Wrong Seat, Wrong Moment - Follow the Money, Part I

CA-04: He says progressive. His funding says Silicon Valley

On January 3, 2027, the 120th Congress of the United States will be sworn in.

That Congress — the one we are fighting to elect right now, today, in every primary and every special election between now and November — will be the most consequential legislature in the history of this republic since the Congress that ended the Civil War in 1865.

It will either restore the democratic accountability that the 119th Congress surrendered, or it won’t. It will either use the power of the purse, the subpoena, and the oversight function to begin unwinding two years of executive overreach — or it won’t. It will either hold the line against the permanent consolidation of oligarchic power in the executive branch — or it won’t.

There is no third option. There is no “we’ll get them next time.” The 120th is the one that matters. Every seat. Every district. Every incumbent and every challenger.

Which is why I want to talk about CA-04, my congressional district.

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I am all for passing the baton. Let me say that clearly, at the top, before we go any further.

My generation has had its turn. The next generation is exactly who this moment needs — in the seats that need taking. Seats that have gone cold. Seats held by people who stopped fighting. Seats that flipped from blue to red because constituents no longer believed the DNC messaging.

Look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, still fighting, still sharp, still the most effective communicator the Democratic Party has. Look at Zohran Mamdani in New York. Look at James Talarico in Texas, a former middle school teacher and seminarian who just won the Democratic Senate primary, raised record money, and is now running to flip a Senate seat Democrats haven’t held since 1988. Look at Jasmine Crockett, who ran for that same Senate seat, lost gracefully, called for unity the next morning, and went straight back to work in the House introducing the TRACK ICE Act and the Payback Act without missing a beat. That is how you pass the baton. Through the process. With integrity. Not by manufacturing an opening that doesn’t need to exist.

And look at Bernie Sanders at 84 and Elizabeth Warren at 75 — still fighting, still voting right, still doing the work. Age is irrelevant when someone is still swinging. The question was never how old you are. The question is whether you are still in the fight.

This piece is not an argument against generational change.

It is an argument about this seat. CA-04. In this Congress.

Because not every seat is the same. And not every moment calls for the same kind of representative.

California’s 4th Congressional District

Since Prop 50 passed last November, CA-04 is composed of whole counties in California; Colusa, Yuba, Napa and Sutter, and parts of Sonoma, Solano, Lake, Placer and Sacramento. It is currently represented by Mike Thompson, who has served since 1999. Thompson is 74 years old. He is the Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Tax Policy. He has 27 years of relationships, institutional knowledge, and legislative leverage built across nine Congresses.

He has also, in the last year, learned something.

A year ago in February, Thompson met with our local Democratic group. He was treating the questions about the MAGA threats to dismantle Medicare, Medicaid and other social safety programs as business as usual — the kind of measured, careful, institutionalist response that had served him through previous Republican majorities. Something had not yet landed.

It has landed now. Thompson is fighting back — harder, sharper, and with the specific tools that 27 years in Congress provide. He introduced legislation to restore the clean energy tax credits gutted by the Big Ugly Bill. He is using his Ways and Means ranking membership aggressively. He is not the same congressman he was fourteen months ago.

Politicians who learn are rarer than politicians who arrive knowing everything. Thompson learned. That matters.

Into this picture walks Eric Jones, 34, Yale-educated, former partner at Dragoneer Investment Group — a major San Francisco growth equity firm managing $8.6 billion in assets — who resigned from Dragoneer in summer 2025 and announced his congressional campaign September 9, 2025.

He presents himself as a progressive outsider. A grassroots candidate. A new generation voice who won’t take a dime from corporate PACs or a call from a lobbyist.

The receipts tell a different story.

The money:

Eric Jones has raised $3,248,650 through March 31, 2026. [FEC filing C00919100] Of that total, $364,133 came from Jones himself from personal wealth accumulated during his years at Dragoneer. Small donors — ordinary people giving what they can — contributed $5,222. That is less than two-tenths of one percent of his total fundraising.

The rest came from Silicon Valley venture capital partners writing individual maximum checks. His single largest employer donor group: Dragoneer Investment Group, his former firm, at $51,550 — donated two months after he walked out the door. His donors include partners at 8VC — that is Peter Thiel’s venture firm — TPG Capital, Coatue Management, Apollo Global Management, Accel, and Lux Capital.

He calls this being “powered by people.”

The Super PAC he never mentions:

While Jones stood before voters declaring “not a dime from corporate PACs,” a Super PAC called New Leadership Now [FEC filing C00900993] was running mailers and digital ads across the district on his behalf.

New Leadership Now was registered with the FEC on March 31, 2025 — five months before Jones publicly announced his campaign. Its total receipts as of March 31, 2026: $1,797,000.

The largest single donor: Elisa Stad, wife of Marc Stad, founder of Dragoneer Investment Group, of which Jones was a partner until he resigned in the summer of 2025, who contributed $1,500,000. The Stads also wrote Jones individual maximum donations directly, one day before his announcement. The Gillespie Family Trust contributed $225,000; Daniel Gillespie lists his employer as Dragoneer. The Gillespies also wrote individual maximum checks directly to Jones before he announced.

Every single expenditure logged by New Leadership Now supports Eric Jones or opposes Mike Thompson. It has no other purpose.

Super PAC “independence” rules are, in the words of local researcher Roberta Millstein, who broke this story at Davisite.org on April 25, 2026, one day before Jones held a public forum in our area, “flimsy and poorly enforced.” The same Dragoneer billionaires who write Jones individual maximum checks also funded a $1.8 million Super PAC that exists solely to elect him.

“Not a dime from corporate PACs” is a distinction without a difference.

The December 2025 surveillance incident:

A member of Eric Jones’s campaign was investigated by U.S. Capitol Police for surveilling Mike Thompson’s private home in St. Helena. This was reported by the Davis Enterprise in December 2025. It was also widely reported in other papers in the district. Jones did not mention it at his April 26 public forum. No attendee asked about it.

What he said at the forum:

When asked about his donor relationships, specifically the FEC filing showing $3.25 million raised almost entirely from Silicon Valley maximum donors, including his former firm, Jones said: “They’re my friends who supported me.”

When asked about California Forever, the 60,000-acre Solano County development backed by the same Silicon Valley investor class that funds him, with a who intend to create a 100,000-person city on 17,500 acres of the project with the water rights gap still unresolved, he said: “I am vehemently opposed.” No elaboration. No written commitment. No explanation of how vehement opposition survives contact with his donor relationships once he is in office.

He also stated he would never take a call from a lobbyist. Nobody takes calls from lobbyists anymore. Access in Washington is built through fundraisers, donor dinners, staff hires, and revolving door relationships. His entire donor class has Washington policy operations. They don’t need to call Congressman Jones. They already had dinner with him in Atherton.

The carried interest question nobody asked:

Jones has criticized Mike Thompson for voting for the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 — a bipartisan bill, supported by Mitch McConnell, designed to help American semiconductor manufacturers compete with Chinese state subsidies. Jones called it a corporate tax giveaway, implying Thompson had sold out American businesses — when in fact Thompson’s vote was helping American tech businesses compete against China.

Jones spent years as a partner at Dragoneer benefiting from the carried interest loophole — the provision that allows venture capital and private equity partners to pay the capital gains rate of 20% rather than the ordinary income rate of 37% on their earnings. It is the most egregious preferential tax treatment in the entire tax code. It has survived every reform attempt for decades because people exactly like Jones’s donor class protect it.

Attacking Mike Thompson on corporate taxes while personally benefiting from carried interest is not a coherent tax policy position. It is opposition research dressed up as principle.

The bottom line:

Eric Jones is not a villain. He is something more subtle and in some ways more difficult to counter. He's not a cynical fraud. He genuinely believes he's a progressive. But in politics, you dance with the ones who brung you. And the ones who brought Eric Jones to this dance aren't progressives — they're Silicon Valley billionaires protecting their portfolios, their opposition to a wealth tax, and protecting their ability to develop AI without guardrails.

His publicly stated reason for running for Congress was his “anti-Trump” stance — believing that running for the most junior federal position he could find would allow him to fight Trump. He has never held elected office. He has never sat through months of contentious community meetings or hearings to resolve local issues. He has never had to tell a room full of angry constituents something they didn’t want to hear with no Super PAC and no glossy mailer to hide behind.

The 120th Congress — the one that determines whether we get our democracy back — is not the place for on-the-job training in a seat that doesn’t need flipping.

Mike Thompson has learned. He is fighting. He has 27 years of relationships and a ranking membership on Ways and Means that will matter enormously in a Democratic majority trying to claw back accountability from an executive branch that has spent two years dismantling every guardrail it could reach.

Pass the baton. Yes. In the seats that need new voices. In the Republican-held districts that can be flipped. In the open seats where fresh energy is exactly the right tool.

Not here. Not this seat. Not this Congress.

The 120th is the one that matters.

Vote accordingly.

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Sources: FEC Committee ID C00919100 (Jones campaign); FEC Committee ID C00900993 (New Leadership Now Super PAC); Roberta Millstein, Davisite.org, April 25, 2026; Davis Enterprise, December 2025; field observation, April 26, 2026 public forum.