Someone a few emails back mentioned Suzan DelBene here in Washington State. There are and have been quite a few ex-Microsoft folks who've run for office at various levels, including city councils and the state legislature. One of our US Senators, Maria Cantwell, was with RealNetworks for some time - although as VP of Marketing, not an engineering role. Darcy Burner, another former Microsoft marketing person, unsuccessfully ran twice against Dave Reichert for his seat in the US Congress, lost to DelBene for the newly formed First Congressional District and lost a bid to represent the Fifth Legislative District in the Washington State House. Tina Podlodowski, ex-Microsoft, is now the chair of the Washington State Democratic Party, and served on the Seattle City Council for a single term. Eric Oemig, again ex-Microsoft in a 'performance manager' role, served in the Washington State Senate for a single term. Toby Nixon served in the Washington State House and is now a City Councilman for the City of Kirkland. Laura Ruderman, an administrative assistant from Microsoft (in my product group), served a single term in the House, as well. (Ruderman billed herself as a 'former Microsoft manager' when in fact she briefly held the title of Program Manager, had no engineering responsibilities and had only two direct reports, both of them temporary employees.)
I suspect that one reason we have a significant number of ex-Microsoft types here is that they have the money - the majority of the ex-Microsoft crowd partially or completely funded their own campaigns. But the majority of them worked in non-technical roles. -- Ian