“From the City to the Valley.” This transit map reflects the modern reality that “Silicon Valley” has grown to include the entire San Francisco Bay Area.Credit: Stamen Design

In downtown San Jose, the cavernous, cool ZERO1 Garage is the conceptual epicenter for a wide-ranging art exhibition. Seeking Silicon Valley is an artistic exploration that includes 100 exhibits at 45 museums, galleries, and studios across the Bay Area.

Jaime Austin is one of the curators. Forty years ago, “Silicon Valley” referred to a small clutch of high tech companies in the Santa Clara Valley. Today? “It’s a network of freeways, a network of people, a network of technology, a network of companies and a network is something fairly abstract,” Austin says. “Silicon Valley, at least to me, is really more of an idea, than it is a place.”

Austin stands in front of what looks like a Bay Area public transit map — except the transit is anything but public. It’s a map of corporate bus routes that more than 44-thousand people use to commute to Google, Apple, Facebook and the like. The map (by Stamen Design of San Francisco) is jaw-dropping for its size and complexity — and for what it says about the way Silicon Valley has grown over the last 40 years.

“You know, the idea of San Francisco and Silicon Valley being two different types of cities with two different types of industry is no longer true. The greater San Francisco Bay Area is now interconnected. Because we really are one giant ecosystem.” Austin says.

That ecosystem is also one of the nation’s biggest economic drivers. Like it or not, Silicon Valley has a relationship to cultivate with government. Internet industry analyst and author Larry Downes says some of the most intractable political issues trickle down as big business problems across the world of High Tech. Take for instance, patent law.

“The patent system is utterly and completely broken,” Downes states flatly, “and I don’t know a single person in Silicon Valley, whether they’re a beneficiary or a victim — often both — who doesn’t think otherwise.”

Immigration law is another pain point. Downes points to one example: the best and brightest come here to California to study at our universities, up to the point they’re ready to start working here.

“That’s the moment at which we say ‘You have to leave the United States and go do it in another country.’ I mean, it’s insane!” he says.

More broadly, there’s a vast cultural gulf between Silicon Valley and Washington, DC. Even now, a dozen years into the 21^st century, there are members of Congress who boast about how clueless they are.

Last year, Downes covered the debate over SOPA or the Stop Online Piracy Act, a Congressional measure stopped by an upswell of protest from people and companies concerned about its impacts on the digital realm. Many of those impacts were either unintended or not fully thought through. The bill was largely a creature of lobbyists for the entertainment industry, and many Congressmen were simply taken aback at the public response to the bill.

Downes was in the audience for the hearings. He was shocked at some of what he heard come out of the mouths of some representatives. “‘Well, I don’t really understand the Internet,’ or ‘Well, my daughter uses this device and it sounds very interesting.’” Downes pauses for effect.

“I mean, not only do they not understand these products that we build,” he says, “They don’t even feel compelled to pretend they understand the products!”

The way Downes sees it, government should just stay out of the way. “We built a government that couldn’t do things quickly, because we wanted to make sure that when government acted, it acted carefully and with due deliberation. Of course, that’s a terrible fit for businesses or for technologies that change every 12-18 months. The pace is such that everything you want government to do — even if they did it, it would be too late by the time it arrived.”

Downes recently articulated these views in a commentary for Forbes. But even he admits that what high tech companies want from government depends on what kind of high tech they do. A software developer working on a smart phone app may view government’s “help” more like interference. For companies in other tech industries — med tech, biotech, green tech, clean tech — the view may be quite different.

Priv Bradoo is co-founder of Blue Oak, a venture-capital funded start up that aims to tackle toxic e-waste by grabbing phones and laptops on their way to the landfills of Asia, then extracting the precious metals inside for sale. Sipping on a can of Red Bull in the dappled sunshine outside the company’s offices on Sandhill Road, Bradoo says “I don’t think the government’s in the business of picking winners, but it should be in the business of facilitating and improving and increasing the access to resources that aren’t easy to be funded using small private investment.”

Bradoo says her company would like to build one of their refineries in Southern California to do that extraction. The trouble is, labor, utilities and taxes are more expensive here than in other states. If state and local governments were to sweeten the deal, that might change the math.

“Absolutely. I think it all comes into what are the incentives for us to be here, versus somewhere else,” she says.

Because at some point, Bradoo’s going to have to make the case to her venture capitalists.

“From the investors perspective, that’s usually a big question,” she explains. “Is it going to take two years to put up? We’ve done as much as we can do without actually setting up a facility. Hopefully we can find places where it’s not going to be a problem, but it’s actually even the perception of a regulatory risk which can be a hinderance.”

Beyond that, Blue Oak is going to burn through its VC cash, and the firm will find itself competing for real – inside a system that essentially off-shores the human and environmental cost of e-waste to people in China and India.

Blue Oak Co-founder Bryce Goodman says it matters that the U.S. is not a signatory to the Basel Convention, an international anti-toxic waste dumping deal, and that we don’t mandate companies to take back used electronics on a nationwide basis. Without those kinds of policies, the volume isn’t there to make recycling much of a business proposition in the U.S.

“That’s one place where government can be a driver — is in providing some sort of guarantee for markets that we think are crucial and that won’t exist otherwise,” Goodman says.

Whether their business model relies on a tight relationship with government – or relies on government staying out of the way – one thing is for sure: Silicon Valley denizens don’t leave their relationships with government up to chance anymore. Big companies hire their own lobbyists. Little ones band together in collective lobbying associations, like EngineAdvocacy in San Francisco. This is, after all a democracy, and if you don’t participate, you don’t get a say in what happens.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the industry spent more than $120 million on lobbying in 2011 — twice as much as a decade ago.

Hear the radio version of this story on the California Report.

Read Rachael Myrow’s other stories about the intersection of government and Silicon Valley:

Silicon Valley Republicans: Wandering in a Political Wilderness

Not So Simple Math: Support for Silicon Valley K-8 Teachers in an Era of Budget Cuts

Twenty-term incumbent Pete Stark has a well developed get-out-the-vote operation, but his opponent, Eric Swalwell, is capitalizing on Stark's reported negative attributes. (Photo: Cy Musiker)

Pete Stark has specialized in health care during much of his 40 years in Congress. He’s helped pass some of the nation’s most far-reaching laws in that area, including the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare” to some); a law that says emergency rooms are required to admit patients who can’t pay; and COBRA, which lets workers and their families temporarily remain covered under an employer’s health plan even after leaving their job.

Stark says he considers himself a health care “expert.”

“But there’s lots to be done,” he adds. “I would like to work until we see that every resident of the United States has access to health care regardless of their income or health status.”

In a normal year, voters would probably have granted him yet another term to do that work. But in this election cycle, he has to fight to be re-elected because of the state’s “Top Two” primary system and newly drawn congressional districts that have changed business as usual.

Instead, he faces another Democrat, Eric Swalwell, an ambitious novice who is an Alameda County prosecutor and Dublin city councilman. Swalwell finished just six points behind Stark in the June primary, 42-36 percent.

“In a Democrat vs. Democrat race,” says Jack Pitney, who teaches political science at Claremont McKenna Colleges, “there’s a very reasonable chance he could end up out of Congress.”

Pitney notes Stark has a number of strikes against him. First, more than half of this redrawn district is new to Stark. In addition, Pitney says Stark has squandered the power of incumbency — and the political clout that usually brings — by antagonizing Democrats and Republicans alike with nasty personal attacks.

“He’s among the most despised members of Congress,” Pitney says.

Stark’s Democratic colleagues even passed him over a few years ago when he was in line to become chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, “a stunning, stunning rebuke,” according to Pitney.

Stark’s crankiness is well known to some Bay Area business leaders. Carl Guardino heads San Jose’s Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a trade association. He says he sent a group of start-up CEOs to meet with Stark in Washington a few years ago.

“He came in cursing, yelling, saying profanity to these people,” Guardino recalls. “Obviously the meeting didn’t last long, and it was completely unproductive. Whether you agree with people on policy or not, we need to treat each other with respect. Constituents deserve that; the American public deserves that.”

When asked about that incident, Stark said he didn’t recall it. “If I was short with them, I certainly apologize,” he says. “I do tend to find that people who oppose helping children and helping provide medical care to the poor — I tend to, I guess, not like them.”

But there have been other slip-ups during the campaign that have some wondering if Stark, 80, is still up to the job. Two examples: Stark accused Swalwell, without evidence, of taking bribes; he was forced to  apologized; and he wrongly accused newspaper columnist Debra Saunders of making political donations to Swalwell, again apologizing after.

Here’s the video of Stark, during a debate, accusing Swalwell of taking bribes, then being admonished by the moderator:

Here’s the video of Stark accusing Saunders in front of the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board:

Such incidents have energized the campaign of his 31-year-old challenger.

While Stark spent most of the summer working in Washington, Eric Swalwell has been campaigning hard. He’s knocked on thousands of doors in neighborhoods across Alameda County. On one day in September, he was in San Ramon, a suburb of big houses and cul-de-sacs east of Oakland.

At home after home, he introduced himself, reminding potential voters of his name and why he’s running.

“It kind of upsets me that you have all this voting where all the Republicans vote on one side,” Fitzmaurice told Swalwell, “and all the Democrats vote on the other. I thought they were there to represent the people, and sometimes that aggravates me.”

Swalwell wrapped up the campaign day at a house party 10 miles away in Castro Valley, where he addressed a cheering crowd.

“I’m running because I know this area well,” he told supporters. “I want to see nothing but the best for the area where I grew up, and I believe that the person I’m running against is at the root of the problem in Congress.”

Swalwell says Stark is among the most partisan members of Congress. He argues that Stark has lost touch with his district. Stark’s wife and young children are settled in Maryland. Stark comes home to the district for town halls but less often than some of his Bay Area colleagues, Swalwell says.

At the house party, Teresa Branaugh says Swalwell won her over. Still, I asked why she’d trade a veteran lawmaker for someone who hasn’t even finished his first term on the city council.

Swalwell has a strong grassroots campaign, but Stark has had 40 years to build his political network. The result is name recognition — and the loyalty of many in the district, including Hayward Mayor Mike Sweeney.

Sweeney and others dismiss Stark’s flaring temper as a minor flaw in someone who is a champion of average people needing a voice in Washington.

“Whether it’s getting money for local communities like Hayward to hire more police officers,” Sweeney says, “or helping us start after-school tutoring programs through our library — or standing up to special interests that want to undo Social Security or eliminate Medicare, he’s there, and he’s in touch, and he’s fighting the right fights for us.”

Stark’s incumbency also brings benefits like endorsements from congressional colleagues, President Obama, and most labor unions — plus a powerful get-out-the-vote operation.

In the past, when Stark was running against a Republican, assets like these were always more than enough to put him over the top. But against a fellow liberal like Swalwell, Stark will have to prove he’s still the best Democrat for the job.

Listen to Cy Musiker’s story: