Twitter: @emustich. More Emma Mustich

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The Republican Senate candidate will resume her campaign schedule tomorrow

By Judy Lin, Associated Press

Topics:Carly Fiorina, 2010 Elections

Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina will be released from the hospital Wednesday and is preparing to resume a full campaign schedule, a day after she was sidelined by an infection related to her recent reconstructive surgery for breast cancer.

Fiorina’s campaign said the former Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive has been successfully treated for the infection at a Los Angeles-area hospital.

“This morning, her doctors gave her the good news that she will be released from the hospital today and can resume her busy campaign schedule tomorrow,” Fiorina’s chief of staff, Deborah Bowker, said in a statement. “Carly is grateful for the outpouring of well wishes and prayers from so many Californians.”

: More Judy Lin

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Campaign's chief of staff cites infection associated with former CEO's post-breast cancer reconstructive surgery

By Associated Press

Topics:Carly Fiorina, 2010 Elections, California

California GOP Senate challenger Carly Fiorina is in the hospital to be treated for an infection associated with her reconstructive surgery after breast cancer.

Deborah Bowker, the campaign’s chief of staff, says in a statement issued Tuesday that Fiorina was admitted to a hospital and is being treated with antibiotics. The campaign will not say when or where she was admitted.

Fiorina, who is 56, fought breast cancer before her run against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. The former Hewlett-Packard Co. CEO has maintained a busy campaign schedule in the final weeks of the race.

Bowker says Fiorina has canceled Tuesday campaign events in Riverside and Coachella. She says she expects Fiorina to return to the campaign trail soon.

: More Associated Press

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It's an apocalyptic twilight; Barbara Boxer as the new Herbert Hoover

By Adam Hanft

Topics:2010 Elections, Advertising, Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., California, Carly Fiorina, Media Criticism

Adam Hanft dissects and deconstructs political advertising at Spin Season, where this originally appeared

Somebody’s been spending some time researching Google images and the bleak 1930s iconography of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans.

Carly Fiorina’s new attack on Barbara Boxer goes for the depression jugular, with a stark series of graphic, high-contrast black-and-white shots that paint a eschatological picture of California. One photograph, depicting the liquidation of a retail store, could have been lifted from a Walker Evans retrospective at the San Francisco MOMA

Check out that opening scene. Grim-faced farmers standing on a barren field, a Grapes of Wrathian image if ever there was one. During this, the equally ominous announcer intones:

“After 28 long years of Washington partisanship, this is Barbara Boxer’s California. Trillions in reckless wasteful spending. Destroying small business. Killing jobs. Crushing hopes.”

It’s a calculated effort to move people by activating the neural circuits that exist in their brains. We all have imprints of the calamity of the Great Depression, and this spot seeks to summon them up and pin them on Boxer. As Drew Westen, who wrote “The Political Brain” puts it:

“Electoral success is about shaping and activating voters’ networks of association — bundles of thoughts, feelings, sounds, and images that become linked in the brain. Political campaigns are about activating and shaping networks through stories and images.”

Will the spot succeed? For it to work, there needs to be an existing network of imprints about Boxer that can be stimulated by the imagery we’re seeing. You need to connect with a fundamental impression to be able to amplify and harness it. I don’t think that’s the case here.

Yes, Boxer is seen as a dogmatic liberal, a big spender, and somewhat self-righteous. But the commercial pushes too far past the boundaries of Boxer’s perceptual map. Voters just won’t emotionally accept the argument that the economic wreckage they see around them is “Barbara Boxer’s California.” They recognize, on some equally deep level, that the responsibility for California’s condition is spread wide. The exaggeration doesn’t fit the crime.

By contrast, Boxer’s new spot is positively chirpy, with upbeat music and a string of her accomplishments, from veteran’s benefits to after-school centers to “fighting for new jobs.”

But the commercial is a dud. Just as Fiorina overstates Boxer’s culpability, this spot feels blithely detached from the immediate and profound crisis California is facing. What Senator couldn’t dredge up and string together a few one-off accomplishments after decades in the Senate?

Boxer’s previous spot, vilifying Fiorina for layoffs and shipping jobs offshore when she ran HP, were negative but far more effective, because they tapped into another set of neural circuits – that Fiorina is cold and calculating.

So as far as this round of spots goes, it’s Fiorina’s landscape of destruction versus Boxer’s landscape of denial. Boxer is slightly ahead in the polls, and Fiorina’s shout-out to John Steinbeck might actually widen the gap.

: Adam Hanft writes and comments frequently on politics and culture for The Daily Beast, Fast Company, Huffington Post, CNN, Fox News, Politics Daily, the Barnes & Noble Review, and elsewhere. He is founder of Hanft Projects, a strategic and brand consultancy. More Adam Hanft

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The "Democratic doom" narrative is meant to demoralize, but even Scott Rasmussen believes Dems will hold the Senate

By Joe Conason

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway.

Topics:2010 Elections, Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Carly Fiorina, Democratic Party, Meg Whitman, Rand Paul, Rand Paul vs. Jack Conway

Creating the universal premonition of Democratic doom is always among the most useful elements of Republican strategy. A broad feeling of foreboding demoralizes the party base, repels independent voters who prefer the winning side, and strikes emotional chords that are at least as important in electoral behavior as ideologies and issues. So Republican leaders and pundits regularly issue outlandish predictions of crushing victory, echoed across the media spectrum until they become self-fulfilling.

This year’s real conditions for Democrats are certainly threatening, but there are indications that the impending repudiation will not be as devastating as suggested by the current narrative. Whatever ultimately happens in the House, where a Republican takeover appears likely if not inevitable, the Senate will probably remain under Democratic control — despite enormous spending by “independent” groups such as the Club for Growth, the voice of Wall Street conservatives; American Crossroads, the Karl Rove outfit; and the Chamber of Commerce.

At least that is the view of Scott Rasmussen, the pollster whose survey techniques and conservative predilections have often provoked suspicions of Republican bias in his results. As of last Friday, Rasmussen’s latest “Midterm Election Update” said that “a Republican takeover of the Senate appears unlikely,” with Democrats predicted to hold at least 51 seats, Republicans at least 45, and four races (in Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin and Illinois) rated as tossups. Today Rasmussen marginally revised that estimate by moving West Virginia into the “Toss-up” column when a new poll showed popular Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin slightly behind Republican businessman John Raese in the Senate race.

Meanwhile the revision of Republican expectations of glory is fully underway in California, where Sen. Barbara Boxer was once among the GOP’s prime targets. Now the incumbent Democrat is starting to pull ahead of Republican Carly Fiorina, despite a wave of negative ads bought by the Chamber of Commerce and other third-party opponents. (Last week Rasmussen revised its assessment of the race from Toss-Up to Lean Dem.) Even more notable is the surge of Attorney General Jerry Brown, the Democrat running for governor against former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, billionaire darling of the Republican right, whose record campaign expenditure of $120 million (and climbing) is expected to be four or five times more than that of her opponent. That massive spending imbalance, with thousands of anti-Brown commercials flooding the state’s airwaves on her behalf, has itself become a symbol of Whitman’s distance from ordinary citizens.

Other signs of life on the Democratic horizon include the surprising polls showing that Kentucky Democratic Senate nominee Jack Conway is roughly tied with Republican Rand Paul, the Tea Party’s favorite loony until the advent of Christine O’Donnell. If Conway had enough money to match the third-party expenditures on Paul’s behalf, he might even have a chance to win.

Democrats elsewhere could learn from the examples of Brown and Boxer — and even Conway — who haven’t hesitated to strike back hard or behave like winners. What those races show is that monetary advantage need not always determine outcomes. If Democrats stop ducking and cowering — and offer an aggressive “closing argument” — they may still escape the worst possible debacle in November.

: Joe Conason blogs in Salon several times a week and writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His latest book is "It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush." More Joe Conason