Jones is “ashamed” of supporting Prop 50 and endorses “sunsetting” of federal programs
By Roberta Millstein
Eric Jones, former partner of the venture capital firm Dragoneer Investment Group, seems to be shifting dramatically rightward in the wake of (or in order to gain?) the endorsement of Republican Ray Riehle, his former opponent in Jones’s attempt to become the congressional representative for California’s District 4. What’s going on here? There are several aspects, so let me unpack.
First, I remind readers that Jones still has financial interests in Dragoneer and that his run for Congress is largely funded by 1) his own money, 2) by maximized direct donations from his former Dragoneer colleagues and other high tech executives, and 3) by a Super PAC that has so far funded only Jones, coming from some of the same sources as the direct donations. Each of these three categories individually amounts to millions of dollars. This is Silicon Valley, venture capitalist, AI/high tech, data-center-favoring money, not money that is looking to benefit citizens. Details can be found here.
As I noted in an earlier article, Jones has sought to present himself as a progressive, implying affiliations with Ro Khanna and Bernie Sanders and touting his endorsement from Our Revolution (removed from two Our Revolution web pages and now mysteriously reappeared). As I document in the same article, that appearance of being a progressive was always misleading, given his donation to a Republican candidate for governor — a member of the Bush family — and support of AI-driven health care, among other things. But his mask seems to be slipping further.
Generally, it is a sign of desperation when a candidate dramatically changes his stripes. Does Jones think he can woo Republican voters? Maybe so — after all, he founded an organization whose specific goal was to figure out what voters want (see previous links). And did Jones craft a new platform to gain Riehle’s endorsement? It’s hard to explain why else Jones would now say:
“I supported Prop 50 as a response to the gerrymandering effort in Texas. But after speaking with thousands of voters at their doors, I am extremely disappointed — ashamed, even — of the way this was carried out in our own state.”
Prop 50 passed handily in California, 64.4% to 35.6%, not because Californians love gerrymandering but because they recognized that it was necessary to fight Texas’s gerrymandering, because they recognized it was essential for Democrats to retake the House. And they understood that the text of the proposition dictated that the gerrymandering would only be temporary. Now Jones is disappointed and ashamed of it? Well, I’m certainly glad he wasn’t our governor this past term, much less our congressional representative, if that’s how quickly he’d reject a key tool at our disposal. And then to say that legislators “celebrated” the disenfranchisement of voters is a flat out lie. It didn’t happen, and to say it did is simply to attack Democrats in a blatant attempt to make Republicans think he is on their side.
As if turning his back on Prop 50 weren’t enough, Jones is also now saying that he would “sunset reviews for federal programs — they earn renewal by proving they work, or they expire.”
[A note about these two screenshots, both taken on Aug 20: Jones’s website is constantly in flux, seeming to change every time he gets called out for problematic messaging, so the text may be different now. All that shows is that he’s trying to tell people what they want to hear to gain more votes. Voter beware].
So, what’s wrong with sunsetting? Well, he doesn’t specify which federal programs he would eliminate if they didn’t pass review (by whom and by what criteria?) but here are some candidate federal programs: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Federal Pell Grants, unemployment insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Head Start, Federal Student Aid, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute for Health (NIH), and many, many more programs that, in reality, people on both sides of the aisle rely on, whether they “like” these programs or not.
And Jones wants to let these programs simply vanish on the basis of a review — rather than, oh, I don’t know, fixing them if necessary? And once sunsetting is a regular practice, who is to say that Medicare and Social Security won’t be next?
His rejection of Prop 50 and his embracing of sunsetting are bad policies and particularly bad in today’s political climate.
As a relevant aside, note that the Riehle endorsement is especially strange in light of the fact that Eric Jones’ donors paid to get three other Republican candidates on the ballot in CA-04 to siphon votes away from Riehle, later spending more than $100K in a smear campaign against him when it looked like he was going to beat Jones for 2nd place. Something funny is going on; what I write above could just be the tip of the iceberg.
The reality is that no voter, Republican or Democrat, should be voting for Jones. It’s bad enough that his positions keep shifting and that he is trying to portray himself both as a progressive and as someone who embraces very rightwing approaches. Finger-in-the-wind politics means an untrustworthy candidate.
Add that to a candidate with no political track record, only recently moved to the district, and funded by out-of-district Silicon Valley billionaires, the only thing you can count on is that Jones would fight any serious regulations of AI, data centers, and other tech-friendly policies. These billionaires, many personally known to Jones, aren’t spending millions to have their financial activities controlled.
If there is one thing that is bringing Democrats and Republicans together right now, it’s the realization that Silicon Valley does not have our best interests in mind. Jones does not have our best interests in mind either. No one should be falling for his constantly shifting stories.
Davisite 
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