Tech billionaires hire Democratic dealmakers in push to build a Bay Area city

- California Forever is a secretive, well-funded project backed by Silicon Valley billionaires (including Marc Andreessen, Laurene Powell Jobs, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman) that aims to build a new city from scratch on 60,000+ acres of farmland in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco. - The project purchased vast tracts of agricultural land over the past several years without disclosing its backers, prompting local backlash and a state investigation into potential land speculation and water rights violations. - The article describes how the group is now hiring prominent Democratic political operatives (such as former state legislative staff and campaign strategists) to lobby for an exemption from Measure J, a Solano County voter-approved law that requires a countywide vote to convert agricultural land to urban development. - This matters because it is a test case for whether wealthy tech interests can bypass local land-use controls and community opposition to build new cities in California, a state with a severe housing crisis but also strong environmental and farmland protection laws.