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A running list of Code Conference speakers who are not running for political office

“No, really, I’m not.”

Marc Andreessen, Code 2017 Asa Mathat
Rani Molla is a senior correspondent at Vox and has been focusing her reporting on the future of work. She has covered business and technology for more than a decade — often in charts — including at Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal.

Politics is everywhere these days — even at this year’s Code Conference in California. But while the topic has come up frequently onstage, many of our speakers have told us they’re not running for office.

Here’s a running list of speakers at Code who’ve said they aren’t running for office:

  • Former Microsoft CEO and current LA Clippers owner Steve Ballmer said his USAFacts website, a project seeking to improve transparency in government, doesn’t mean he wants to run for office. He has “no political ambitions of my own. Zero. Nada. None,” Ballmer said. “I do love numbers.”
  • LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, despite potentially spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fix some of the country’s biggest political problems, told Kara Swisher he’s “definitely not running for office.” He prefers partnering, being a board member and investing.
  • Marc Andreessen, co-founder of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, isn’t running for office. “Can you imagine anybody voting for me?”
  • Hillary Clinton told Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg she’s not running for president again.
  • Senator Kamala Harris, who was interviewed alongside philantropist and Steve Jobs widow Laurene Powell Jobs, said she wouldn’t be running for president, though her tone suggested she was giving herself some wiggle room. “I’m not giving that any consideration. I've got to stay focused,” Senator Harris said. When asked whether Jobs would run for president, she said (joked?) of her and Harris, "Well one of us should.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t at Code this year but he’s repeatedly declared he’s not running for office, despite traveling across America in what looks like a presidential bid.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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