{"id":178272,"date":"2026-08-05T01:28:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T01:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/178272\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T01:28:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T01:28:19","slug":"california-democrats-choose-populism-in-backing-billionaire-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/178272\/","title":{"rendered":"California Democrats choose populism in backing billionaire tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maya C. Miller<\/a> and Jeanne Kuang<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, opposes the billionaire tax on voters\u2019 ballots this November. So does Xavier Becerra, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate widely favored to succeed him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t stop the state Democratic Party from narrowly endorsing it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Proposition 40 would generate an estimated $100 billion by levying a one-time 5% tax on the state\u2019s more than 200 billionaires. The bulk of the proceeds would go toward backfilling federal cuts to the state\u2019s expansive low-income health program, Medi-Cal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The idea has sparked controversy ever since a healthcare workers\u2019 union proposed it<\/a> late last year, prompting tech billionaires like Google co-founder Sergey Brin to move his business holdings out-of-state and pump millions of dollars into political committees to kill it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

After a contentious endorsement vote among the California Democratic Party\u2019s top statewide activists and officials over the weekend, it\u2019s shaping up to be the latest intra-Democratic fight exposing deep party divisions over November\u2019s ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a kumbaya measure,\u201d said Nancy Tung, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, who voted against the endorsement on Sunday. \u201cThere are very serious disagreements among Democrats and Democratic institutions that are opposed to each other over the measure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The party\u2019s endorsement validated the measure\u2019s proponents, who can use the signal of support to campaign. They argue the revenue is critical to backfill federal cuts to Medicaid and food assistance that Republicans approved in President Donald Trump\u2019s budget bill last year. Those cuts helped fund an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts that predominantly benefit the wealthiest Americans.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After Sunday\u2019s vote, Dave Regan, president of SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, released a statement saying the \u201cendorsement puts to rest the idea that California Democrats are not united by the billionaire tax \u2014 they are.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But undecided liberal voters may be confused to see the party pitted against some of its highest-profile leaders. In addition to Newsom and Becerra, doctors\u2019 and primary care providers\u2019 associations oppose the billionaire tax, along with a variety of Democratic-aligned political powerhouses like Planned Parenthood. Several labor unions are opposed. The powerful, 750,000-member SEIU California last week chose not to take a position.<\/p>\n

Opponents worry the tax would drive the wealthy out of the state, depriving California of both income tax revenue and spending. California\u2019s progressive income tax system means its revenues are particularly dependent on the fortunes of the wealthy. Some interest groups are opposed, too, because the measure primarily dedicates its revenues toward a single state program: healthcare. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst\u2019s Office estimates it could reduce long-term state revenue.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not stable, it\u2019s only temporary,\u201d California Teachers Association president David Goldberg said in an interview last month. \u201cIt intentionally goes around public education funding, it cuts it out of receiving resources.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The No campaign downplayed the party\u2019s endorsement, pointing to the party\u2019s 2024 opposition to Prop. 36, a crime measure which nonetheless passed overwhelmingly, and its support for Prop. 32, a minimum wage hike which failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Newsom, Becerra, CTA, California Professional Firefighters, Planned Parenthood and others are against Prop. 40 \u201cbecause it’s bad for our budget, bad for our economy, and bad for our future,\u201d the campaign said in a statement.<\/p>\n

A nationwide populist uprising<\/p>\n

Still, their biggest challenge is a voter base that wants to tax the rich.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a popular idea within the party,\u201d said Chris Hannan, president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council, who spoke against Prop. 40 before a party committee over the weekend. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of passion along with the populist message.\u201d<\/p>\n

A nationwide movement to more aggressively tax wealth is gaining steam among progressive Democrats as inequality worsens. The top 1% of Americans held 22% of the nation\u2019s household wealth in 1989; now they hold nearly a third<\/a>. The bottom half\u2019s share has declined from 3.5% to 2.5%. Prop. 40 is being watched closely by tax-the-rich activists around the country and has support from Rep. Ro Khanna and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California<\/a> found in May that 54% of Californians and more than 76% of Democrats surveyed supported the billionaire tax, which at that time had not officially qualified for the ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For his part, Newsom, who is expected to launch a presidential campaign after he leaves office this year, is balancing that momentum with his opposition to Prop. 40 by proposing a series of federal tax reforms he calls a \u201cnational billionaire\u2019s tax.\u201d <\/p>\n

They include reversing the 2017 tax cuts, a minimum tax rate on anyone making more than $100 million and closing loopholes that allow the wealthy to borrow from unrealized capital gains without paying income tax. He\u2019s pairing his stances with talk of capturing and redistributing wealth generated by artificial intelligence, an issue with wide appeal among job-insecure Americans.<\/p>\n

The No on 40 campaign, too, points to an alternative \u2014 Proposition 3, which would make permanent the existing top income tax rates on the state\u2019s highest earners. Crucially for groups like CTA, Prop. 3 revenue would flow into the state\u2019s general fund, about 40% of which is set aside for education, but would allow the rest to go toward other needs.<\/p>\n

A desire among some leaders to meet populist demands drove the contentious, dramatic push for the party endorsement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At first, the vote to endorse failed after supporters barely missed the 60% threshold needed for an endorsement from the over 200 state Democratic Party officials gathered. Opponents pushed for a formal \u201cno consensus\u201d position \u2014 a move that Democratic National Committee member David Atkins argued was \u201ccategorically weak\u201d and would alienate voters \u201cwho already believe that we are in the pockets of corporations and billionaires.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels kind of weird to just sit out as a party and say, \u2018We don’t really have an opinion on a billionaire tax in this moment,\u2019\u201d said Jane Natoli, a member of the party resolutions committee.<\/p>\n

After several tense seconds of murmuring, two people changed their votes, setting up\u00a0 the final tally that made the endorsement official.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was cinematic,\u201d Atkins said. \u201cIt was sort of a movie moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Supporters said though nearly all Democrats there agreed wealthy Californians should pay more in taxes to fund social services, a majority didn\u2019t buy opponents\u2019 arguments that they should approach the issue more slowly and deliberately.<\/p>\n

\u201cProp 40 is not perfect. I don’t think anyone will tell you it is,\u201d Natoli said. \u201cMaybe it doesn’t work, but at the same time, it just doesn’t really feel like a moment where we can be sitting on our hands and saying, \u2018Eh, let’s go back and work at it another two years.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Maya C. Miller and Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[147],"tags":[47163,542,5019,1049,23275],"class_list":["post-178272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gavin-newsom","tag-ballot-measure","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-health-care","tag-taxes","tag-xavier-becerra"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117040310049605688","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}