Getty/Chip Somodevilla Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
- Jeff Bezos, who bought the Washington Post in 2013, was once wary of wading into the Washington, DC limelight.
- However, the Amazon CEO now embraces DC and sees himself as the successor to former Washington Post publisher Kay Graham, according to the Washingtonian.
- Insiders who spoke to the magazine point to the Jason Rezaian incident as the turning point.
- Bezos' embrace of DC life could have implications for where Amazon's second headquarters eventually lands, but by how much is anyone's guess.
Jeff Bezos was once wary of Washington, DC.
The Amazon CEO, who bought the Washington Post in 2013, didn't see himself as a fixture in the city.
"At the beginning, he was more reticent about being in Washington, about being involved in these kinds of things, and wasn't really that interested in injecting himself in it," one acquaintance of Bezos told Washingtonian for part of a profile on Bezos's DC life.
In fact, Bezos needed a to be convinced by former and famous Post reporter Bob Woodward, who emailed him, to go to former Post editor Ben Bradlee's funeral in 2014, the magazine reported.
Since then, however, his thinking has shifted. The biggest incident that changed his mind happened in 2016, when Jason Rezaian, a Washington Post journalist reporting in Iran, was taken prisoner and convicted of espionage. After being held in the country for 18 months, he was released.
Bezos and his personal jet flew to an American military base in Germany to pick up Rezaian. The cabin was decorated with #freejason streamers. He instructed his pilot to take Rezaian and his wife anywhere in the world.
"The Jason Rezaian experience really was an inflection point for him,"an acquaintance told the Washingtonian.
Bezos was treated to a round of applause when he arrived back at Post headquarters.
Since then, Bezos has upped the amount of time he spends in DC. He still lives most of the time in Seattle, but flies to DC often. In 2016, he bought the largest home in the city for $26 million dollars - a 27,000-square-foot mansion in the well-heeled Kalorama section.
According to the blueprints obtained by Washingtonian in a Freedom of Information Act request, half the home is for personal use and the other half is in the process of being turned into a haven for entertaining, with landscaped grounds, and a large ballroom, and a commercial style bathroom with six stalls.
"What he's going to do is revive the legacy of Kay Graham and her great socializing - bringing smart, interesting people together in a social context," Jean Case, a friend of Bezos since the 1990s, told the Washingtonian.
Another friend told the magazine that he is now attracted to DC "like a moth to light."
Will Bezos digging his heels into DC provide any kind of glimpse at where Amazon's HQ2 may land? Perhaps, but maybe not.
According to Washingtonian, Bezos rarely steps into Amazon's DC office, the site of its lobbying arm, instead busying himself with work related to the Post or his rocket venture, Blue Origin.
Still, a second headquarters could give Bezos another big reason to visit the city he's grown accustomed to. Throwing in the $5 billion investment and 50,000 new workers HQ2 promises to bring could either give Bezos more levers to pull, or complicate his social endeavors.
