Grow California spent $1.5 million in my backyard. Then I found out they’re doing it all over the state. And the endgame isn’t Sacramento — it’s 2028.
By Judy Tipple
I’ve been following this money for months. In April, I wrote about the Silicon Valley venture capital network behind Eric Jones’s congressional campaign in CA-04 (Part I: Wrong Seat, Wrong Moment). When the same donor fingerprints showed up attacking a candidate in my own Assembly district, I kept pulling the thread (Part IV: They’re Doing It Again). What I found goes well beyond two races in the North Bay.
The primary is over. The votes are counted. And now it’s time to show you the full picture, because if you live anywhere in California, this maybe happening in your backyard too.
Here is the common thread running through all of it: tech and crypto money flowing into Democratic primaries, looking for candidates who won’t get in the way of their industry interests; who won’t tax their unrealized gains, who won’t put guardrails on AI, who won’t ask hard questions about data centers reshaping energy grids and water supplies across the state. They can’t do this through Republicans. Democrats hold 75 percent of the seats in both legislative chambers, and in a midterm year with a Republican in the White House, that’s not changing. So they’re doing it through us.
What Just Happened in AD12
Jackie Elward — Rohnert Park city councilmember, labor-backed educator, the only Sonoma County candidate in the race — survived more than $500,000 in attack ads funded by crypto billionaires trying to knock her out of the Assembly District 12 primary.
She’s still standing. She made the runoff. She’ll face Marin County Supervisor Eric Lucan in November.
The attack on Jackie Elward was paid for by a super PAC called Grow California. You probably haven’t heard of them. And that’s by design. But you need to know who they are before November, because they’re not done.
Who Is Grow California
Grow California (CA FPPC filer ID 1483808) was launched around September 2025 by two men.
Chris Larsen — co-founder of the cryptocurrency company Ripple, major Democratic donor, San Francisco resident who also owns a 46-acre compound in Calistoga. He recently told the New York Times that unions hold too much sway over the California Legislature and that he wants to fund a centrist, pro-business “counterforce.” His word.
Let’s be clear about what he means by that. The force he wants to counter is organized labor; SEIU, the California Nurses Association, the teachers unions, HERE, the unions that don’t just donate to candidates, they walk precincts, knock doors, and turn out voters election after election. They do the actual unglamorous work of democracy. Larsen’s response to decades of that ground game is a $40 million checkbook.
Tim Draper, venture capitalist, Bitcoin evangelist, the man who tried to split California into six separate states. Not, to put it gently, a champion of working families.
Each put in $5 million to seed the operation. Total commitments across their independent-expenditure committees and affiliated nonprofits: roughly $40 million.
Their goal, stated openly: reshape California’s Legislature into a more “business-friendly” body. So if you’re a billionaire who wants legislators who won’t tax your net worth or regulate your industry, there’s only one play: get into Democratic primaries and install your preferred Democrat.
“Business-friendly” is a polite way of saying not answerable to the workers who actually showed up for these candidates. Labor walks the precincts. Labor knocks the doors. Labor turns out the vote. And then billionaires who never knocked a single door in their lives write a check to make sure those same legislators don’t get too comfortable with the people who elected them
The legal infrastructure for this kind of operation runs through Nielsen Merksamer — a powerhouse political and government law firm headquartered at 2350 Kerner Boulevard in San Rafael, with a Sacramento office — that has been the go-to firm for California corporate political maneuvering for decades. PAC formation, campaign finance compliance, initiative campaigns. They are very good at their jobs. They work right here in the North Bay.
This wasn’t a theory. They ran the same play in eight races across the state.
The pattern is in the numbers. Every candidate they opposed had one thing in common: they were backed by California’s public sector and service worker unions — SEIU, the teachers, the state workers. The unions that Larsen named by name
What Triggered the Sleeping Giant
The match that lit $40 million on fire was a proposed wealth tax — a union-backed measure that would impose a one-time 5% levy on net worth exceeding $1 billion, including unrealized gains. Paper wealth. The kind tech oligarchs are sitting on in quantities most of us can’t fathom.
Larsen didn’t mince words about the reaction: “Whoever designed that wealth tax — wow. They woke up the sleeping giant like I have never seen.”
A sleeping giant with $40 million to spend on your Assembly race. And your Senate race. And your congressional district.
It’s Not Just AD12
Grow California isn’t running one race. It’s running a statewide operation.
Google and Meta jointly put $10 million into a parallel effort called California Leads, which has spent heavily backing business-friendly candidates in Assembly and Senate races from the South Bay to downtown Los Angeles. Combined, Grow California and California Leads have spent more than $14 million across legislative races statewide.
Labor leader Ada Briceño, running in a Southern California Assembly district, called it out directly: “They’re definitely scared of this proud immigrant and labor leader. They want to figure out how to buy this district.”
In congressional races, the AI industry is running its own version of the same play. A PAC called Leading the Future, backed by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, has poured more than $75 million into races opposing stringent AI regulation.
If you’re in a competitive Assembly or Senate district anywhere in Northern California, there is a reasonable chance this money has touched your race or is planning to. Check who paid for the mailers. The answer is almost always more revealing than the ad itself.
The Same Pattern in CA-04
The congressional version of this playbook showed up in CA-04, the redrawn district that now covers Napa, Yolo, Yuba, Sutter, Lake, and parts of Placer, Sacramento, and Sonoma counties.
Eric Jones — former partner at Dragoneer Investment Group, a major San Francisco venture capital firm heavily invested in AI — self-funded more than $5 million challenging 14-term incumbent Mike Thompson. He also collected over $2.7 million in large individual contributions of more than $2,000 each, predominantly from out-of-district donors managing or employed by big tech, venture capital, hedge funds, and investment firms — including Palantir (Peter Thiel’s data surveillance and military contracting giant) and Blackstone (the private equity firm that has spent years buying up single-family homes across America, pricing working families out of homeownership.)
A super PAC called New Leadership Now, funded almost entirely by $1.5 million from Elisa Stad, wife of Marc Stad — Dragoneer’s founder and Jones’s former partner spent heavily on Jones’s behalf, running mailers and digital ads across the district while Jones stood before voters declaring he wouldn’t take “a dime from corporate PACs.” Jones told the Press Democrat he didn’t know about New Leadership Now’s existence until the mailers began to arrive. (Press Democrat, May 21, 2026)
What Jones didn’t mention: under campaign finance law, it would have been entirely legal for him to tell his associates he didn’t want the PAC to operate. He chose not to. Most voters don’t know that — and his campaign is counting on it.
Jones has now made the November runoff against Thompson. I’ll have more on that race as it progresses. But the pattern is identical: Silicon Valley money, Democratic primary, candidate with no public record of opposing tech interests.
What I Didn’t Expect to Find
Chris Larsen told the SF Examiner that reshaping the California Legislature is just the opening act. He has already hinted at personally spending money to support Gavin Newsom’s expected national ambitions — describing Newsom as a “once-in-a-lifetime kind of president” and framing both Grow California and Newsom as part of the same project: “course correcting the Democratic Party.”
Read that again slowly.
The man who spent half a million dollars in attack ads against a labor-backed assembly candidate in my district is already positioning himself as kingmaker for the next Democratic presidential race. The same crypto billionaire who wants to kneecap the wealth tax, install friendly legislators up and down the California ballot, and build a political infrastructure that protects AI from regulation and billionaires from accountability — he’s got his eye on the White House.
This is not a story about an attack ad on a Sunday morning news program.
This is a coordinated, multi-front, multi-cycle effort to purchase a version of the Democratic Party that works for billionaires — starting at the Assembly district level, building through the Legislature, and aiming straight at 2028. And they are doing it at the exact moment when the rest of us are fighting to retake the House and build a Democratic Party that actually works for working people. They are using our urgency as cover for their agenda.
Jackie Elward made it through the primary. She’s still in this fight.
The question for every voter in AD12, in CA-04, and in every district where this money has shown up: are you paying attention yet?
Because they are counting on you not to be.
Sources: Press Democrat (Austin Murphy, May 18 and May 21, 2026); SF Examiner; SF Standard (”The Mogul Midterms,” May 25, 2026); NY Times; FEC filings C00919100 (Jones campaign), C00900993 (New Leadership Now); Roberta Millstein, Davisite.org, April 25 and June 1, 2026; California Senate Office of Demographics, Prop 50 Congressional District maps, 2025; nmgovlaw.com. AI assistance disclosed
Follow the Money series: (Part I) | (Part IV) | Subscribe at rosietheboomer.substack.com
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This article first appeared at https://rosietheboomer.substack.com/p/the-sleeping-giant-is-in-your-district . Reprinted with permission of the author.
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