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Who is Eric Jones?  A summary of the series with a quick wrap-up.

By Roberta Millstein

Who is Eric Jones?  I started with one article and didn’t know I’d be writing a series of them, addressing:

  1. Large numbers of maximized campaign contributions from Eric Jones’s former venture capitalist colleagues at Dragoneer Investment Group and other individuals from the high tech industry (link here).  The money comes from out of the district and so does Jones.
  2. Jones’s close connections to a Super PAC, New Leadership Now, that is pouring huge sums of money into his run for Congress (link here).
  3. Some of the Super PAC’s blatantly false claims about Thompson (link here).
  4. An update reflecting that the Super PAC spent $1.1 million on ads, including an Orwellian mailer, although as of May 30 that number exceeds $2.4 million. I have no doubt there will be  more on the way (link here).
  5. The extremely unlikely claim that Jones is a progressive, given his maximized donation to Republican Jonathan Bush, cousin of GW Bush, who is running for governor in Maine, with problematic views on health care, AI, and the environment — views that Jones seems to share. (link here).

Beyond these articles, there are just a few more points than I want to emphasize:

  • Jones was a partner at Dragoneer, not a mere employee.  A partner is not even technically an employee; it’s an owner. He is responsible for the decisions the firm made.
  • According to the Thompson campaign, Jones’s “own disclosure report shows he still has up to $30 million invested with his company [Dragoneer], and it continues to pay him $1 million… It raises concerns about his conflicts of interest.”
  • Dragoneer has invested in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company. As is well known, AI not only uses massive amounts of energy, it also guzzles massive amount of water.  This has led to growth in data centers, such as those now proposed for California Forever — perhaps something that Jones supports?
  • Anthropic Nears Trillion-Dollar Valuation After Its Latest Funding Round. Dragoneer is one of the firms leading the new investment round.
  • Jones’s own website asserts that he does not want state regulation of AI — like Republicans, he calls these “patchwork” regulations — but instead wants federal regulation.  In our current federal climate, that amounts to no regulation at all.  Even Marjorie Taylor Greene was concerned about it.

Donald Trump’s sons are young.  JD Vance came from a family that took public assistance.  John Fetterman ran as a progressive.  Being a young person who comes from a family who relied on public assistance and who espouses progressive ideas is no guarantee at all that the person will actually govern as a progressive, especially with these kinds of big money connections and no political track record.

Follow the money.  Do not vote for Eric Jones.  He has all the marks of a Trojan Horse for the high tech industry.

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Comments

7 responses to “Who is Eric Jones?  A summary of the series with a quick wrap-up.”

  1. Eric Nelson

    Spot on!

    Reply
    1. Roberta Millstein

      Sorry for the delay in posting this. WordPress thought it was spam and I just now noticed it in the spam folder. Thanks for the good word!

      Reply
  2. Sue Greenwald

    Excellent summary. A prominant progressive who supports Jones was unaware that Dragoneer (of which Jones was one of only 4 partners until less than a year ago) is a big player in AI (artificial intelligence).

    I typed key words AI and Dragoneer into Gemini, and got the following answer —–

    Gemini:
    Dragoneer Investment Group is a major growth equity and venture capital firm that has become one of the most prominent institutional investors in the artificial intelligence sector. Managing billions in assets, they have deployed massive capital into defining AI companies.

    Key AI Investments

    Dragoneer has led and participated in some of the largest private funding rounds in AI history:

    *OpenAI: Dragoneer led massive fundraising rounds for OpenAI, including an $8.3 billion round with a massive $2.8 billion check from their firm alone.Anthropic:

    * Anthropic: Dragoneer has been co-lead and key backer in substantial funding rounds for AI powerhouse Anthropic (makers of the Claude chatbot).

    *Scale AI: Dragoneer led the $325 million Series E financing of Scale AI, a company specializing in curating and labeling data for AI infrastructure.

    *ClickHouse & Helsing: Dragoneer led a $400 million round for the analytics and AI infrastructure platform ClickHouse and co-led a $1.2 billion round for Helsing, a defense-tech company focusing on the “brains” (AI software) of military platforms.Broader Strategy

    Broader Strategy

    Dragoneer primarily focuses on companies with sustainable competitive advantages and proven economic models. Their heavy emphasis on AI suggests they view artificial intelligence not just as an emerging technology, but as the foundational infrastructure for the next generation of global businesses and software development.————

    So there you have it. Big tech and AI special interests are pouring huge amounts of money into congressional races in order to have more influence in congress over regulations and funding. Jones’ campaign is obviously one of these races. The family of Dragoneer’s founder has poured massive money into a SuperPac supporting Jones, and his donors are mainly compromised of people from the industry donating the maximum the law allows. To understand all this, it’s critically important to note that Thompson is known for his support of AI regulations and his strong opposition to the Silicon Valley-supported new city “California Forever”.

    Reply
    1. Roberta Millstein

      Thank you for this important background, Sue. The connection between Jones, Dragoneer, AI, and California Forever might be even more direct than this — I believe the latest plan for that project is for large data centers, which of course energy-guzzling (not to mention money-guzzling) AI needs.

      Reply
  3. Don Shor

    Thanks very much for digging into this and for this concise summary. This campaign has been troubling from the start. I think, or hope, that we’ll all be more cautious in the future when a new candidate with no track record comes along.

    Reply
    1. Roberta Millstein

      Thank you, Don. As I keep saying, I never planned on doing this, but it seemed like no one else was. I am glad that you find the summary helpful. I likewise hope that people are more careful going forward.

      Reply
  4. Why are we waiting on the vote count? – Davisite

    […] at the DE is reading this, can you do better for the November election?  Really, writing a five-article series on the money in Eric Jones’s campaign was not how I had planned to spend my spring.  That was really the job of local media.  […]

    Reply

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