Meet Congressional District 4 Candidate Eric Jones

NAPA VALLEY, CA — Patch reached out to all the candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in California's 4th Congressional District.

Two candidates are running for the U.S. House seat representing California's 4th Congressional District.

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We sent out questionnaires and reprinted their answers verbatim. Below, read the responses of Eric Jones, a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in California's 4th Congressional District.

Eric Jones, 35, is running for the U.S. House of Representatives in California's 4th Congressional District. In the questionnaire, Jones identified the cost of living, campaign money and government accountability, and risks to the district's future as priorities.

What is your educational background?

Education was the one thing that changed my life, and it's a big reason I'm running. I grew up poor in rural Maine, in a military family, and reading was my escape. A handful of teachers and tutors saw something in me and refused to let me fall through the cracks. That's what helped me earn a full-ride scholarship to Yale and become the first in my family to go to college, where I studied economics and international relations. Every kid deserves that shot, and right now too few get it.

What is your professional background?

I've spent my career as a business builder. For more than a decade, I helped build companies that made life more accessible: Maven Clinic and Lyra Health expanded healthcare, Chime and Nubank brought low-fee banking to millions, and Duolingo made learning a language free. I worked with Medicare (CMS) to pilot rural senior care under both parties. I founded two nonprofits: a local one for families, veterans, and children, and the American Dream Institute, to protect free speech online.

Have you ever held public office, whether appointive or elective?

No, I've never held public office, and I'm not looking to be a career politician. The system is broken, and we don't need more of them perpetuating the corruption that got us here. I bring different experience: I grew up in poverty, lived the American Dream, and built companies that created jobs and solved real problems here. I'm running to represent the people of this district, not the special interests, and to bring change. I've pledged to 12 years: go to Washington, get it done, come home.

What are the top three issues facing your district right now?

1. The cost of living: Families here pay some of the highest power bills in the country to PG&E, among California's highest housing costs, and drug prices no one can plan around. Getting ahead has turned into just getting by.

2. Legalized corruption, which keeps that cost high: When PG&E, the drug companies, and the insurance industry fund the politicians who write the rules, they get protected and you get the bill. It's legal, and that's the problem. Get the money out, enact term limits, and the rest becomes possible.

3. The risks to our shared future: We're a collection of agricultural towns, and water and family farms decide whether we make it. Wildfire risk climbs each year, and a complicit PG&E sparks the fires. We're handing our children a national debt they never voted for. AI threatens mass job loss, data centers drain our water, and surveillance grows through government overreach, with few in Washington who understand it. We protect all of it, or we lose it.

What is one specific policy you would implement in your first 100 days?

Expand Medicare to cover vision, hearing, dental, and in-home care for seniors.
This is the rare fix that helps people right away, and it's within reach. Today, Medicare will cover a heart procedure but skip the dental care that might have prevented it, and it won't send a nurse to a senior who's one fall away from the hospital. So people go without, and the system waits for the crisis and pays far more.

I'd add full vision, hearing, and dental coverage and create a Medicare benefit for preventative, in-home nursing visits starting at 65. A nurse comes to you, checks your vitals and your medications, and catches the small problem before it becomes the expensive one. In a rural district like ours, where hospitals keep closing, the nearest one keeps getting farther, and hospital stays are the biggest drivers of cost, bringing care to the patient is everything.

All of this care is preventative, so it lowers costs across the whole system instead of adding to them. These proposals save us money, and we can enact them. This is a winning issue on both sides of the aisle, and it just needs the energy to make it happen.

What is your plan to enact this plan and how would you measure success after one year?

Modern legislating is about driving energy, attention, and resources toward an idea people already want, then building a coalition around it. Seniority has little to do with it anymore. My job is to make in-home care and senior health impossible to ignore, and to force every member to decide in public whether they're with it. This is built to cross the aisle. Caring for seniors and keeping rural hospitals open isn't red or blue, and I don't care which party gets the credit. We've watched how fast Washington moves when an issue stops being partisan, and the public gets loud enough. I'd do that here: rally seniors, nurses, rural hospitals, and family caregivers, get creative about how we make the case, and put anyone who opposes it in the position of explaining to their own voters why they said no to their parents' care. Here's how I'd measure success after one year: a real bill with bipartisan co-sponsors, a committee hearing that puts these stories on the record, an independent cost estimate showing the savings, and clear momentum toward a floor vote. That's progress you can check yourself, in the public record.

What is one specific change you would make to improve livability in your district?

I would end PG&E's destruction of our communities and our monthly costs: Lower what families pay PG&E, and stop the fires that come with its corrupt negligence.

Our district pays some of the highest electric rates in the country, while just across the river in Sacramento, the public utility SMUD charges far less for the same power. The difference is a monopoly that answers to Wall Street instead of to you, and funds our local Democratic establishment to keep it that way.

As the most PG&E-funded member of Congress, my opponent claims he can't do anything about a regulated monopoly. But Washington has real power here, and I'd use all of it. I'd end the ratepayer-funded bailouts that put the cost of PG&E's wildfires on your bill instead of on its shareholders. I'd open real federal oversight of the guaranteed profit it collects no matter how it performs. I'd use antitrust law to take on its monopoly. I'd fund local and public power, so towns that want out of PG&E finally have a way there. And I'd tie executive pay and liability to safety, so the people making the decisions carry the risk, not you.

Lower bills, safer lines, and a utility that answers to the people who pay it. I take nothing from PG&E and never will, and I'll take them on without fear.

How would you improve transparency or accountability in your local government?

Government should answer to you, and it can't while it's bought and paid for by corporate and special interests. I'd change that, and I'd lead by example.

Get money out of politics. I take no corporate PAC money, no special interest money, no foreign money, and that won't ever change. I answer to voters — never to PG&E, the insurance lobby, or Big Pharma. I'd work to ban that money in our politics and end the dark money that hides who's really paying.

Ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks — and require real-time disclosure of their finances, so you see the moment a vote might make your representative richer instead of finding out a year later. Members of Congress should be accountable to our well-being, not to their own wealth.

Enact term limits so the seat never becomes a career.

End partisan gerrymandering everywhere so politicians stop picking their own voters.

And show up: I've held more than 100 town halls and meetups across all nine counties, including the rural parts that rarely see their current congressman, and I've challenged my opponent to numerous debates. Accountability starts with standing in the room and answering the question. I'll always answer to you, and never to special interests.

What makes you a better choice than your opponents?

Start with who each of us answers to: I take no corporate PAC money, no special interest money, no foreign money. I answer to the people of this district, never to PG&E, Big Pharma, or the insurance lobby. My opponent is the most corporate-funded California Democrat in the House, and no one in Congress has taken more from PG&E — ever. There's a reason, nearly three decades later, the monopoly behind your power bill and the fires that keep burning this district go untouched by federal oversight.

Then, look at what you do with the job: I'll never be a career politician. I've taken a term limit pledge, and I mean it. With limited time, I'll deliver real solutions, and if I can't, I'll go home. That beats spending nearly three decades collecting participation trophies while your costs climb. The nonpartisan University of Virginia Center for Effective Lawmaking ranks him one of Congress's least effective members.

And I bring a stake in the future: I know the risks we face, from healthcare to AI, and I understand how to regulate them. I've lived the life a lot of people here have lived: poverty, hard work, leaning on your community, getting squeezed by corporate greed. I also lived the American Dream, and I still believe this country can be great if we choose change. That's what this comes down to: a new generation of leadership that owes this country everything and the special interests nothing.