Eric’s Family
“The Best Thing I’ve Done”
If you want to know me,
you should also know my family.
They're my entire engine.
Why I see the world the way I do, why I'm crazy enough to run for Congress, why Rachel and I are committing our own financial resources to this campaign.
Everything I believe, I believe because of my mother, my childhood, and my faith.
Everything I'm doing, I'm doing for my kids — and I wouldn't be able to do it without Rachel.
Rachel
I met Rachel in New York the same night I accepted a job here in California. She told me I was crazy to leave. Six months later, she followed me.
She's a New Yorker. She studied art history, went to work, and then went back to school at Berkeley to study architecture. She's crazy talented.
She worked at a big firm, and was very good at it.
But Rachel is a badass, a creative, and a leader. So, naturally, she started her own practice, Vine Projects, with a friend from school.
She's building her business, expanding her practice, and absolutely killing it — all while being a wonderful mother. I'm so proud of her.
Her grandparents were born and raised in Sonoma County. Her grandmother went to UC Davis, was a rodeo queen, and even brought her horse to college.
When we were deciding where to build a life, we ended up back near where her family started.
How we got here
After college I worked in New York, and then in San Francisco for several years. In our twenties we bought a house in Cazadero, out in northwestern Sonoma County — the first place either of us had lived as adults that wasn't a city. We loved it.
Our son, Owen
Rachel got pregnant during COVID. The hospital wasn't letting both parents into the room for prenatal testing. There was one optional test where they'd allow two parents in, so we took that one, for no better reason than wanting to sit next to each other and see our baby.
That test found a severe congenital heart defect in our son. We were told our son's condition was "incompatible with life."
If we hadn't taken that optional test, we would never have known. If not for odd COVID rules, we never would have taken that test.
Owen was born and went into surgery as a newborn. His doctors saved his life. He's doing great: he's strong, healthy, and way too tall for his age.
I have never in my life been as afraid as I was that year, and I have never been as grateful.
Faith, in our house
I was raised Catholic and was confirmed as a kid. Then I spent most of my twenties not thinking about it much, the way plenty of people do.
That ended in a hospital.
When Owen was recovering, I started to pray. I realized that I had never really prayed as a child. With prayer I found space. I found the path and the perspective to take care of a sick child, and I was a changed person because of it. That prayer led me away from my prior life in business toward something completely different.
I'm a Christian, and I work at it every day. I'm still learning, and I take wisdom where I find it.
My mother sits next to me most Sundays.
You can't sit in a hospital, as strangers save your child's life, and still believe that you are an island. We are all here for each other. We are all here to help and serve each other. Nobody lives on a pedestal. My faith teaches me that none of us gets through this alone, and that we depend on the grace of others and the grace of God.
People are people, and I believe most are wonderful and good. I've seen this everywhere in life. It is a fundamental gift of human kind — or one might say, human kindness. The greatest evils often stem from systems, when individual sensitivities are dulled by large, corporate-government structures. When capitalism is poorly managed and democracy becomes co-opted by special interests, the entirety of the system can become evil, structurally crushing people every single day.
Most of what I want to do in Congress comes back to people the system failed the way it failed my father. The sick. The ones who can't pay. The kids who started out where I started, or in places with even less opportunity and hope.
Choosing Napa
After Owen's surgeries we needed to be somewhere quiet, safe, and close enough to great medical care. Cazadero was beautiful, and it was a long stretch of mountain road to the hospital.
We moved to Napa in 2021. I was 30 years old.
We chose it, and we keep choosing it. It's quiet, and it's safe, but it's still alive. It's an easy commute for Rachel. People here work with passion. It's a farm and food town in the same way the town I grew up in was — a seasonal economy that runs on water and weather — and it's full of people who care a great deal about what they grow and make. And it's close enough to a city when we need one.
My parents live here now. Three generations of us in this district, after many on Rachel's side of the family.
Our daughter, Margot
She was born in October of 2024. Healthy, and alert to everything. Our little star.
I was holding her one night when it occurred to me that I couldn't promise her what my mother promised me — that it would get better, and that this country would give her the chance to build something better than what we had.
I haven't been able to let that thought go.
Whenever this road is tough (which is often), I think of that moment. I think of her.
Being a husband and a father is the best thing I have ever done. I want my kids to have a future in the country my mother told me about. The one she promised.