His campaign biography says his father’s health struggles taught him “how critical affordable health care” is to working families (ericjones.us/meet-eric). It says he “built a firm that built businesses.” It lists Lyra Health as a company he helped make “accessible to millions.”
Fair enough. Let’s look at the businesses.
His job was healthcare
Jones joined Dragoneer Investment Group in 2013 and became a partner 4 years later, where he remained until he resigned in July 2025. Not an employee. A partner. His sector title at the firm was “Partner – Healthcare, Fintech, Internet” (RocketReach profile; his LinkedIn will confirm). Healthcare was not a side interest. It was his book.
So the question is simple. When Jones and Dragoneer put money into healthcare, who was the customer?
He called for a national moratorium. He said members of Congress who don’t understand the technology shouldn’t be in the room for these decisions (Patch, Sept. 2, 2026).
Strong stuff. The kind of line that gets applause in a room full of people watching data centers drink their water and eattheir farmland, and farmland all over the country.
Here’s the problem. It’s not what his campaign has been telling voters for months.
Go to ericjones.us right now. His official AI platform page said something very different, until 2 days ago:
It may be more. Might be less. But it’s monthly and this is a raise of after income tax dollars. Most living dwellers, bill payers, are eligible. Those incredibly wealthy, not even slightly cost conscious, a few living off the grid or your neighbor perhaps who has recently invested a large sum in solar panels, lithium battery banks and highly efficient mechanical systems might not be. My target audience for this article is the rest of you.
We live in a meteorological wonderland; this huge valley with its high desert, dry heat climate. Thankful every summer evening for our refreshing delta breeze. And our frost, snow free winters. As I type this about 9 AM it’s bright and still on this late August morning. Outside air temp is 68F and it’s 66F in my living room. Last night’s low was 58F and today’s high is 93F. My predicted indoor high is 78F. Only my laptop, my fridge and the trickle charges (TV and smart speakers) are consuming any electrical energy.
Your pay raise is generated by the cost saving measures you implement to drastically lower your P, G & E monthly devotional, offering, bequest, and irksome payment.
Make It Happen for Yolo County board member Marilyn Stebbins and intern Kegen Wells help a UC Davis Guardian Scholar furnish her apartment this summer. The nonprofit has launched a campaign to sponsor former foster youth studying at UC Davis this fall.
(From press release) Local nonprofit Make It Happen for Yolo County is offering opportunities for the community to sponsor UC Davis Guardian Scholars – students who have experienced foster care – as they move into housing this fall. Sponsorship levels run from $200 to $2,500 and provide essential furniture, household goods, cleaning supplies, bicycles and more to ensure former foster youth studying at UC Davis are not burdened financially, physically or emotionally by furniture poverty as they pursue higher education. The campaign will run through mid-October. Learn more and make a donation: https://www.mihyolo.org/donate-index-impact.
“Having a fully furnished, safe and functional home is a fundamental need for these resilient students,” said Cathi Schmidt, executive director, Make It Happen for Yolo County. “Each community member can choose from a variety of levels to provide a tax-deductible gift this fall that will turn a student’s empty living space into a place of comfort, dignity and belonging as they work toward achieving their degree.”
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.”
They should state their un-endorsement explicitly and explain their reasons for it
By Roberta Millstein
As I documented in a past article, Eric Jones is not a progressive. Now it seems that Our Revolution, which Wikipedia calls “an American progressive political action organization founded as a continuation of Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign,” has finally figured out the same thing. Having previously endorsed Eric Jones in his run to unseat Mike Thompson in CA-04, Our Revolution seems to have quietly withdrawn that endorsement.
I want to be clear: this is not a critique of Our Revolution. I consider myself to be a progressive and I generally support their mission. I contributed to Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, voted for him twice, displayed the swag. But organizations can make mistakes. So it is no surprise to me that they would withdraw their endorsement once that they had the complete picture of who Jones is.
OK, I admit it… I’m a political nerd. Many years of campaigns, more FEC filings read than I’d like to admit. And I had never heard of “red-boxing” until a friend flagged it to me last week. Wait till you hear what it means — because once you see it, you can’t unsee it on every campaign website you visit.
Before I get to that: credit where it’s due. Roberta Millstein at Davisite already dug up the core of Jones’s Dragoneer ties and his Super PAC connections. Read her full series here: Who is Eric Jones? A summary of the series. This piece adds a few new pieces to her picture.
1. Red-Boxing: The website is talking to PACs, not to you
Jones’s campaign site has a page — not in the main menu, you have to know where to look — that reads less like a pitch to voters and more like a memo to an ad-buyer. It tells you what you “need to see,” what you “need to hear,” on what timeline. That’s a known, legal-but-gray tactic called red-boxing: campaigns aren’t allowed to privately hand a Super PAC their ad copy, so instead they post it publicly and let the PAC “discover” it — no phone call required, no coordination on paper. It’s used by both parties nationwide, so it’s not unique to Jones. What is fair to point out: he’s built his brand on refusing PAC money, while his own site is doing PAC-facing work in plain sight. That is red-boxing.
2. Follow the money, follow the name, follow the family
A young mother and her two children stand in their Yolo County apartment with the household goods and furnishings they received from Make It Happen for Yolo County. The nonprofit has received a two-year grant from the Kelly Foundation.
Funds will help sustain and expand program for local youth amidst growing demand
(From press release) The Kelly Foundation has granted local nonprofit Make It Happen for Yolo County $20,000 each year for two years for its program that equips underserved local young adults with essential furnishings and household goods to create safe, stable homes as they move into independent living. The two-year grant will help sustain and expand the organization’s work to address furniture poverty in response to significant growth in demand as well as rising prices of items.
“We are grateful to the Kelly Foundation for recognizing that having a fully furnished, safe and functional home is a fundamental need,” said Cathi Schmidt, executive director, Make It Happen for Yolo County. “The resilient young adults we serve have often experienced foster care, the juvenile justice system, homelessness or all three. Working together, we can turn their empty living spaces into places of comfort, dignity and belonging.”
At 17, Davis Senior High School senior Dash Voskuhl built a caregiving startup called Tethr. He and his threeco-founders apply to Y Combinator at the end of July.
(From press release) Dash Voskuhl spent his summer mornings knocking on doors around Davis, selling window cleaning. At one house, the pitch turned into a different conversation. Voskuhl mentioned the caregiving app he was building on the side, and the woman at the door, in her 50s, went quiet. Then she told him about her mother, who has dementia.
“That was the moment I knew I had to actually build this,” Voskuhl said.
Voskuhl, a rising senior at Davis Senior High School, is the CEO and co-founder of Tethr, a Davis startup whose app connects families with vetted caregivers so anyone can book care on demand, the way they’d order an Uber. The company is pre-launch, and this month the team is applying to Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley accelerator whose early bets included Airbnb and DoorDash.
The Future of Cache Creek Gravel Mining Restoration –A New Pathway Forward
(From press release) What-When-Where – The Sierra Club Yolano Group and Tuleyome are sponsoring an in-person potluck dinner and conversation on Wednesday, July 22 from 7 to 9 pm in the Blanchard Room at the Yolo County Library, 314 E. 14th Street in Davis. (Doors open at 6:45 pm). Unfortunately, a Zoom option will not be available.
Cache Creek looking west into the Capay Valley in the 1970s(more…)
Davisite 