Finance

Jeff Bezos Just Made First Political Contribution. It’s Not What You’d Expect

REUTERS/Gary Cameron

David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s and his wife are gifting $10 million to a super PAC formed to elect military veterans to Congress.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the donation propels Bezos into a select group of people who contribute more to the electoral process than most people earn in a lifetime.

But Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, isn’t leading with his liberal politics. He’s supporting the With Honor Fund, a political force that endeavors to get veterans elected — regardless of their political stripe. Until Bezos added to their coffers, the organization had raised about $7 million dollars since its inception last October according to Federal Election Commission documents.

With Honor Fund founder Rye Barcott told the Wall Street Journal that Bezos is committed to implementing the PAC’s objective of creating a “cross-partisan coalition” of representatives who won’t resist reaching across the congressional floor to seek consensus.

“They perceive themselves to be pretty nonpartisan,” Barcott told the Post. “The idea of doing something different and disruptive appealed to them, along with our focus on values and integrity in our national discourse.”

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