Austin Murphy - Press Democrat
May 18, 2026
They're coming after one of our own. Let's not let them get away with it.
A political advertisement attacking Jackie Elward has been popping up lately on local TV stations, and streaming platforms such as YouTube, Hulu and MLB.com.
The 30-second spot is tough and hard-hitting.
It’s also unabashedly misleading. Elward, a two-term Rohnert Park City Council member now running for state Assembly in the 12th District, is a progressive Democrat with strong support from labor unions.
The video blames her for rising utility rates, taking aim at her 2025 City Council vote in favor of a water rate hike to advance long-delayed capital projects in Rohnert Park, including repairs on aging tanks, water lines and wells.
In a Beamonesque leap of reasoning, the ad also implies that Elward could be responsible for the high price of gas, as if the educator and mother of three has some power to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The hit piece was paid for by Grow California, a political committee founded by a pair of crypto billionaires looking to shape the state’s Assembly and Senate — Democrats hold 75% of the seats in both chambers — into a more tech- and business-friendly body.
The tech magnates behind the super PAC are Chris Larsen, a Democrat and founder of the crypto company Ripple, and Tim Draper, a libertarian-leaning, anti-big government Bitcoin crusader also known for his attempts to break up the state of California.
Larsen, a resident of San Francisco who also owns a 46-acre compound in Calistoga, recently told the New York Times that unions hold too much sway over the state Legislature. To cultivate a more centrist, pro-business “counterforce,” as he put it, Grow America is pouring tens of millions of dollars into negative ads targeting labor-backed Assembly and Senate candidates all over the state.
Elward, one of six candidates vying for the District 12 seat, is on that hit list.
Stripped of context
That measure to hike Rohnert Park’s water rates, mentioned in the attack ad, passed 4-1.
“The reality,” said Elward last week, “is that the rate increases were tied to major infrastructure updates. My city is in dire need, and at the end of the day, we didn’t have a choice.
“It was more responsible to invest in those costs now, instead of kicking the can down the road, making my constituents pay even more when the problem becomes an emergency.”
At the time, Elward said she understood the concern over increasing rates, but noted that “costs are escalating five-fold every year. You’re going to pay now or pay more later.”
The video excerpts only a fragment of the second sentence of that quote, “Pay now, or pay more later.”
Describing the attack ad as “garbage,” Elward said Draper and Larsen “are pouring massive amounts of money into this race” — just over $500,000 so far, according to independent expenditure reports filed by Grow California — “because they think they can flip this traditionally progressive seat. That’s all they’re doing.
“These attacks are designed to scare voters and destroy my record, because they cannot honestly argue against the results we’ve delivered in Rohnert Park on housing, homelessness, mental health response, and clean energy.
“These attacks are designed to scare voters and destroy my record, because they cannot honestly argue against the results we’ve delivered in Rohnert Park on housing, homelessness, mental health response, and clean energy.
“They have millions of dollars,” she said. “We have volunteers, union members, teachers, nurses, firefighters, and those who actually live here, and they’ve seen the work. I am proud to be part of the Rohnert Park City Council. Along with my colleagues, we have done a fantastic job.”
Grow California did not respond to an interview request. So far, it hasn’t gone after any of Elward’s District 12 Democratic rivals: Eli Beckman, a Corte Madera council member; Marin County Supervisor Eric Lucan; nonprofit leader Steve Schwartz and Tiburon council member Holli Thier.
Eryn Cervantes, a correctional counselor, is the lone Republican in the race.
The 12th District takes in all of Marin County and about two-thirds of Sonoma County, stretching up to Santa Rosa.
Big tech flex
The super PAC’s foray into California’s 2026 legislative contests is part of a wider movement animated by tech titans, venture capitalists and crypto kings such as Draper and Larsen. In addition to shaping the Legislature, the goals of this “big tech flex,” as Politico describes it, include influencing California’s governor’s race, and kneecapping the proposed “Billionaire Tax Act,” which could appear on the November ballot as a proposed constitutional amendment imposing on Golden State billionaires a one-time tax equal to 5% of their net worth.
David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University, noted that while tech moguls have long sought to increase their leverage in politics, “they’re not often good at picking candidates, or being candidates themselves.”
They’re better, he said, at “elevating issues.”
One problem they run into, McCuan added, is that they have so much money to spend on ad buys “they tend to overspend — to lay waste to the ground. And it leads to a backlash effect.”
That backlash could already be occurring in Southern California, where John Erickson is running for the open seat in the state Senate’s 24th District in west Los Angeles.
‘People are
disgusted’
Erickson, a former union president and organizer with wide support from labor groups, is one of eight Democrats in that race. But he’s the only one being targeted by Grow California, which has spent more than $952,000 to oppose him.
“That’s because I’m a direct threat to their ongoing, unregulated, anti-labor, crypto schemes,” he said in a phone interview Friday, May 15.
The millions being spent by Draper and Larsen underscore what Erickson describes as “the gross wealth inequality in the country, and in our state, which I’m fighting against.”
At a time when many Californians “can’t afford gas, can’t afford food, can’t afford rent, you have these two billionaires spreading lies about me. I think it shows why people are disgusted with politics.”
Erickson is fighting back. Being in Grow California’s crosshairs isn’t without its upsides, he said.
“When crypto billionaires and people who hate labor are against you — well, you know what they say, ‘Show me your enemies, and I’ll show you where you stand.’
“Frankly, they’re just making me more popular, in the long run.”
Also in Southern California but farther inland, Ada Briceño, a union president representing 32,000 hotel workers, is running to represent Assembly District 67.
With her labor background and truckload of union endorsements, Briceño is also a target of Grow California, whose negative ads against her “are coming so fast and furious, I’m kind of not paying attention to them anymore,” she said.
“I’ve confronted billionaires and corporate greed my whole career,” added Briceño, who is countering Draper and Larsen’s flood of attacks “by changing hearts and minds, having an army of volunteers, meeting people where they’re at, going door to door.”
She believes “the work that my union and I have done for 25 years in this district can’t be erased” by some negative ads by outsiders, no matter how deep-pocketed.
“We’ve touched way too many people’s lives.”
Briceño and her staff have been struck by what they see as the wasteful spending of Grow California, which is burning through $280,000 a week, by their estimate, on Los Angeles broadcast TV ads to defeat Briceño. But those broadcasts cover a vast expanse, from Ventura County to Los Angeles County to San Bernardino County, even reaching parts of Nevada — with Assembly District 67 voters comprising less than 1% of that market.
Briceño’s website even features a “Spin the Wheel” game highlighting “how anti-union Tim Draper is wasting his money against Ada Briceño!”
“They have the money, we have the people,” Elward said last week.
The longer she talked about the billionaires aligned against her, the angrier she seemed to get.
“They’re not worried about water rates. They’re scared of the ballot measure for a tax on billionaires making it to the November ballot. And trust me, I am all for that.
“If they’re going to come after someone who delivers for the teachers, the firefighters, for working families, let them come.
“They are not scaring me. I am used to dealing with people trying to put fear in me.
“You know what they are doing? They are unleashing my power.”
The ad is followed by
"PAID FOR BY GROW AMERICA
TOP FUNDERS: CHRISTIAN LARSEN & TIMOTHY DRAPER"