Rand Paul’s courtship of Silicon Valley paying off in donations

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has been engaged in a courtship with Silicon Valley as he prepares a 2016 run for president, has reaped some large donations from tech donors, a new Maplight.org analysis of campaign finance data shows.

The donations went to Paul’s campaign committee, his joint fundraising committee and his leadership political action committee, RandPAC, according to campaign finance data posted between Friday and Monday, the Maplight.org analysis shows.

Among the donors are Bay Area billionaire Sean Parker, the co-founder of file-sharing music service Napster and the first president of Facebook. He contributed $7,600 to Sen. Paul’s joint fundraising committee on Nov. 3 — $5,000 of that donation was distributed to RandPAC, and $2,600 went to the Senator’s campaign committee, the limit allowed by both committees.

The senator’s joint fundraising committee is used to raise money for both his PAC and his campaign committee.

Michael Dearing of Woodside, who founded Harrison Metal and previously worked at eBay, contributed $5,000 to Paul’s joint fundraising committee. The Dec. 27 contribution was distributed to his leadership PAC, the data shows.

Facebook’s PAC also contributed $1,000 to Paul’s campaign committee on Oct 30.

Paul’s campaign committee also received $2,600 from Travis May, founder and CEO of TollFreeForwarding.com, based in Los Angeles.

MapLight.org analyzed contributions from California contributors to Paul's three committees, all of them reported in the latest round of available FEC campaign filings, covering contributions from Oct. 1, 2014, to Dec. 31, 2014.

Carla Marinucci is senior political writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. E-mail: cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com Twitter @cmarinucci