WASHINGTON — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his family are pushing $10 million into a political action committee focused on getting more veterans elected to Congress, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
The move comes just two months before the contentious November midterm elections and represents a major funding and publicity boost for the advocacy group With Honor, which has already endorsed a bipartisan slate of 33 House candidates.
The group announced Bezos' involvement as part of a goal of raising $30 million before November “to lower the financial barriers to entry for principled veterans from both parties.” In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, group founder Rye Barcott said the Bezos family said the donation supports their idea of building a “cross-partisan coalition” of lawmakers who can upend the partisan infighting in national politics today.
Bezos, who is also the owner of the Washington Post, has not made any similar major campaign donations in the past.
The With Honor fund has a stated goal of creating “a government that works for and is trusted by Americans, where principled veterans represent a significant percentage of elected positions at all levels.”
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In the mid-1970s, nearly three-fourths of the House and Senate had served in the military. That number has declined steadily in the decades since, both due to change to the all-volunteer military and the aging Vietnam veterans population.
At the start of the 115th Congress, less than one-fifth of lawmakers had any military experience. But that’s still a larger percentage than in the American public in total, where only about 7 percent of Americans have ever served in the military.
Several prominent veterans in recent months have called for more veterans to run for public office in an effort to bring more common experience and respect to Capitol Hill.
That included the late Sen. John McCain, himself a Navy veteran and former prisoner of war, who in a 2017 interview said he had “great faith in our system of government over time” when he looked at the younger generation of veterans seeking national office.
Among the candidates With Honor is backing are incumbent Reps. Brian Mast, R-Fla.; Connor Lamb, D-Pa.; Don Bacon, R-Neb.; Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif.; Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc.; and Seth Moulton, D-Mass. All of them are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars era.
Prior to the Bezos donation, the PAC had reported only about $7 million in campaign donations in the last year. That included $2 million from Bezos’ parents and nearly $3 million more from the family of Leslie Wexner, CEO of L Brands, which includes Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works.
With Honor is based in Virginia and has spent nearly $6 million in recent months in support of its endorsed candidates.
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
