Tech vet seeks to flip dad’s district
Families divided by politics is a now-familiar story. But the Goodlattes are heightening the drama with a Silicon Valley spin. Tech investor and early Facebook designer Bobby Goodlatte has thrown his support to the Democrat running for the seat being vacated by his Republican father.
“Let’s flip the 6th,” he wrote on Twitter, referring to the Sixth Congressional District of Virginia — a district his father, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, has represented for 25 years. He is not seeking re-election.
The younger Goodlatte said in a tweet Sunday that he has donated the maximum amount allowed to Democrat Jennifer Lewis’ congressional campaign, and encouraged his followers to do the same. Goodlatte’s follower-count on Twitter grew from 26,000 to more than 35,000 on Monday.
Goodlatte, who worked at Facebook a decade ago, went on to co-found OpenVote, a website to pledge and share votes, in 2015. He has backed more than two dozen companies as an investor, including Blue Bottle Coffee and cyrptocurrency exchange Coinbase.
Goodlatte is part of a growing group in Silicon Valley that is flexing its newfound wealth and power to make political change. Investors Bilal Zuberi of Lux Capital and Mamoon Hamid of Kleiner Perkins have both been outspoken critics of Washington policies. Investor Chris Sacca, Homebrew Management partner Hunter Walk and startup founder Charlie Cheever are supporting Goodlatte’s effort in the Sixth District, according to their tweets.
Neither Goodlatte immediately responded to a request for comment.
On Twitter, Bobby Goodlatte criticized his father’s “political grandstanding,” and said he was “deeply embarrassed” about the role his father played in firing longtime FBI agent Peter Strzok for Strzok’s anti-Trump texts.
“That committee hearing was a low point for Congress,” he wrote.
Bob Goodlatte also serves as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He announced last year he wouldn’t seek re-election so he could spend more time with his family, particularly his granddaughters.
As he’s been serving out his last term, Goodlatte has drawn Democrats’ outrage by refusing to use his chairman’s gavel to look deeper into Russian election meddling, instead using it to scrutinize and criticize the actions of Justice Department and FBI officials, like Strzok, during the early stages of that probe.
Goodlatte defended his focus last year. He explained that several other congressional committees were already looking into the election meddling, but said that it’s his role as Judiciary chairman to lead congressional oversight of the FBI and Justice Department. As a result, he has focused more on potential bias and official missteps surrounding the 2016 presidential election, including looking into why the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use was dropped.
The Goodlattes may have some bad blood between them, but the father and son agree on at least one thing: cryptocurrency.
Bob Goodlatte owns from $17,000 to $80,000 in bitcoin, bitcoin cash and ethereum, according to his annual financial disclosures filed in May.
His son, who first backed Coinbase in 2013, sent a tweet last week announcing his dad’s holdings. He gave it a thumbs-up emoji.