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Author: Roberta Millstein

  • Top 10 reasons why it’s bad that Eric Jones is backed by millions of Silicon Valley dollars

    By Roberta Millstein

    Recently, I’ve had people ask me why it’s so bad that the Eric Jones campaign is spending millions of out-of-district dollars.  I was surprised by the question at first, but since a few have asked it, here is my attempt to answer, with links to many of our previous Davisite articles. Please share this article to help get the word out before Nov 3.

    10. It raises the bar for political spending. Jones $15M contributions to his campaign — to buy a seat in the House — are record-setting in CA and make his congressional campaign spending one of the highest in the country. It’s a waste of money that could be used on other things and makes it harder for ordinary citizens to run for office. Someone that wasteful of money and resources would not make a prudent candidate.

    9. It’s carpet bagging. Jones’s direct donations are mostly large, out-of-district voters, many in high tech and finance. There is no reason to think that these donors have District 4 interests at heart.

    8. Jones is supported by a Super PAC, New Leadership Now, of associates from his former firm, Dragoneer, where he was a venture capitalist (not a “businessman” as he likes to call himself) for 12 years, 8 as partner. Jones misrepresented this from the very beginning, claiming not to take corporate PAC money, but to date NLN has spent more than $5 M on Jones’s campaign. Super PACs, which are not supposed to coordinate with campaigns, are typically shady — this one, which has supported only Jones, was formed even before he declared his candidacy and while Jones was still an active partner at Dragoneer.

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  • Yet more lies from the Eric Jones campaign

    By Roberta Millstein

    Fellow Davisites, time and time again I promise myself that this is my last post about Eric Jones. And time and time again, he does something more outrageous and I feel obligated to call it out.

    Now he’s using the more than $15 million of his venture capitalist money — or perhaps it’s his millions of donated tech oligarch money — to tell even more lies about Thompson. (Remember this lie that Rep Zoe Lofgren had to call out?)

    His former campaign staffers are standing by him, though, to correct the record:

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  • BREAKING: Jones total contributions to his campaign are now just shy of $15 million

    By Roberta Millstein

    Less than a week ago, I wrote an article here about the $10 million dollars that Eric Jones, congressional candidate in CA’s District 04, had dumped into his own campaign. That contribution made headlines across the district as the largest contribution ever made in a CA congressional campaign, an amount that, together with large-donor out-of-district donations to Jones campaign, put him at #10 in spending across the entire country (remembering that there are 435 seats open and an unknown number of candidates running for those seats).

    But little did any of us know about another contribution, just surfaced on the FEC site, from Jones: $4,800,000.00 on October 1, for a grand total of $14,864,133.10 — yes, almost $15 million dollars. There is no other way to see this but as this recently-resigned Silicon Valley venture capitalist, former partner at Dragoneer Investment Group, trying to buy a congressional seat.

    $10 million was eye-popping. At $15 million, your jaw should be on the ground and your head should should be swiveling on its neck (and don’t ask me what comes after that).

    Fellow citizens of District 4: Californians have a proud history of rejecting multi-millionaires and billionaires trying to buy their way into positions of power, knowing that these people do not have the interests of ordinary citizens in mind.

    Vote for Mike Thompson, born and raised in our district, who is hardworking, honorable, and trustworthy.

    Here is the screenshot from the FEC showing the Oct 1 donation and his year-to-date total:

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  • BREAKING: Jones drops eye-popping $10 million into campaign

    Wife of Jones’s former Dragoneer partner dumps in $5 million

    By Roberta Millstein

    With quarterly updates at FEC.gov, we have new information about just how many more millions Eric Jones and his supporters have dumped into his campaign to try to buy a seat in Congress in District 4.

    Jones himself has now added $4,700,000.00 to the $5,364,133.10 he had already spent, for a total of $10,064,133.10. That is a massive amount of money for a congressional campaign, especially one that is (at least in name) a Democratic candidate vs another Democratic candidate — Mike Thompson is the incumbent.

    Edited to add: An article in the Davis Enterprise states, “this makes Jones’ contributions the largest self-funding for a U.S. Congressional race in California history. It is also the sixth most self-funding spent on any race in California history.”

    Here is a screenshot from FEC.gov showing his previous $5.3 million in “contributions” to his campaign:

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  • 350 words that explain why you should vote for Mike Thompson over Eric Jones

    By Roberta Millstein

    [Note: This letter first appeared in the Davis Enterprise, here].

    Would you vote for a congressional candidate who had endorsed a variety of Republican positions while at the same time touting his progressive credentials and connections to candidates like Ro Khanna? Someone who: advocated for “immigration reform” for a “secure border”, said he was “ashamed” of Prop 50, called for “sunsetting” federal programs, donated to Republican politicians including a member of the Bush family?

    What if you learned that he had, in a very short amount of time, flip-flopped his views on important issues such as data centers and Medicare for All?  What if you found out that he had distributed two versions of the same flyer on the same block of the same street, one for Republicans and one for Democrats?

    What if you further learned that he had no political track record to back up his ever-changing political promises?  That he had been a partner at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm for 8 years (12 in total), allowing him to dump $5 million of his own money into his campaign?  And that on top of that, former colleagues and associates from the same firm continue to dump millions more into his congressional campaign, including a Super PAC, a legal but shady way to skirt campaign donation limits?  (If you’ve been deluged with mailers, flyers, and intrusive texts, now you know why).

    Citizens of Congressional District 4, the candidate described above is Eric Jones, recently resigned from Dragoneer Investment Group.  He would represent the interests of out-of-district tech oligarchs — resisting needed protective regulations at every turn — rather than the interests of ordinary citizens, whether Republican or Democratic.

    What if you were to further learn that there was another candidate, Mike Thompson, who has seniority and thus power to wield in the House, who has a proven and known political track record, who has deep roots in our district along with military service, who has legislative accomplishments in areas as diverse as affordability, climate change, agriculture and fishing, preventing gun violence, and supporting veterans?

    It’s an easy choice, friends.  Vote for Mike Thompson for Congress.

  • Eric Jones compares himself to Jesus Christ

    Jones’s shamelessness and hubris knows no bounds

    By Roberta Millstein

    Recently, I came across a Facebook reel where Eric Jones compares himself to Jesus. Here is a screenshot of the text that accompanies the reel:

    Screenshot from https://www.facebook.com/reel/1683293890472814 taken on 1 October 2026. Underlining is mine.

    [Edited to add: Note that in an earlier version of this article, I wrote that this was the same text that is in the reel, but it is in fact a bit different — I don’t know if he changed it or not. In the video, Jones brings up a comparison of himself and Jesus turning over the table of the money lenders].

    I must admit I was rather stunned by this. As someone who is not a Christian, I try to be respectful of religious differences and not to comment on other people’s beliefs. But this seemed above and beyond to me. So I wrote:

    Looking at it again, I also notice Jones’s implication that Thompson, who has dedicated his life to public service and who is supposed to be his fellow Democrat, is his “enemy.” Nice. My point, which I didn’t express as well as I would have liked, was that Jones was not in fact speaking any kind of “truth,” much less “truth to power.”

    But then I saw a reply from Sue Greenwald, which was much better than mine and really got to the heart of the matter:

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  • Super PAC supporting Eric Jones spends $1.1 million more on campaign ads in just three weeks

    A new Substack author joins the chorus of people revealing the dark underside of Eric Jones’s run to unseat Mike Thompson

    💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰💰

    By Roberta Millstein

    This is just a quick little post to let people know about a new Substack author to pay attention to. Regular readers of Davisite articles on Eric Jones already know about the awesome Judy Tipple, who has kindly let us repost some of her articles here. Judy’s articles are always in depth and on point, and she always brings the receipts! Now here comes Bruce Banner with some quick and pointed articles on Eric Jones.

    Both Substacks are free, so give them a follow!

    And I thought I had been tracking the expenditures of the Super PAC that has been supporting Eric Jones, but Bruce’s most recent Substack post caught me by surprise: $1.1 million spent on ads for the Eric Jones campaign in September alone. This from the candidate who is still deceptively claiming not to take corporate PAC money, not beholden to special interests.

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  • To share: Links to articles about Eric Jones

    By request, here are links to Davisite articles about Eric Jones’s bid to unseat Mike Thompson in the House, plus his recent donation #s (as best as I can determine them), for easy sharing with friends & on social media. I will try to keep this post updated. – Roberta

    *** This is a pinned post — scroll down if you’re on the main page looking for new Davisite articles on other topics

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  • Eric Jones campaign hands out different flyers for Republicans and Democrats

    A continuation of the deceptive tactics we’ve seen since the primary

    Republican-geared version of the Eric Jones for Congress flyer, with my annotations.

    By Roberta Millstein

    Last week, a Davisite reader sent me two versions of the same “Eric Jones for Congress” flyer that had been left at homes on her North Davis street on the same day.  The one she received seems clearly pitched to Democrats; the other one, which she found near her driveway, is strikingly different and seems instead to be pitched to Republicans, which some of her neighbors on her block are. [1] To paraphrase her reaction, “How stupid does Eric Jones think we are?”

    Now to be clear, this is not the first time we have seen this sort of behavior from the Eric Jones campaign.  After months of playing the progressive, e.g., with a mailer that touted his endorsement from Our Revolution and implied (falsely) that he had been endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna, he:

    But this does seem like a new low, pandering to Democrats and Republicans alike, trying to be everything to everybody, while still ridiculously claiming to be against PACs and special interests — even though his former Silicon Valley Dragoneer Investment Group colleagues and associates have dumped millions of dollars into his campaign via direct donations and a Super PAC.  And he is still trying to tout his health care experience as being good for employees and patients, when the evidence shows otherwise.

    Why do I say that these flyers are pandering? 

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  • Flip-flopping Eric Jones first casts himself as a progressive, but now endorses right-wing policies

    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.”

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