That's one reason I decamped to the SF bay area. I have friends still living in DC (or one of its inner 'burbs) who have been saying for over a decade that they want to escape the games and backbiting bullshit, but have never managed to do so. One reason is the compensation can be high: the DC area is home to the highest-income county in the nation[1]. Stewart is a senior partner at Steptoe, where the average partner income is approx. $1M[2]; as a very senior one he might be taking home $2M a year.
Plus housing prices are cheaper than SF or the peninsula, and if you're trained as a political fixer/policy wonk, where else do you go?
On a more HN-relevant point, working in DC means trying to get a bigger slice of a fixed pie. Silicon Valley companies and other startups around the world can make the pie bigger. For more realpolitik, check out this provocative essay on DC-Silicon Valley by San Jose-based Cypress Semiconductor cofounder/CEO TJ Rodgers (it's worth a read even if you disagree, I think): http://www.cypress.com/?rID=34975
[1] "The Washington region dominates the list of the most affluent places in the United States..." http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/12/12/th...
[2] http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2013/02/steptoe-johnson-ll...