Happy holidays, and welcome back to The Stratosphere.

In today’s issue, I take a look at Jeff Bezos’s emerging frontrunner bid to purchase The Washington Commanders for a price tag that could reach a staggering $7 billion—or about 30x what he spent for The Washington Post a decade ago.

And then, below the fold, speaking of big Seattle-based expenditures, I have the origin story of how Sam Bankman-Fried got his start as a political mega-donor.

Teddy

Snyder—who bought the team formerly known as The Redskins for a then-astronomical $750 million in 1999—has long been one of the most reviled owners in sports. But he decided to explore a sale as the franchise has become mired in investigations, including from Congress, over its alleged toxic culture. Snyder hasn’t said publicly whether he would sell just a part of the team, his entire ownership stake, or nothing at all. But if this does turn into a bidding war, Bezos—the world’s second-richest person—would clearly have a tremendous advantage. And you’d imagine that Snyder and his army of beancounters at Bank of America would be hard pressed to turn down a full-team sale if the bids really are north of $7 billion, which would shatter records for the biggest sports franchise deal ever.

Bezos never really made sense to me as a potential Suns owner, as I wrote at the time. But the Commanders? Bezos spends much of his time these days in Washington, given his ownership of the Post and his $23 million party house in Kalorama. Unlike the NBA, Bezos also seems to genuinely like football—he’s frequently seen alongside his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, in box seats during Amazon’s Thursday night broadcasts just before her ex-husband, Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez, does the post-game show. I imagine some other NFL owners would have questions about potential conflicts of interest—Bezos is, after all, still Amazon’s executive chairman and its largest shareholder, and it’s not inconceivable that the interests of the league’s broadcasting deals might conflict with the interest of an individual league owner. But that can probably be worked out to everyone’s satisfaction, especially if that $7 billion-plus number (or, 28 Washington Posts) is real.

Regardless, Bezos all but confirmed his interest with a wink during a rare interview given to CNN last month. “I’ve heard that buzz,” he said when asked about his interest in the team. “I grew up in Houston, Texas, and I played football growing up as a kid… and it is my favorite sport… so we'll just have to wait and see.”

Back in December 2019, when S.B.F. had not yet graced even a single magazine cover, Alameda put $50,000 into a local political committee called Seattle for a Healthy Planet, only four days after it was launched. The next month, Alameda put $265,000 more behind the group, a staggering amount considering that Alameda was still in its infancy. The committee was guided by two people who would end up being key S.B.F. political advisers in the coming years—Michael Sadowsky and Dave Huynh. This was around the time that Sadowsky was beginning, in his personal capacity, to run several effective altruist ballot measures and lobbying efforts around the country.

Seattle for a Healthy Planet was fairly mysterious to local onlookers—was it some clean energy play? A lab-grown meat agenda? And more importantly, why was this unheard-of crypto entrepreneur from Hong Kong spending $300,000-plus in a local election? It’s unknown what specific E.A. goal the group had in mind, but F.Y.I. to creditors, it still has $330,000 in its bank account as of its last filing.

In the end, the political committee never even launched an actual ballot measure, so it didn’t end up having a material impact. But the $315,000 spent in Seattle was Bankman-Fried’s first major political check, and the opening stanza in his increasing involvement in effective altruist political campaigns across the country. To bring things full circle, a few years later, S.B.F. would return to Seattle to pump $135,000 into an effort this cycle to stand up approval-voting in local elections—and it ended up failing, too.