White House Correspondents Insider

Behind the scenes of the most powerful city in the world — Washington, D.C. — and those who cover it.

Amazon’s HQ2 Shortlist: Washington, Pittsburgh, Nashville Among 20 Finalists

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Pittsburgh, PA, one of the candidate cities in Amazon’s top 20

 

The business community has been eagerly anticipating Amazon’s announcement of the location of its new headquarters, or HQ2, something the company’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who recently became the richest man in the world, has been teasing over the past year.

On Thursday, January 18th Amazon released its list of 20 city finalists. Cities and municipalities around the country have been vying to become home to Amazon’s white-collar workforce, offering tax incentives and prime real estate deals.

One of the most discussed candidate cities, Baltimore, Maryland, did not make the list. According to the Baltimore Sun, “Amazon said it was looking for cities that could provide an initial 500,000 square feet of space, preferably in an urban or suburban area, with access to major highways, airports, public transportation, and a robust technology workforce.”

Here’s the list of 20 contenders to become the host city for Amazon’s HQ2:

Toronto, Columbus, Indianapolis, Chicago, Denver, Nashville, Los Angeles, Dallas, Austin, Boston, New York City, Newark, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Montgomery County, Washington D.C., Raleigh, Northern Virginia, Atlanta, and Miami.

Read more details about Amazon’s HQ2 here.

Checking In on Today's 2010 Primary

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If you’ve been living under a rock, good for you. If not, you know today is primary day for New Hampshire, Delaware, New York, Wisconsin, Maryland,Massachusetts, Rhode Island–and even Washington, D.C itself, but that’s only relevant if you’re inside inside the Beltway.

Politico provides the complete rundown for what to watch for today and how November could shape itself:

Several marquee House and Senate primaries are on tap. In Delaware, Rep. Mike Castle, the establishment favorite and the most popular Republican in the state, is fending off an insurgent challenge from the right in his bid to win the state’s open Senate seat. In New Hampshire, a crowded field is seeking the GOP nomination in order to face Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes in November in another open Senate contest.

The most closely watched House race will take place in New York, where Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel, the embattled former Ways and Means Committee chairman, faces a handful of challengers in his bid for a 21st term.

The New Hampshire, Maryland and Delaware’s races provide more of a microcosm, as both of those races represent the first main battle between so-called “fringe” tea-partiers and traditional Republicans. MSNBC stresses the losses that incumbents have suffered this election year and wonders if we’ll see the promised tea party/”traditional GOP” brawl Democrats have been speculating for the last few weeks. The brunt of this focus in Maryland falls to Brian Murphy, endorsed by Sarah Palin, and struggling with a race that he can’t seem to win–literally as Bloomberg reports–and the Washington Post’s live-blog of Maryland is here.

In New York, Rep. Charlie Rangel may be making his last dance amid speculation of fraud and investiagations. But it won’t be rage and revolution in the streets of Albany, according to the New York Times. It seems everyone’s just fed up and tired of the political system that inspired a bagel tax.

For anything related to D.C. politics, we turn to TBD who break down the big local race: incumbent Adrian Fenty vs. Vince Gray. On one hand, things look rather dire for Mayor Fenty and TBD even wonders how he’ll fare in the current job market.

Washington City Paper’s Loose Lips spoke with Fenty earlier today after the age-old “faulty voting machine” rumor leaked out. To see how this started, look no further than City Paper’s late July profile on Gray’s rise as a threat to Mayor Fenty’s campaign.

Polls will close tonight at 8 pm in DC and stagger elsewhere, allowing for the proper speculation and nail-biting that live-blogs and Twitter thrive on.

Then again, it’s never too soon to air colorful ads referencing fighter jets, The Wizard of Oz and…god knows what else John Dennis is thinking per the Washington Wire.