Sean Eldridge, husband of The New Republic editor in chief and former Obama employee Chris Hughes, officially launched his campaign for New York's 19th Congressional seat Sunday night in a video that did not include Hughes or mention Eldridge's longstanding support for gay marriage.
The announcement does not come as a surprise, for Eldridge and Hughes have been district shopping.
The New York Times reported on the ambition of Eldridge and Hughes in July, writing about "how one young couple came to the Hudson Valley with a fortune and big political dreams." They moved to Garrison and eyed the Congressional seat there two years ago, but once that looked unattainable they went north to its neighboring district and purchased a $2 million home overlooking a reservoir.
However, those interviewed in the story were struck by the gall of Eldridge moving into town and running for office almost immediately:
Amy Shields, a mother of three children who lives a few miles from Mr. Eldridge, cannot get over the fact that he has just moved into town and is already planning a run for Congress.
"It’s a little bit presumptuous," Ms. Shields said. "In a community like this you like to know who your neighbors are. Having ties to your neighbors is important. How can he expect to represent people he doesn’t know?"
Eldridge appeared reticent to take a stand on major issues before the campaign. Eldridge would not respond to multiple requests from Politico for comments on the Syria debate earlier this month.
The Washington Free Beacon's Matthew Continetti wrote that Eldridge's pursuit of office could not be more contrived, not just because of the obvious district shopping, but because of his fabulously wealthy husband, his ownership of a prominent if flailing liberal magazine, and their extensive connections to Democratic donors established through lavish giving to liberal organizations and campaigns.
In 2011, Eldridge founded Hudson River Ventures LLC, a "small business investment fund" that "works to empower entrepreneurs and build thriving businesses throughout the Hudson Valley," where Eldridge just happened to be thinking of running for Congress, Continetti noted:
The portrait sketched in the New York TimesThursday is of a couple for whom political influence is an entitlement; of liberal plutocrats detached from the people they claim to represent; of an attitude toward money in politics that is breathtaking in its naiveté. When we enter the universe of Hughes and Eldridge, we go beyond the simple conflation of financial and political interests. What they practice is not cronyism. It’s phonyism.
Hughes is often celebrated in the press as a wizened entrepreneur despite starting a failed social media outlet, Jumo, before buying The New Republic. Yet, Continetti wrote in December, his story is really one the media normally would have castigated. Hughes married Eldridge at Cipriani Wall Street before more than 400 guests, his residences all cost seven figures, and his fortune was made on having the great luck of being Facebook inventor Mark Zuckerberg's roommate at Harvard:
Hughes did not have programming or business skills—it is unclear what skills he has at all—so Zuckerberg made him Facebook’s first press agent. He publicized the revolutionary social network, which does not strike one as particularly hard to do, and parlayed his Facebook experience into a job on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. He was riding a wave he had caught inadvertently by sleeping in the same dorm room as Zuckerberg. Where is the special, two-segment, snark-filled panel on "Melissa Harris-Perry" devoted to Hughes, whiteness, and the nature of membership in the American elite?