^ Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world for a very good reason, and he's not an idiot when it comes to business. He was already a decently well off guy when he started Amazon (not like those memes would make you believe), living in NYC. He was a Senior VP of a hedge fund on Wall Street by the time he was 30. In his mid 30s he decided to quit and leave behind, at least in that perspective, a decently lucrative job too (obviously not like today though).
Do you know why he moved to Seattle from NYC? Because Seattle not only had a bunch of talent, but it was close to the Ingram Book Group's warehouse which was in Oregon. I believe Seattle also had a bunch of other book group warehouses. No, he didn't stay in NYC even though he could have and he was already a millionaire of multi millionaire in his mid 30s. He moved to Seattle because he knew that was the best place for the
business. The guy had a well thought out business plan and knew that Seattle was the best bet - and Portland is actually closer to Ingram, but Seattle had the talent at the time (still does, of course). I'm sure he enjoyed NYC - he bought a very expensive condo in NYC recently - but at the end of the day in his mind it wasn't the best place for what he needed to do. Seattle was. It had nothing to do with where he wanted to spend his time the most. It was mostly about the business.
The guy is rich as hell - he can have a home in every major city of the US, fly everyday on a private jet, eat a $1000 dinner every single day and not even blink an eye. He's not an idiot - he will pick the place that's best for his business and churning out as much money as possible for the company via those 50,000 employees. People seem to confuse a C-Suite office with an actual office where work gets done. There is a massive difference. The reason he chooses X city/metro area for HQ2 in the end will have very, very, very little to do with where he wants to spend his time (I'm sure it's a small factor but at the end of the day, my guess is that it's already been factored into most of the top 20 selections) - thinking this for this situation shows a complete ignorance for how big businesses actually choose huge centers of employment with every single level of professional employment in them.
Buying a mansion in DC, as people have said, is probably indicative of maybe that he wants to one day be in politics. He is very supportive of various causes and this wouldn't surprise me, but I doubt it has much to do with the company itself enough to be a sole reason to locate an office like that there (for the record, DC is a solid choice, but because of their business/economic ecosystem, talent, etc).
As a side note, LOL - I have the data collecting thing pretty well down so I can get the numbers pretty quickly after work. There's a reason why I wasn't posting CA numbers this afternoon
Way too busy during the day to do that nowadays. I just had a small amount of downtime today for some reason.