Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
When Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) finally met with the mysterious forces behind the Northern California land grab that has troubled his constituents for the last six years, he was a little unimpressed.
His first impression? “They have a long, long, long, long, long way to go,” he told The Daily Beast.
Thompson is the first known legislator to meet with representatives of Flannery Associates, a secretive company that has purchased thousands of acres in rural Solano County, California without revealing the names or motivations of its backers. Last week, the group was reported to be a group of tech billionaires, including venture capitalist Michael Moritz and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffamn, who plan to use the land to build a new utopian city between San Francisco and Sacramento.