Goli Ameri (in Persian:گلی عامری) is a Republican Iranian-American businesswoman who ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from Oregon. She was born in 1956 in Tehran, Iran as Goli Yazdi.
Life
She immigrated to the United States when she was 17, in order to get an education at Stanford. There, she received her B.A. in Communication and French Literature and, later, her master's degree. She also studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. At Stanford, she met and later married Jim Ameri, a real-estate investor.
She is also known for having started some succesful technology companies in Silicon Valley, most prominently eTinium .
2004 Campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives
In 2004, she became the official nominee of the Republican Party to run for Oregon's 1st district seat in the House of Representatives and challenge three-term incumbent Democrat David Wu, the 6th most liberal member of the House. Her attempt to become a member of the American government was a subject of admiration and controversy in Iran and around the world. It attracted interest because she was born in a country marked as the "axis of evil" by George W. Bush's administration and yet she won the nomination of Bush's own party. Her campaign was also tinged with a bit of feminism, since in Iran women do not have much political power. The contest between her and Wu also received some national attention when, late in the campaign, Wu admitted that he had been disciplined for sexual misconduct while he was a student at Stanford. Ameri heavily pushed the issue in the closing days of the campaign, which may have contributed to her surprisingly large loss in the election.
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