The Associated Press called California’s redrawn 4th District for the self-funded newcomer on Friday night; the results are unofficial until certified, and the delegation loses one of its most senior members on tax and gun policy.
For 28 years, Rep. Mike Thompson has been the North Bay’s man on the House Ways and Means Committee, a co-founder of Congress’s wine caucus and, since the Sandy Hook massacre, the Democrat his party turned to on gun legislation. On Friday night he conceded that he will not be back in January.
The Associated Press called California’s 4th District for Eric Jones, a first-time candidate and former venture capitalist, ten days after the Nov. 3 election. With an estimated 95 percent of ballots counted, Mr. Jones led 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent, The Press Democrat reported. The results are unofficial until counties and the secretary of state certify them.
“I’m proud of my service,” Mr. Thompson said in a statement conceding the race, in which he listed his work on renewable energy, gun-violence prevention and wildfire recovery. “While these results are neither what my team and I worked for nor hoped for, I’m grateful to the hundreds of local elected officials and community leaders who supported our campaign.”
How the race was won
The contest was the product of Proposition 50, the 2025 measure that redrew California’s congressional map. It stretched the 4th District from Mr. Thompson’s base in Napa, Sonoma and Yolo Counties into Lake County and the Sacramento Valley, adding Colusa, Sutter, Yuba and parts of Placer and Sacramento Counties.
Mr. Thompson held Napa, Sonoma and Yolo, according to The Press Democrat, but his margin in Sonoma was under five points, and Mr. Jones won Lake County and the newly added counties, leading by 38 points in Sutter and 35 in Yuba as of Friday afternoon.
Mr. Jones put about $14.8 million of his own money into the race, according to the Los Angeles Times, and campaigned on keeping corporate money out of politics, lowering the cost of living and a government that “lives within its means.” He said he held more than 200 town halls. “We didn’t win because of partisanship,” he told The Press Democrat. “There’s an economic reality a lot of Americans are facing. A complete lack of trust in government.”
Mr. Thompson had been endorsed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and the California Democratic Party, The Times reported. His supporters objected to the challenger’s advertising, and to ads from an outside group, New Leadership Now PAC, that accused Mr. Thompson of being too soft on illegal immigration, The Press Democrat reported.
What leaves with him: the tax seat
The most consequential loss for California may be the least visible. Mr. Thompson sits on Ways and Means, the House committee that writes tax law and oversees trade, Medicare and Social Security, and he is the top Democrat on its tax policy subcommittee, according to the House committee roster and The Times.
That seniority comes due at an awkward moment. Democrats won control of the House on Nov. 3 and take the majority in January, when the ranking members of subcommittees are usually first in line for their gavels. The tax subcommittee is where a new majority’s tax agenda, including any changes to the cap on the state and local tax deduction that matters so much to high-cost California households, would first take shape. Whoever leads it next year will not be from the North Bay.
The gun-violence task force
Mr. Thompson, a Vietnam veteran and hunter, has chaired the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force since Democrats created it after the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. He was the lead author of the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, the universal background-check bill that passed the House in 2019 and 2021 but stalled in the Senate.
His approach, pairing a gun owner’s credibility with expanded background checks, made him a bridge to the handful of Republicans who supported the bill. Gun-rights groups, and most House Republicans, opposed it, arguing that it would burden lawful private transfers between law-abiding citizens without stopping criminals, who largely obtain guns outside legal channels. With Mr. Thompson’s departure, the task force will need a new chair when Democrats organize in January.
Wine country’s man in Washington
Mr. Thompson, a lifelong St. Helena resident who represented the area in the state Senate before going to Congress in 1999, co-founded the Congressional Wine Caucus and has been the industry’s most reliable advocate on tariffs, labeling and labor. In his concession statement he also pointed to federal money he secured for fire recovery in a region that has burned repeatedly since 2017.
Mr. Jones lives in Napa, The Press Democrat reported, and will represent the same vineyards. But as a freshman, he will start at the bottom of whatever committees he is assigned. He has said he is already working on campaign-finance reform with other members of the incoming class, the Times reported, and has not said which committee seats he will seek.
The delegation in January
Mr. Thompson’s defeat came in a year that otherwise favored his party in California. Democrats flipped five Republican-held California seats under the new map, as The Inquirer reported on Nov. 8. In the 4th District, the new map instead turned a Democrat-on-Democrat contest into a generational one, and the incumbent lost.
“My team and I have always lived by one principle: We’re here to do the people’s work serving our district, and that job is never too big nor too small,” Mr. Thompson said. He has seven weeks left in the job.
Ingrid Lindqvist covers Northern California’s members of Congress on Capitol Hill, from committee rooms and floor votes to the bills and spending that reach the region, for The Delegation. More from Ingrid Lindqvist
