Photograph by Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg

Sean Eldridge, president of Hudson River Ventures, left, and Chris Hughes, editor-in-chief and publisher of The New Republic and a founder of Facebook Inc., during the Paris Review Spring Revel gala in New York.

Sean Eldridge, an investor and Democratic political activist, has filed paperwork establishing a 2014 campaign for Congress in New York’s Hudson Valley.

A statement of organization creating “Sean Eldridge for Congress” and a statement of candidacy were processed by the Federal Election Commission on Feb. 1.

Eldridge is the president and founder of Hudson River Ventures LLC and a senior adviser to Freedom to Marry, which advocates for same-sex marriage. He’s married to Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook and the publisher of The New Republic magazine. Eldridge created a political action committee that promoted an overhaul of campaign finance laws, according to Capital Tonight.

Eldridge would seek the 19th District seat held by two-term Republican Chris Gibson, who was re-elected by 53 percent to 47 percent in 2012. New York’s 19th District, which takes in all or part of 11 counties, backed President Barack Obama over Republican challenger Mitt Romney by 52 percent to 46 percent, according to data compiled by Political Capital.

Eldridge is a frequent donor to Democratic candidates and committees. He gave $30,800 in February 2012 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats, Federal Election Commission records show.

Eldridge didn’t immediately return an e-mail seeking comment.

House Democrats, who fell 17 seats short of winning a majority in 2012, are targeting Republican-held districts like Gibson’s that voted for Obama. Andrew Romanoff, a former Colorado state House speaker, announced last weekend that he will challenge three-term Republican Mike Coffman in the 6^th District near Denver, a district that also voted for Obama.

Original post is Investor Eldridge Eyes N.Y. House Seat by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chris M. Rogers/Getty Images

Skeet shooting

A question came up at the White House today:

Just how much skeet shooting does President Barack Obama do at Camp David?

He said in an interview with The New Republic released over the weekend that he and friends go shooting “all the time” on the range that President Dwight Eisenhower opened at the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains named for his grandson David.

There are pictures of John F. Kennedy shooting skeet there, pictures of George H.W. Bush and his young, at the time, son Jeb shooting skeet there.

But the Camp David Web-site offers no photo album of the 44th president’s riflery (make that shotgunry).

“I don’t know how often,” the president shoots skeet at the mountain retreat, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today in response to a reporter’s question at the West Wing press briefing.  “He does go to Camp David with some regularity, but I’m not sure how often he’s done that.”

If there’s a photo of the president shooting skeet, Carney said, he hasn’t seen it.

Asked why this hasn’t been mentioned before — the president revealed it when asked in the TNR interview if he’d ever shot a gun, at this time when Obama is promoting a plan to curb gun violence — Carney explained: “Because when he goes to Camp David, he goes to spend time with his family and friends and relax, not to produce photographs.”

There is, however, video of the Kennedys at the Skeet Range — they liked to relax, and produced a lot of photographs, too.

Original post is More on Obama’s Skeet-Shooting: Camp David for Fun, Not Photos by Political Capital.

Camp David

President John F. Kennedy shot skeet at Camp David, shown here with David Niven and The Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee in 1963. Camp David Photo.President John F. Kennedy shot skeet at Camp David, shown here with David Niven and The Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee in 1963.

President Barack Obama, seeking a ban on assault weapons, says he shoots skeet “all the time” at Camp David.

Obama told The New Republic magazine in an interview that at the presidential retreat in Maryland’s wooded Catoctin Mountains “we do skeet shooting all the time.”

“Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there” to shoot skeet, Obama added in an interview published in the magazine’s Feb. 11 issue.

President Dwight Eisenhower, who had the good sense to rename the presidential retreat for grandson David — it had been known as Shangri-La before then — installed the skeet shooting range in the 1950s.

Obama, father of two daughters, mentioned his interest in skeet shooting in response to a question on whether he had ever fired a gun.

Obama has responded to a shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school last month by proposing legislation to mandate background checks for all gun buyers, ban high-capacity ammunition clips and reinstate a ban on sales of assault weapons. Obama also signed 23 executive actions aimed at circumventing congressional opposition to new gun restrictions, including several designed to maximize prosecution of gun crimes and improve access to government data for background checks.

Twenty students and six educators were killed in a mass shooting Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

Skeet shooting involves shotguns, not Bushmasters. And there are no mega-clips involved.

The president also expressed concern about violence and injuries in professional and intercollegiate football in this interview, saying he would “think long and hard” if he had a son before allowing him to play. Obama, an avowed sports fan, says the National Collegiate Athletic Association in particular should consider rules changes in view of emerging evidence on long-term health consequences of head blows suffered by players.

He said he is “more worried” about amateur college players than professional National Football League players who are “grown men” represented by a union and paid a salary.

“You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on,” Obama said in the interview. “That’s something that I’d like to see the NCAA think about.”

Obama predicted that football rules will “probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence.” He said the while rules changes to tamp down violence “may make it a little bit less exciting,” the result “will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won’t have to examine our consciences quite as much.”

Original post is Obama Shoots Skeet at Camp David — and Has Advice for the NCAA by Political Capital.