“After porn and gambling, politics is the fastest adopter of new technology”

What often persuades clients to sign on is the ability to raise money behind enemy lines. “In theory, no Democrat would ever give to a Republican and vice versa,” Spinner says. But many do. Often, they’re drawn to a particular candidate or issue. To demonstrate how to find them, Spinner—a Democratic fundraiser and denizen of liberal Menlo Park, Calif.—uploads his own 6,933 contacts and optimizes them for an imaginary Republican congressional candidate. Within minutes, the software merges 605 duplicate entries, then ranks the 6,328 people on a 100-point scale. Hundreds of Spinner’s contacts are shaded red or pink, including several prominent venture capitalists who are major Democratic donors. Another click reveals the Republican candidates or causes to which Spinner’s contacts have given, which the software correlates with our own (fictitious) Republican. Were he real, it would alert us if a prospective donor had already given the legal maximum or given to the opposing candidate, so we would know not to embarrass him