If Sean Eldridge didn’t exist, conservatives would have to invent him. He is a self-parody of everything self-respecting human beings find obnoxious about politicians. He is fabulously wealthy, thanks to his decision to marry Mark Zuckerberg’s college roommate, Chris Hughes. The couple owns a pair of $2,500 nautical binoculars, which they presumably use to gaze down on commoners from their trendy loft in SoHo. Eldridge (i.e., Hughes) is the largest donor to his own campaign.
Sean Eldridge is a carbetbagging feudal lord who has spent the last several years chain-buying mansions in New York’s Hudson River Valley in an effort to find a congressional district that might elect him and is establishing a modern day fiefdom as a means to buy loyalty and votes with his husband’s money. He went to Brown and majored in philosophy. At 28 years old, Eldridge is even more entitled and self-important than Sandra Fluke, who is five years his senior yet still had the humility to initiate her political ambitions at the state level. He won’t even commit to stay in his current district (NY-19) if he loses.
To their credit, the major Democratic power players seem content to let Eldridge twist in the wind, probably because he’s trailing Republican incumbent (and Army veteran/lifelong district resident) Chris Gibson by nearly 30 points. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Nancy Pelosi’s PAC have stayed out of the race, and the AFL-CIO declined to endorse him. So the Eldridge campaign has had to fend for itself, and hadn't released any television ads. Until today, that is, when it unveiled two.
"In the next few months, you’ll hear a lot about Sean Eldridge," Sean Eldridge tells prospective Sean Eldridge voters in one of the Sean Eldridge ads. "So why not hear it from Sean Eldridge?"
He wants voters to know how much he loves living in the Hudson Valley. In fact, he loves it so much that his husband bought him two separate mansions in neighboring congressional districts in the valley. He boasts about his fiefdom of "local small business" and his efforts to "reduce the influence of special interest money in politics," which as Eldridge defines it does not include the likes of labor unions, Silicon Valley CEOs, Goldman Sachs executives, billionaire financiers George Soros and Tom Steyer, and self-funded Facebook spouses like Sean Eldridge.
This next ad is even better. Eldridge explains to a group of commoners how "fortunate" he was to marry "one of the founders of Facebook," a title that, while technically true, is a rather grandiose way to describe the inventor of the "poke" button who lucked out in the Harvard room lottery. He'll be an "independent advocate" for the commoners in his district, who seem to believe him from the way they nod along in agreement. Unless he loses, of course, in which case he'll move back to his other mansion in a different district.
If Sean Eldridge doesn't lose by at least 20 points in November, it will be a defeat for America.