Obama Tech Confidante Eric Schmidt Offers Tech Tips to GOP

During the 2008 presidential race, candidate Barack Obama won over an important Silicon Valley backer when Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced his intention to stump for the Democratic candidate. At the time, Schmidt was careful to underscore that Google remained "officially neutral" in the campaign. After all, you never know for sure how the political winds in Washington will blow tomorrow.

And so it was that following the Republicans' big congressional win during the midterm vote, one Eric Schmidt popped up at the House Republican transition office a couple of days after the elections, Politico is reporting.

Not to talk, politics, mind you. Strictly tech tips on how to use technology to make Congress more efficient. Or so says Greg Walden, the chair of the transition committee.

"You could just see his mind start to go to work on this, where he said why couldn't you - you ought to be able to in real time get a bill marked up and see how it effects the statute," Walden told Politico. "And you can do all that electronically on an iPad. As the amendment is adopted, the editing takes place and here's what it looks like now, in real time. You've covered some of these hearings. In energy and commerce, you have 200 copies of every amendment distributed before we vote on it. And then we throw it out in the end."

During the 2008 campaign, Schmidt emerged as an adviser on technology and energy matters.