By Sue Greenwald
[Note: this letter first appeared in the Davis Enterprise, here. However, they did not have room to print the first paragraph, which the author asked to be included here].
Eric Jones has been touting his strict opposition to ‘corporate PACs’ over the course of the entire campaign. But Super PACs are worse than corporate PACs, because corporate PACs limit individual donations to $5,000, whereas Super PACs have no limit on individual donations. So Eric Jones, while sanctimoniously abjuring corporate PACs and attacking Thompson for accepting some donations from them, himself not only benefited from his (barely) former partners’ $3.9 million Super PAC, but also personally donated $10,000 to a Super PAC in support of the campaign of one of his tech cronies.
Eric Jones claims to be a progressive congressional candidate who wants to get money out of politics, but his actions speak much louder than his words.
Eric Jones was a big venture capitalist — a partner at Dragoneer Investments — until only one month before he declared for office. He received the vast majority of his outsized war chest from his network of AI/Crypto/tech-related executives and their financiers and his own venture capital fortune. He is also supported by a $3.93 million Super PAC largely funded by his long-term fellow Dragoneer venture capital partners/spouse. Dragoneer is a huge investor in tech and artificial intelligence.
When Jones is criticized about the Dragoneer Super PAC, he defends himself by claiming that he can’t legally stop it, and that he opposes the Citizens United ruling enabling Super PACs.
But wait! We now learn that Eric Jones himself contributed $10,000 to Maine Dream Inc, a Super PAC that supported the Maine gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Bush. Jones knowingly and intentionally skirted the spirit of Maine’s campaign spending limits by exploiting the Citizens’ United loophole.
Jonathan Bush ran against Maine’s environmental regulations and expanded Medicaid program. But did Eric Jones support Bush because Jones is a crypto-Republican? No, more likely because Bush founded a tech-based health billing company, and sat on the board of Innovaccer, a company that Dragoneer was investing in.
In fact, Jones made his largest federal-level contributions to 9 Democrats and all but one, like Bush, were either from or were heavily backed by the tech/AI/crypto special interests, even though they varied in orientation from progressive to centrist.
For example, Jones donated $7,000 to tech-backed centrist Raja Krishnamoorthi, running against progressive Julianna Stratton. And $3,300 to centrist, tech/crypto-backed Sam Liccardo, running against progressive Evan Low. And $7,000 to tech-backed progressive Jake Levine, running against centrist tech-regulator Brad Sherman.
Jones didn’t seem to care where the candidate stood in the policy spectrum, as long as the candidate was backed by the new oligarchs of high tech/AI/crypto.
Jones lacks political history. It also appears that he has no political beliefs except loyalty to the tech/crypto/AI special interests that fund him.
Sue Greenwald is a former Mayor of the City of Davis
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