Democratic congressional candidate Eric Jones is courting Republican voters as he seeks to unseat fellow Democrat Mike Thompson, who has held much of the seat for 27 years, in California’s redrawn 4th District.

No Republican won enough votes in the June primary to advance to the November election in the heavily Democratic district, and Jones, 35, is betting he can unite voters on the far left and far right in a coalition of the anti-establishment.

You have so many people in America who are fed up with both parties. It’s just about their political gains and keeping power and dividing us.

Jones, a philanthropist and former venture capitalist, has contributed more than $5.1 million of his own money to the campaign. That approach poses risks: progressive billionaire Tom Steyer failed to advance in this year’s governor’s race despite spending more than $213 million.

The district, redrawn under Proposition 50, runs from the wineries of Napa and Sonoma to the rice fields of Yuba and Sutter counties and includes conservative parts of Colusa, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter and Yuba counties once represented by the late Republican Representative Doug LaMalfa and his successor, James Gallagher. Thompson won the June primary with 41% of the vote, followed by Jones with 22% and Republican Ray Riehle with 20%.

Riehle has since endorsed Jones and said he would help him build Republican support. “At the end of the day, 60% of the voters in June voted for someone other than Thompson,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political consultant working with the Jones campaign. “This Prop. 50 district could be the reason why Thompson loses.”

Thompson, 75, a Vietnam War veteran and senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, has questioned the motives of Jones, who moved to Napa from San Francisco in 2021, and said the challenger is using personal wealth to “buy” the seat. “If I’m doing a poor job, why isn’t someone from our district running? Why does someone have to airdrop in from San Francisco?” Thompson said.

Jones disputed the characterization. He said he and his wife moved after their son Owen was born with a serious heart defect that required emergency surgery, an experience that “prompted a whole bunch of life changes” and led them to seek a quieter place near the boy’s doctors at the University of California, San Francisco.

Jones has accused Thompson and the Democratic establishment of “corporate cronyism” for taking donations from pharmaceutical companies, insurers and Pacific Gas & Electric, whose faulty equipment started devastating 2017 wildfires in Napa and Sonoma. Thompson accepted $20,000 from the PG&E Employee Energy PAC in his last two re-election bids, according to federal campaign finance records from 2023 to 2026.

“I take contributions from employee PACs,” Thompson said, noting that PG&E employs several thousand of his constituents. He said he had pushed the utility to invest in renewable energy jobs and, with LaMalfa, won an exemption of wildfire victims’ relief funds from federal income taxes. “I’m not afraid to take these guys on if they’re wrong,” he said.

Jones’ website lists 27 policy proposals, including eliminating federal income taxes for those earning $150,000 or less, expanding Medicare to cover vision, dental, hearing and in-home care, a refundable $10,000 monthly tax credit for working-class households, a 12-year congressional term limit and a National Housing Construction Bank. He would pay for them by raising the corporate tax rate, a change that would face near-certain defeat under President Donald Trump.

Supporters such as Lisa Seran, a progressive co-founder of Indivisible Napa, call Jones “just brilliant” and praise his self-funding. Russell Joy, a Republican wine executive who said he had “religiously” voted for Thompson, said he was impressed by Jones’ policy knowledge but undecided: “Mike flies back almost every week to be with his constituents.”

Thompson cites his record of securing federal money for flood prevention and wildfire resiliency, including emergency U.S. Department of Agriculture aid for peach growers after Del Monte went bankrupt and closed its Modesto canning plant. Sutter County farmer Ranjit Davit, who lost the remaining five years of a 20-year Del Monte contract, said a letter Thompson wrote to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, signed by more than 40 lawmakers, sped the aid. “You need the person that has the reputation in D.C., and that’s what Mike carries,” Davit said.