The latest venture-capital funded mailer is downright Orwellian
By Roberta Millstein
Mailer received 27 April 2026. Annotated by the author.
Eric Jones’s campaign to unseat Mike Thompson in Congressional District 4 has repeatedly promised not to take money from special interests and PACs. As I have already documented in detail (see earlier articles here and here), that promise is essentially meaningless. A former partner of the Dragoneer Investment Group, Jones has received large individual donations and repeated campaign advertising funded by massive donations to the New Leadership Now Super PAC from his fellow venture capitalists, including a huge donation from the family of Dragoneer’s founder, Marc Stad.
Expenditures for ads in support of Eric Jones’s campaign (mailers, TV, internet, etc.) from New Leadership Now currently exceed 1.1 million dollars, as this screenshot from the FEC website shows:
When the HRC sent the MAPA Report to the City Council for approval, one of the HRC members wrote a dissenting opinion, as is his right. Astonishingly, the Human Relations Committee, a group that is supposed to help minority groups, decided to NOT include that minority opinion. Here, in full, is that dissenting opinion. With permission of the author.
To Davis City Council,
As a Commissioner on the HRC, I believe it is important to provide you with my minority opinion regarding the “Report on MAPA Climate & Experiences in Davis” recently approved by the HRC.
At first glance, the report appears to simply document feelings of concern and alienation among members of the MAPA community and recommends that the City of Davis, DJUSD, and UC Davis demonstrate solidarity and provide training on anti-MAPA bias. On the surface, this seems like a straightforward and unobjectionable request from an oppressed and marginalized community.
However, a closer reading reveals a very different and deeply troubling narrative. The report does not document systemic discrimination against MAPA community members across Davis institutions. Rather, it focuses overwhelmingly on allegations of harassment by individuals identified as ‘Zionists’. The implicit — and at times explicit — message throughout the report is that Zionism is equated with fascism, and that Zionist individuals have no legitimate place in the Davis community.
It is important to clarify what Zionism actually represents. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people, like all other peoples, have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel). It is a movement rooted in the pursuit of safety, dignity, and national liberation for Jews following centuries of persecution, displacement, and genocide. To demonize Zionism is to deny a fundamental aspect of Jewish identity and to delegitimize Jewish aspirations for freedom and security.
Students navigate a mix of bikes, e-scooters, skateboards, and foot traffic on campus—illustrating the growing complexity of how people move through the Davis campus. (Courtesy photo / UC Davis)
(From press release) UC Davis is inviting the broader Davis community to review and comment on a draft of its updated sustainable transportation plan through May 4.
The plan—called Moving Forward Together—has been in development for over a year and outlines more than 100 possible improvements for how people get to and move through campus, from safer crossings and separated bike paths to better transit connections. It marks the first comprehensive update since 2009, with recommendations supported by input from more than 3,000 people, along with an analysis of travel patterns, infrastructure gaps, and collision data.
We find out at the April 28th City Council Meeting
By Scott Steward
July 1, 2024, UCD Student Encampment – Popular University of Liberation of Palestine One sign reads: “As You Go to Class Today, remember that there are no Universities Left in Gaza
City Staff released its version of the Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian and Allies (MAPA) recommendations this past Friday. (provided below)
Discrimination against Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian bodies, families, and cultures has been an unfortunate project that has accelerated since the First World War. This bias is also evident in the colloquial, systemic, unequal, and dehumanizing treatment of our Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian residents and students in Davis.
City email boxes are filling with canned opposition emails leading up to the April 28th special City meeting to hear Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, and Allies (MAPA) antidiscrimination recommendations, recommendations made by our own City Human Relations Commission (HRC). The HRC recommendations were made after months of surveys, hearing testimony, and careful consideration.
Jones criticizes Mike Thompson for taking PAC money, but is he being hypocritical?
By Roberta Millstein
Flyer in support of Eric Jones’s run for Congress, paid for by the New Leadership Now Super PAC
Among the small deluge of flyers Davisites have received promoting Eric Jones’s candidacy for Congressional District 4, some may have noticed that one was different from the others: It indicated that it was paid for by a group called “New Leadership Now.” Who is New Leadership Now, and what sort of connection does it have to Eric Jones, if any? This article aims to shed a bit of light on these questions. It is a follow-up to my earlier article discussing the direct campaign contributions from Jones’s former venture capitalist co-workers and other individuals from the high tech industry.
New Leadership Now is registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as a Super PAC. What is a Super PAC? Wikipedia has a helpful definition:
Independent expenditure-only political action committees, commonly known as super PACs, are a type of political action committees (PACs) in the United States. Unlike traditional PACs, super PACs are legally allowed to fundraise unlimited amounts of money from individuals or organizations for the purpose of campaign advertising; however, they are not permitted to either coordinate with or contribute directly to candidate campaigns or political parties. However, in practice, restrictions on such coordination are considered flimsy and poorly enforced.[1]
The unlimited expenditures coupled with not really knowing if the committees are actually coordinating with candidates make Super PACs controversial. Eric Jones has touted his campaign as “Powered by People, Not Special Interests: Not a Dime from Corporate PACs”[2] What I will describe below casts some serious doubt on that slogan, however.
For Davisite readers, the following is a response to an Alan Pryor post that made the following accusation, “Grass Roots” is not an accurate description of the opposition to Village Farms. How do you spell “NIMBY”? It is not spelled “Grass-roots”! (see https://nextdoor.com/p/9nSwSrmBTckW/c/1585068648?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=1776984857876&share_action_id=a32ff6cd-07c2-4764-a989-a686060c125a) Alan, is there a reason you are deploying the “If you can’t address the message, attack the messenger” tactic? There are very few NIMBYs in No on Measure V. That is very clear in the unifying principles of No on Measure V, which were just yesterday presented to DTA, the DJUSD teachers union, and are anything but NIMBY, specifically:
It’s time to TRASH almost everything between First St & Cowell/Research Park Drive
Focus of post: Consent Calendar item, this evening in City Council: “Authorize the City Manager to sign the California Transportation Commission ATP Cycle 8 Signature Page for Richards I-80 Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvement Grant Application and if awarded authorize CityManager to commit agency resources and funds to grant”
First things first: On April 13, Lincoln Sabini was killed in the Greater Davis Mobility Ecosystem 1. Please pause for a moment. Release. Sign Petition.
Hot on the heals of the ethically-repugnant fake patriotism of the City Council – okay, Council member Vaitla made a just above symbolic opposition vote – final approval for July 4th Fireworks via Consent – also in the midst of the forming trials of the Esparto Fireworks Murderers including the impossibility of County Supervisor deniability/ignorance over a decade – now we have the Council using the never-meant-to-be blunt instrument of the Consent Calendar to remove active transportation infrastructure from a long term project designed to herd rabid driving kittens in the Richards-80 “Uptight Diamond Project”.
Also a decade in the corrupt birth canal of Caltrans, in the buns of a stinky Double-Double, the ghost of a Murder Burger, the bike lane clogging coffee that only incestuous Dutch siblings would ever create… we have a mostly mysteriously delayed, budget over-ripened waste of concrete and bitumen bits getting a lazy bifurcation… a separating of the funding mechanism o its active transportation elements.
By increasing capacity between I-80 and Olive Drive and removing the long-flowing ramps for the westbound freeway, the Richards-80 Project will indeed at least temporarily remove some conflicts or stress from the ill leeches – freeway-to-local connections – that suck the metal fecundity units (mostly “cars”2) from the Eisenhower into the Bike Friendly Paradise of the Greatest Nation on Earth! But it will also just push the same or more metal encased bags of flesh (humans, beneficial bacteria and sometimes companion animals)into the Downtown, where the permanently soiled diaper of mostly fare free parking won’t actual expand like the belt-loosening induction of demand of that ex-President-named maximalist infrastructure perpetual gift – and that famous quote about the “military industrial complex” applies to cars… it’s motonormativity and it’s a cancer (the I-80 widening).
The City needs to instead use staff capacity to apply for something else and very related better like vast improvements to the rough and/or ableist existing under crossing to South Davis – perhaps purchase the land along the Dry Putah Creek just east of the I-80 under crossing so that the multi-use path (MUP) can finally go that way, repave the west end of Research Park Drive – and perhaps also use the $$$ for the in-progress Cowell protected bike lane (which is very flawed due to this thing called motor vehicle headlights glare – it’s also ableist, yep yep, but we can solve this!)
YES, just as the Uptight Diamond will revert to coal not so long after completion, the designed and approved MUP is a WASTE of time: It has no safe connectivity at the Olive end, is problematically serpentine and has an absolute danger point – where the stairs shortcut to the top meets the Downtown-direction bike lane on a 4%-ish slope after a 90 degree turn.
It’s true that – Richards-80 this train wrecking train wreck of a project was left to staff and current council to deal with, BUT:
100 times worse is the WHOLE ENTIRE JUNCTION BETWEEN FIRST ST AND COWELL/RESEARCH PARK DRIVE INCLUSIVE OF THE NEW AND OLD FREEWAY EGRESSES – IT IS SIMPLY AN EXISTENTIAL MESS THAT CAN NEVER BE SORTED OUT IN A JOYOUS, SAFE AND SUSTAINABLE WAY.
TAKE THIS OUT OF CONSENT, THROW IT INTO THE RECYCLING – ALONG WITH THE CLAIMED 88% OF EVERYTHING ELSE IN TOWN – and make plans to reach out to the next hopefully kinder Federal administration and convince them that a HUGE investment is needed to first very nearly destroy everything – oh yeah, sorta sad that millions is being spent now to something something symbolic related to the shape of a freeway like a belt but also the traffic induction belt of perpetual loosening and populist vote gathering!
Again, again, and again… City Council, it’s really not your fault, it’s objectively awful. Just please admit it, force Caltrans to agree…. and move on to something different and better.
Thank you!!
Just for fun: For what’s been spent so far on the war in Iran, every single student, YES, every single student, K-12, in the USA could have a $1000 bicycle.
This is the actual transportation infrastructure and systems of the city, campus, peripheral areas and region. ↩︎
A motor vehicle is a general technical term for a tool for mobility conveyance; “car” is a function of this tool and others that can perform the same thing in a partial or often superior and e.g. more efficient fashion… normal bicycles for single passenger trips (in combination with public transport), cargo bikes, etc. ↩︎
With the increasingly regular appearance of glossy mailers from Eric Jones’s campaign seeking to replace Mike Thompson as the representative for Congressional District 4 (which includes Davis), I thought it might be helpful if I shared what I have learned about Jones’s background. I haven’t seen anything inaccurate per se in those mailers or in his ballot statement,[1] but what is there seems quite partial and thus misleading with respect to both his background and who is funding his campaign.
To be clear, I am not a reporter and have never pretended to be. What follows is all widely available information (I will footnote all of my sources) and I don’t think Jones is trying to hide any of it. But he’s not really mentioning it either, and I think it might be relevant for at least some voters.
Let’s start with Jones’s background because that sets the stage for his donations. Jones graduated with an economics degree from Yale University and worked at JP Morgan in 2012.[2] Shortly thereafter, he left JP Morgan for Dragoneer Investment Group; his LinkedIn page says that he was a “Dragoneer Investment Group Partner, Healthcare and Internet” for 12 yrs 7 mos, 2013 – Jul 2025. Not long after that, in September 2025, he declared his candidacy. His LinkedIn page also says that he is a Founder of the American Dream Institute, 2024 – present and a Principal of The Rachel and Eric Jones Foundation, 2021-present. The year 2021 is also the year he (partially) relocated from San Francisco to Napa, making him eligible to run in what is now (since Prop 50) District 4.[3] Jones has never held public office and still has a home in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights.[4]
Free self-guided tour provides inside peek at local artist studios
Artists Thelma Weatherford, Cathie James-Robinson and Schorré Oldham gather in Weatherford’s studio. The three women are leading and participating in the 2026 Davis Art Studio Tour that will showcase 48 local artists in May.
(From press release) Forty-eight artists from across the region will open their Davis studios for the free self-guided Davis Art Studio Tour where hundreds of guests can immerse themselves in the creative spaces where local artwork is being crafted. The two-day public event will take place May 16-17 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and will include opportunities to view and purchase a wide range of artwork, from sculpture and painting to print making and photography. For information about participating artists and studio locations, visit www.davisopenstudios.com.
The Pence Gallery, 212 D Street in Davis, will feature a preview show for the Davis Art Studio Tour, showcasing one piece from each participating artist. The show will open at the Davis 2nd Friday ArtAbout Reception on May 8 from 6-9 p.m. and will be on display through June 5.
The Davis Art Studio Tour began more than two decades ago and became a casualty of the pandemic until 2023 when a small group of local artists formed a grassroots effort to bring the tour back to life with 21 artists showing their work. In 2024 and 2025, they doubled the number of artists featured, and this year will showcase 48 artists to hundreds of guests on the tour. For more information, visit www.davisopenstudios.com
In a public university system that manages a $53.5 billion annual budget, oversees three national labs, and educates nearly 300,000 students, you would expect those students to have a real say in how things are run. Currently, they do not.
That is why Californians should pay attention to ACA 18, a new Assembly Constitutional Amendment moving through the state legislature. Authored by Assemblymember Jessica Caloza (D-Los Angeles), this measure would finally fix a long-standing democratic deficit at the heart of the University of California.
Here is the current reality: Under the California Constitution, the UC Board of Regents, the powerful body that governs the entire system, includes just one voting student representative. One vote for almost 300,000 minds. While the constitution currently authorizes the Board to appoint student members, it does not guarantee meaningful representation. After a year of serving as a non-voting “designate,” a single student finally gets a vote. For a system this massive, that is not representation; it is a token gesture.
Davisite 