Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Susan Molinari, then with Google, spoke at the Tenth Congressional District Young Women Leadership Program on Capitol Hill, July 10, 2015.
Last night, the internet burst with speculation after an offhand remark from former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is speaking on the first night of the Democratic National Convention. Kasich told CNN that a “prominent” former Republican congressman would endorse Joe Biden. The speculation mostly focused on former House Speaker John Boehner, but a spokesperson said he would “rather set himself on fire” than get involved in politics again, which is probably a no.
With the release of tonight’s speaking schedule, we know the identity of the former member of Congress: Susan Molinari, who once represented a district on Staten Island and was vice chair of the House Republican Conference. Molinari will speak at the convention tonight, along with two other Republican luminaries, as Biden attempts to display a united front in opposition to Donald Trump.
But while Molinari was “prominent” at the time that Kasich served in the House in the 1990s, she hasn’t been in Congress for 23 years. Her more recent experience is as the chief lobbyist for Google.
Molinari quit the House in the middle of her fourth term in 1997, despite rising into the leadership ranks. She has been a lobbyist for almost her entire post-congressional career, starting on her own and then joining the Washington Group and later Bracewell and Giuliani (yes, that Giuliani). In 2012, she was tapped to head Google’s Washington office, where she served for six years. Molinari is now at APCO, a leading PR firm.
Google is among several Big Tech firms on the ropes, with antitrust investigations from state and federal prosecutors at “full tilt,” Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen told Reuters on Friday. The House Antitrust Subcommittee roughed up Google and other companies in a hearing last month.
During Molinari’s tenure, Google successfully avoided an antitrust case at the Federal Trade Commission in 2013, with FTC leadership overruling its Bureau of Competition’s recommendation to bring a lawsuit. And the company’s stature in Washington grew significantly.
Her presence at the Democratic convention recalls the extremely close relationship between the company and the Obama administration. During Obama’s two terms, members of his administration met with Google representatives more than once a week, on average. And nearly 250 people moved from government service to Google employment, or vice versa, over that period.
Biden doesn’t have the same relationship with Silicon Valley that Obama did, and he’s even called for treating Facebook like a publisher and revoking immunity protections on user-generated content. But he’s said little in general about Big Tech, and welcoming former Google lobbyists to give a prime-time address right as the tide turns against Google and other firms doesn’t look great.
In addition to Molinari and Kasich, other Republicans speaking tonight include former failed California gubernatorial candidate and Mitt Romney senior adviser Meg Whitman, and George W. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Christine Todd Whitman.
Both have their own corporate ties. Meg Whitman is the CEO of Quibi, the short-video service, and was previously the CEO of eBay and HP. She’s on the boards of Dropbox and Procter & Gamble. Christine Todd Whitman previously served on the board of weapons contractor United Technologies before it merged with Raytheon, and is currently the president of her own corporate consulting firm, the Whitman Strategy Group.
Biden clearly wants to present a big tent uniting against Trump, but there are some tears in that tent fabric. Kasich spent his pre-convention flurry of interviews insisting that “people on the extreme” like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) “get outsized publicity,” but that “doesn’t mean she represents the Democratic Party.”
AOC gets her convention slot tomorrow, widely reported to be a 60-second speech. The four Republicans, including Google lobbyist Molinari, all speak tonight.
