The Mad Professah Lectures

Sean Eldridge is the male spouse of Chris Hughes, the openly gay co-founder of Facebook who bought The New Republic last year and was the architect behind Presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign website BarackObama.com in 2007. Eldridge has been rumored to want to run for Congress from New York State for quite awhile. Eldridge is 27 years old and probably best known in LGBT circles as the former Political Director of Freedom To Marry, the campaign to win the freedom to marry nationwide

Bizarrely, if elected, he would be the second, not the first openly gay guy named Sean who is a Congressman from New York. Sean Patrick Maloney was elected in 2012 to represent the 18th Congressional District of New York. There are currently 7 openly LGBT members of Congress, 6 in the U.S. House and Wisconsin's U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin.

This week Eldridge indeed announced that he is running to represent the 18th Congressional District of New York, in a curious video where he mentions his family (but not the fact that he is married to a man) and touts his supports for abortion rights and small business. It's not clear if this would count as "straight-washing" but it does appear a little odd to this openly gay viewer.

Then again maybe we are now living in a world where the fact that you are gay will not be brought up or of interest to the general public during a political campaign. I seriously doubt it. After all, he is running against a Republican incumbent Congressman (named Chris Gibson).

With his husband's hundreds of millions of dollars at his disposal Eldridge should be able to make the race for the 19th District competitive, at the very least.

Hat/tip to BuzzFeed

Sean Eldridge last made news when his marriage to Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, was featured on the front page of the New York Times last year. Eldridge, 26, was the political director of FreedomtoMarry.org until July 2011 and a Democraic political activist since, while Hughes, 29, recently re-launched The New Republic to great fanfare with an in-depth interview with President Obama.

Now comes word that Eldridge wants to follow in the footsteps of openly gay Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney (NY-18) and challenge sitting Republican congressman Chris Gibson in New York's 19th Congressional District. Presumably, Eldridge will have access to some of the estimated 500-million-dollar fortune of his husband. Eldridge has filed the necessary paperwork that allows him to further explore a run for Congress.

According to the filings, Eldridge, a Democratic activist and the head of an investment firm, will be seeking a House seat in New York's 19th District, currently represented by Representative Chris Gibson. Gibson, a two-term Republican and former West Point professor, was reelected in November by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent. But the 19th District also broke for Obama; it is one of the dozens of vulnerable districts Democratic strategists are gunning for in 2014 in an effort to reclaim the House.

It will be interesting to see how serious Eldridge is about running. If he wins, that would most likely make New York the first state with two openly gay Representatives in Congress. (Of course, Wisconsin currently has a openly gay Congressman in Mark Pocan and an openly lesbian Senator in Tammy Baldwin.)