Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie Bezos, are making their first major foray into politics with a $10 million contribution to a super PAC that aims to elect military veterans to Congress.
The contribution introduces Bezos
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, who also owns the Washington Post, to a class of political megadonors that includes Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and California billionaire Tom Steyer, who have each poured more than $100 million into elections over the past decade.
But unlike with Adelson and Steyer, the Bezos contribution isn’t to a partisan political organization. Instead it is to With Honor Fund, a year-old super PAC that backs veterans of both major parties who are running for House seats. Federal Election Commission filings show the organization had raised $7 million between its launch last October and the end of July.
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Rye Barcott, the founder of With Honor Fund, said the Bezoses shared his group’s goal of building a “cross-partisan coalition” of House members willing to work with the other party.
“They perceive themselves to be pretty nonpartisan,” Barcott said. “The idea of doing something different and disruptive appealed to them, along with our focus on values and integrity in our national discourse.”
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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