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A tech investor is in a dead heat in a competitive congressional race to become the sole venture capitalist serving in the House of Representatives.
Update: After another week of counting votes, he has won, according to the Associated Press.
The Democratic candidate, Josh Harder, is trying to oust a GOP incumbent in a campaign that turned into something of a referendum on Silicon Valley. Harder, who most recently served as a vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners, is battling the four-term Republican incumbent, Jeff Denham, but the race remains too close to call, according to the Associated Press.
Denham, with 50.6 percent of the vote, has a lead of about 1,300 votes as of Wednesday morning. Although 100 percent of precincts have reported results, election officials will have to account for absentee and provisional ballots in a process that could last awhile. Neither Harder nor Denham has conceded.
But Harder was not merely a venture capitalist. His entire race was defined by his venture capital past, with Denham casting him as a Silicon Valley insider who was responsible for Bessemer portfolio companies that shifted jobs overseas. Denham, on the other hand, called himself the closest thing to the opposite of a venture capitalist — a farmer — in a rural district centered on Modesto.
Harder was reluctant to talk about his background in tech investing, taking pains to stress the more homegrown parts of his biography.
According to industry trade group the National Venture Capital Association, the only other current member of Congress that it’s aware of having a background in traditional venture capital is Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, who was elected to the Senate in 2008.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
