The latest venture-capital funded mailer is downright Orwellian
By Roberta Millstein
Eric Jones’s campaign to unseat Mike Thompson in Congressional District 4 has repeatedly promised not to take money from special interests and PACs. As I have already documented in detail (see earlier articles here and here), that promise is essentially meaningless. A former partner of the Dragoneer Investment Group, Jones has received large individual donations and repeated campaign advertising funded by massive donations to the New Leadership Now Super PAC from his fellow venture capitalists, including a huge donation from the family of Dragoneer’s founder, Marc Stad.
Expenditures for ads in support of Eric Jones’s campaign (mailers, TV, internet, etc.) from New Leadership Now currently exceed 1.1 million dollars, as this screenshot from the FEC website shows:
The most recent mailer sent across the sprawling District 4 from the New Leadership Now Super PAC, shown above, is truly Orwellian. On the same side as the required legal declaration, “PAID FOR BY NEW LEADERSHIP NOW,” it states “Corrupt Corporate Interests are Used to Buying Politicians.” I guess we are supposed to think that other corporate interests are corrupt, but not those who are behind the Super PAC?
On the other side of the mailer, it states “Eric is the only Democrat in this race who isn’t taking a single dollar from corporate PACs. He knows that if YOU take their money THEY want favors… The only people Eric Jones answers to is us!” So, wait a second. Yes, technically speaking, Jones has not “taken” the money from the corporate Super PAC. But it’s funded by his former corporate co-workers. So, who will Jones answer to — who is “us”? The people of District 4? Or the people who funded the mailer, who do not live in our district and whose corporate interests include the AI firm Anthropic (whose AI recently went rogue and deleted software and user data), Uber, and Spotify, companies who lobby the government to avoid regulation? What favors would they get?
The mailer is telling us to follow the money. The huge sums of money lead back to Dragoneer Investment Group. The interests of this out-of-district venture capital firm are not the interests of District 4 citizens.
Believe what mailer says. Corrupt corporate interests buy politicians. People who are bought by corporate interests do not answer to us, the citizens of District 4.
I have heard the refrain “but Thompson takes PAC money too!” Yes, he does. But Jones is claiming to be different. My point is that he is not different in this respect, although he is different in at least one other respect: he has no track record to give us some idea of how he will actually vote. We know how Thompson will vote, but Jones could very well be planning on pulling a Fetterman on us, running as a progressive but then moving to the right if elected.
That’s certainly the direction the money is pointing in.
Davisite 
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