The congressional race on no pundits’ radar

In a campaign no national pundit focused on, Congressman Mike Thompson is in danger of losing his Napa Valley seat to big-spending fellow Democrat Eric Jones, who until recently was a San Francisco venture capitalist. Improbably, the battle for California’s Congressional District 4 became one of the most costly House races in the nation.

As of Wednesday morning, Jones was leading Thompson by 51.5 percent-48.5 per center. Although votes remain to be tallied, Jones issued a statement saying he was confident the “outstanding ballots will move in our direction and deliver the change this district has been waiting for.”

Because Thompson and Jones are Democrats competing for a safely Democratic seat, the outcome will have no impact on the partisan balance of power in the House, and is nowhere near the radar screens of political pontificators. I care about the race in part because of Thompson’s hand in a rather modest bill that could help improve the lives of people with serious mental illness. More about that in a minute.

Why Thompson was in the fight of his career is not exactly clear, except that he is 75 and has held elective office since 1990. Jones is 35 and has never held elective office but has big ambitions and lots of money.

Jones seized an opportunity created by the 2010 voter-approved initiative establishing the system in which the top two primary election vote-getters face one another in the general election, regardless of their party. Its goal was to make Congress and the Legislature less extreme. It hasn’t worked out that way, but that’s another story.

Jones placed second to Thompson in the primary, and ahead of Republican Raymond Riehle, the third-place finisher.

Then there’s the money. So much money.

Jones has used $15 million of his own money to unseat Thompson. While final sums won’t be tallied until the end of the year, the $16.5 million spent so far by Jones ranks fifth nationally among House campaigns, according to the Federal Election Commission. The commission placed Thompson’s $5.3 million at No. 69.

A separate campaign committee, funded primarily by people associated with Dragoneer Investment Group, the San Francisco venture capital firm where Jones was until recently a partner, has spent another $5.3 million, primarily to attack Thompson.

Thompson, who is from the Napa Valley, was elected to Congress in 1998 from the rich wine region of Napa and Sonoma counties and, depending on redistricting, Yolo County, where I live.

Before that, he was a state senator, first elected in 1990. I got to know him when he chaired the Senate Budget Committee and I covered the budget for the Los Angeles Times. I found him to be a straight-talker and smart dealmaker.

Years later, Thompson came by the Sacramento Bee’s editorial board when I was its editorial page editor to talk about his effort to curb gun violence. Thompson is a gun owner and hunter who fully understands the power of firearms, having served in the Army during the Vietnam War, a fact that means more to people of his age and mine than to Jones, who was born 17 years after the war ended.

Although he once accepted campaign money from pro-gun groups, Thompson became chair of the House’s gun safety task force, a cause he embraced after the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012.

“I didn’t think anything could stop us. I was sadly disappointed,” he told me in 2018 of legislation he and others pushed after Sandy Hook.

If Thompson loses, he could be considered collateral damage from Proposition 50 of 2025. That was Gov. Gavin Newsom’s answer to President Donald Trump’s push to persuade Texas and other red states to gerrymander congressional districts to favor Republicans. Proposition 50 rejiggered California’s district lines with the goal of unseating five Republican members of Congress—a goal Democrats appeared to have reached.

But to ensure a safe Democratic congressional seat in far Northern California, Democrats stripped some of the Democratic strongholds in Sonoma County from Thompson’s old district, and added conservative areas to the east in Placer, Sutter Yuba, Lake and Colusa counties, plus a sliver of Sacramento County.

If Thompson loses, he could be considered collateral damage from Proposition 50 of 2025.

To capitalize on the redrawn lines, Jones has courted Republicans. Riehle, the Republican who placed third in the June primary, endorsed him.

Update: The initial results show Thompson led Jones in the remaining parts of his old district in Napa, Sonoma and Yolo counties with 56.6 percent of the vote. But Jones led Thompson with 64.7 percent of the vote in the other more conservative counties for an overall lead of 3,628 votes.

Jones’ play for Republican support is ironic, given that Congressman Ro Khanna, a wealthy Silicon Valley lawyer who is one of the most liberal members of California’s congressional delegation, endorsed Jones last week. Jones is a past donor to Khanna’s campaigns, as are others from Dragoneer.

Jones has campaigned on the claim that he would work to impose term limits, though surely he cannot be that naive. Term limits have no prayer of being approved in a House where clout is a function of seniority.

Thompson has seniority. He also has shown an ability to work with Republicans.

For several years running, Thompson and Congressman Mike Kelly, a Trump-endorsed Republican representing a red stretch of northwestern Pennsylvania, have joined to propose legislation that might, in time, help people with brain disease.

Their bill is not high-profile, definitely not the sort Trump would call big or beautiful. It’s one of nearly 20,000 pieces of legislation proposed by House and Senate members in the 2025–2026 Congress, which is renowned for its inability to enact legislation.

The bill goes by the less-than-catchy name of Mental Health Research Accelerator Act, and it is brief, at only 1,100 words. It would offer $10 billion in tax credits—dust in a $7.4 trillion federal budget—to companies that collaborate with nonprofits or government entities on research to develop drugs or devices “targeted at central nervous system disorders and in the neurological and psychiatric fields.”

Thompson and Kelly introduced the legislation at the behest of One Mind, a nonprofit created by Napa Valley winemakers Garen and Shari Staglin and their son, Brandon, after Brandon was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Much of Thompson’s legislation has focused on health and mental health care, and taxation.

With Brandon’s help, the Staglins and partner companies report having raised $1.45 billion for research into the causes and cures of serious mental illness. The tax credit would help induce more companies to conduct such research.

Kelly is chairman of the Ways and Means subcommittee on tax policy, and Thompson is the ranking member of the subcommittee. That’s notable. If, as seems probable, Democrats take control of Congress, Thompson and Kelly would switch roles, with Thompson becoming chairman and Kelly becoming vice chairman.

With Kelly’s help, Thompson would be in a position to find a path to make the measure a reality, but only if he wins. Elections, as the saying goes, have consequences.

Please look for my next book, Am I Crazy Danny? A Family’s Search for Answers in a Broken Mental Health System, to be published in April 2027 by University of California Press. You can pre-order it here.

This piece originally appeared in Dan Morain’s Substack newsletter. Reprinted here by permission.