There was a time when the tech elite could ignore the results of progressive governance — when the social rot in cities like Seattle and San Francisco could be swept aside with a donation or a tweet. But 2025 is making one thing clear: even the most loyal corporate allies of left-wing urban leadership are starting to run.
Microsoft, the largest company in Washington State, has pulled its annual Build conference from Seattle. The event — once a jewel of the city’s booming tech economy — has been relocated to Phoenix. Official statements spoke of “logistics” and “attendee experience.” The truth? Seattle’s downtown core has become a minefield of crime, vagrancy, and drug abuse.
This move didn’t happen in a vacuum. Amazon has delayed its return-to-office mandates multiple times, citing worker concerns about safety near its South Lake Union campus. Seattle Police Department staffing is still at crisis levels, with violent crime rising 18% year-over-year. Encampments have returned near schools. The metro system is bleeding riders and hemorrhaging trust. Progressive leaders, meanwhile, cling to slogans and policies that have proven toxic.
Marc Benioff/PHOTO: Fortune Global Forum (CC)
The story is nearly identical down the coast. In San Francisco, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff once championed progressive politics, pouring millions into homelessness programs. But reality came knocking when drug abuse and filth threatened his company’s massive Dreamforce conference. In 2023, Benioff warned the city to clean up or risk losing the event. The following year, Dreamforce nearly pulled out. And in 2025? The pressure remains — and so does the decay.
Yet recently Benioff has begun to speak the language of disillusionment. “You can’t have a great conference in a city where people don’t feel safe,” he said last year. Yet he still funds the same policy networks that brought about the problem. Microsoft Chairman/CEO Satya Nadella, on the other hand, didn’t issue warnings. He just walked.
The symbolism couldn’t be clearer. The very cities that once embodied the digital future — built by innovation, but governed by ideology — are now chasing out the builders themselves.
Conventions are more than events. They are statements of confidence in a city’s ability to host, to protect, to impress. When that confidence is lost, investment follows. Tourism dries up. Residents flee. And the cycle of urban failure deepens.
That’s why this year NLPC submitted a shareholder proposal at Salesforce that called upon the Board of Directors’ Business Transformation Committee, which the company states is designed to “[oversee] management’s efforts to transform the business and strengthen our foundation for sustained operational excellence and value creation,” to assess the costs vs. benefits of keeping its headquarters in San Francisco. The proposal pointed out the mass exodus of companies from California and the City-by-the-Bay as part of a spiraling “doom loop,” and noted that other states and jurisdictions around the country have welcomed businesses with open arms that also include better tax and regulation environments, as well as safer cities and more affordable housing and economies for employees.
Unfortunately Salesforce rejected consideration of the proposal, and the Securities and Exchange Commission granted permission to exclude it from this year’s annual meeting, agreeing with the claim that the proposal would excessively meddle in the company’s ordinary business operations.
Yet it remains a sobering truth: the people who built modern liberal cities can no longer afford to pretend their policy prescriptions work. When the tech titans retreat, maybe it’s time for a governing philosophy that isn’t allergic to accountability, law and order, and common sense.
