The Senate Democrats’ campaign arm is mixing politics with technology this week, putting on a fundraising conference featuring top executives from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other Silicon Valley companies on Thursday. Many of these executives have already contributed handsomely to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

On Friday morning in Menlo Park, Calif., the execs will be on on a panel explaining to Democrats where innovative jobs are being created, according to the event invitation. Hours later, the Democrats will be giving the tech-focused crowd an update on the 2012 Senatorial elections over lunch.

The DSCC sent out an updated invitation yesterday highlighting “recently confirmed panelists,” including Elliot Schrage, the VP of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy at Facebook, Dan’l Lewin, a corporate VP at Microsoft, and David Drummond, senior VP at Google.

Another panelist is venture capitalist John Doerr of KPCB, who was appointed by President Obama to be on his Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Executives from LegalZoom, ShopKick, Bloom Energy, Yelp and Symantec will also be speaking.

Many of these executives have also been big supporters of the DSCC. Doerr gave $40,400 to the committee in 2009 and 2010. John W. Thompson, Symantec’s board chairman, gave $30,400 in 2010, the maximum annual donation that year, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Drummond sent $10,000 to the committee in 2009. Schrage and K.R. Sridhar, of Bloom Energy, a fuel-cell company, have contributed in smaller amounts.

President Obama also tapped Silicon Valley for cash recently, holding a $35,800-per-couple fundraiser there in late September.

The conference kicks off on Thursday, where the night seems to be more about mingling than the “innovation ecosystem.” A reception and dinner will feature eight senators, including special deficit panel committee co-chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., Democratic caucus vice chair Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Mark Warner, D-Va., who is a former venture capitalist himself and has held tech-focused events before (like this fundraiser with Google’s former CEO and this meetup in Chicago). The special guest speaker that night is liberal economist and former Clinton Labor secretary Robert Reich.

The senators may be listening for clues to how they can use social media and mobile applications for their own campaigns, as two other panels are titled “How Social Media Has Empowered Movements and Change” and “The Application Revolution/Mobile Internet.”

12 conference tickets cost $30,800, the maximum annual contribution to party committees for the 2012 election, yet one ticket is a mere $1,000. Political Action Committees can give $5,000 or $15,000 for two tickets.

Contributions to Democratic congressional candidates from the tech community have waned compared to Republicans, although some of that decrease can likely be explained by the fact that there are far more Republicans in office now than in 2010. So far this year, Republican candidates have received about $1.1 million from the computer and Internet sectors, compared to about $800,000 to Democrats. However, in 2010, donations to Democrats trounced Republicans by over 60 percent, according to data tabulated by CRP.

The same is true for money from the venture capital sector. Donations are evenly spread between liberals and conservatives this year while Democrats raised more than double the funds that Republicans did in 2010, according to CRP.

Yet, the DSCC appears to be in slightly better shape than Democratic candidates. The party committee has taken in about $380,000 from the computer and Internet sectors this year, compared to $255,000 given to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Last year, the DSCC received $1.7 million from the sector, compared to $1.1 for the NRSC.

Congressional Democrats are finding a way around President Barack Obama’s ban on lobbyist contributions, reports Jonathan Martin in Politico today.

Obama is speaking at a dinner tonight at the Mandarin Hotel for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). In the past this dinner has brought in big lobbyist bucks. But because Obama will be there, the committees won’t be taking lobbyist contributions for the event.

However, lobbyist money will be welcome the next morning at a $5,000-per-head “issues” conference featuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and a variety of committee chairmen. (We don’t have copies of these invitations in our database. If you have them, please send them to us here.)

Reports Politico:

Obama refuses to appear at fundraising events where lobbyists are allowed to contribute money, so the Democrats can’t collect lobbyists’ cash at Thursday night’s dinner. But since the president won’t be at the morning-after event, congressional Democrats will be free to collect the lobbying dollars then that they couldn’t take the night before.

This seems the very definition of violating the spirit of the lobbyist contribution ban–and the piece quotes some anonymous Democratic sources saying it’s Obama’s fault for not reining the Dems in.

Yet at the same time, more anonymous Democratic insiders are quoted griping because the White House won’t help raise lobbyist cash. One says Obama should be leaning on surrogate organizations to send out fundraising alerts. Another points out that the lobbyist money ban puts the committees in a bind:

“It’s kind of like going to Los Angeles and then excluding the entertainment industry,” said a senior Democrat. “Well, then you’re going to have a lame event.”

Seems like Obama’s getting the worst of both worlds right now. He’s getting the blame both because his lobbyist money ban is too weak–and because he won’t pull out the stops to get lobbyist money.