Harris Appeals to Tech Leaders in a Return to San Francisco

Joe Biden who?

Vice President Kamala Harris, whose political career was born in San Francisco two decades ago, on Sunday returned to the city for the first time since clinching the Democratic presidential nomination, hoping to reset relations with a tech community that has soured some on President Biden.

It was a turning of the page and a homecoming all at once. Ms. Harris’s late-morning event raised $13 million from the region’s white-collar establishment that counts her as their own.

But her trip was as much a rally as a fund-raiser, with about 700 people piling into the Grand Ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel atop Nob Hill. On one of this city’s quintessentially brisk, foggy August mornings, these wealthy givers waited in a queue that snaked up the hill, an indignity that would be unheard-of at a typical fund-raiser at a cozy private home in Woodside or Menlo Park. (Some donors with a connection or two found a way, as they do, to skip the line.)

As is often the case in the highly choreographed world of presidential fund-raising, where egos must be treated tenderly, there was a series of receptions before the fund-raiser (with blue, pink and green wristbands) that clearly delineated the pecking order of big donors and their influence. Ms. Harris dropped in on each one, in descending order of price and intimacy, as donors enjoyed peach mimosas and shrimp cocktails before her remarks in the grand ballroom.

“This is a room full of dear, dear, dear friends,” she said, standing before a giant “Harris Walz” sign and four flags: two American and two California.

Mr. Biden has struggled for financial support from the Bay Area dating to his 2020 presidential campaign, when his list of fund-raisers was heavy on Obama-era ambassadors but light on the billionaire leaders of the tech industry.