Eric Jones’s venture capital colleagues at Dragoneer surely know what they would get in him as a member of Congress. Why don’t his would-be constituents?
By Liz Russell
When Eric Jones says he needs two to four years to learn the ropes of being a congressman, and to figure out only after he’s elected whom to meet with in the communities he wants to represent, how can voters trust him to serve our interests? Mike Thompson needed no such grace period (or $20mil in campaign funding), because he put in the work from the start. He dropped out of high school, served in the Army in wartime, and came home to earn his GED and become the first in his family to go to college. He worked as a winery mechanic, keeping the presses and bottling lines running, and from there won a seat in the state legislature while raising a family in his hometown of St. Helena. Long before he was a lawmaker, he was one of the working people Eric Jones now claims to speak for.
Consider today’s letter in the Napa Valley Register from one of Jones’s supporters, Richard Tippitt. He describes Jones as someone who grew up on food stamps, then recounts that when Jones was asked whether he’d still run if he weren’t wealthy, he said no, “at least not yet.” What does that even mean?
Many of us grew up in households facing similar economic and familial hardships (some even unspeakable), and our response wasn’t to pillage the American economy and rip off Medicare and seniors through venture capital. Nor did we then run for Congress claiming to oppose the very system that made us rich. That is hypocritical at best.
His campaign website raises other doubts. It doesn’t separate the issues handled at the federal, state, and local levels. It shows little grasp of the tools a member of Congress actually has to make change, or of how to build coalitions and work with colleagues of every age and stripe to advance the interests of his would-be constituents. Mike Thompson is himself a master class in this kind of effective representation (Affordable Care Act, Passenger Bill of Rights, Bipartisan Safer Communities act, GREEN Act to name a fraction of what he has done).
Eric’s venture capital colleagues at Dragoneer surely know what they would get in him as a member of Congress. Why don’t his would-be constituents? We must ask whose interests Eric is really concerned with. Consider who would benefit from his proposal to sunset the programs we have paid into and that were promised to veterans, the elderly, and workers across the country. And if he has truly flip-flopped on this, he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what is at stake.
Our country is in turmoil, and the current administration has two years left in its term. This is no time for on-the-job training, or for sending someone to Congress who claims to be a Democrat but has promised he will not caucus with that party. If he doesn’t caucus with Dems (and therefore would not get committee assignments to work on his claimed priorities), will he caucus with Republicans (if they’ll have him??) or will he be sitting alone with his thoughts advancing nothing but his own ego? Running for Congress isn’t a game or a flight of fancy for the well-to-do, but you’d be hard-pressed to tell that from what Jones has put out so far.
A republic if we can keep it. Mike Thompson remains the best choice for CA Congressional District 4.
Liz Russell serves as a district representative for California State Senator Christopher Cabaldon. This letter was posted publicly on Facebook with permission to share.
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