California Billionaires Tax Qualifies For Ballot, Setting Up Costly Fight

A proposed tax on California billionaires’ assets has officially qualified for the November ballot, igniting the next phase of a brawl that has consumed the deeply Democratic state.

The secretary of state’s announcement Wednesday that a health care union had collected enough signatures to put a one-time, 5 percent levy on the ultrarich before voters intensifies a fight that has already upended California politics. Even as Gov. Gavin Newsom and deep-pocketed Silicon Valley foes galvanized to fight the tax, some opponents had held out hope it would fail to qualify.

But now the measure is headed to a public vote, pitting populist fury at billionaires and anti-Trump sentiment against warnings, both from Democrats like Newsom and from allied business titans, that it will backfire.

Proponents, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, argue the measure is a vital corrective to federal spending cuts that will otherwise lead to shuttered hospitals and massive job losses. Its foes, including Silicon Valley giants like Google co-founder Sergey Brin, warn the tax will undermine California’s business climate and hurt the state’s budget by driving critical tax dollars out of state.

The proposed tax has pulled Silicon Valley players into state politics as they’ve poured millions of dollars into advancing rival ballot measures and imposing their will on the state Legislature. It has also divided organized labor as some influential union leaders push back behind the scenes, worried it could undermine other tax initiatives.

There is still a chance the initiative does not go before voters. Proponents could still agree to pull it from the ballot before a late June deadline as part of a deal with lawmakers and Newsom. The measure is part of a complex landscape of tax-related ballot initiatives — including a separate union-backed tax extension, an effort by business groups to limit tax increases, and the counter-measures funded by Brin and allies — that could lay the groundwork for such an agreement.

Leaders of the health care union behind it, SEIU-UHW, have long insisted they are uninterested in a compromise and determined to go before voters. But they have recently signaled more openness as Newsom rallies unions and health care groups against the proposal.

A full-blown campaign would almost certainly be among the most expensive in California’s history, and it would offer an early gauge of Democratic voters’ economic sentiment ahead of the 2028 presidential primaries.