Throughout his ascent, Shaw has established himself as a devoted Democrat, regularly spending six figures a year on the party and its candidates. His largesse did not go unnoticed. Bill Clinton appointed him in 1994 to the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology, where he served as chairman of the Panel on Educational Technology.

In 1997, Shaw's committee recommended more than tripling technology spending in grade schools to $13 billion and upping federal assistance for public education. Two years later, Shaw entered the business of high-tech teaching as a shareholder of Mattel, which bought the Learning Co., a children's software provider led by fellow Democratic donor Michael Perik (No. 21, $643,000). According to the Center for Public Integrity, the Learning Co. reaped the rewards of Clinton's education policy by offering discounts on Internet filter Cyber Patrol and other popular software to schools participating in the federal E-rate program. 

The merger turned into a costly mistake for Mattel, halving its share price and prompting shareholder lawsuits. But those may have been the least of Shaw's worries. His hedge fund, along with Long-Term Capital Management, lost big during the Asian and Russian financial crises of 1997 -- plunging 26 percent, or $372 million. The Clinton administration came to the rescue, sending billions in emergency aid to countries like Indonesia and South Korea.

During the campaign, Shaw lauded Al Gore's support for free markets and his readiness to intervene if the markets go awry. "I was quite surprised at the depth of his understanding," Shaw told the Washington Post after a pre-election meeting with Gore. "He knows the individual countries quite well, he knows what the IMF can expect to accomplish, why it is necessary to head off ripple effects."

Despite his support for Gore, Shaw has benefited from anti-regulatory efforts by the GOP. In September 1999, after the near collapse of Long-Term Capital, Shaw spoke to a conference of the Managed Funds Association about the "positive force" hedge funds have on the world economy "from a social welfare point of view." Several months later, the MFA lobby helped kill proposals to increase disclosure requirements for hedge funds that had been endorsed by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Shaw also serves as treasurer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit that tracks federal spending on science research. The group has held recent policy forums about the negative impacts of new security measures at nuclear labs, the federal funding of medical research, the management of oceans, and the need to increase overall government science spending. Shaw is the founding chairman of Juno Online, an Internet access provider with more than 840,000 subscribers.