As national Democrats look for an issue that can unify voters heading into the fall’s midterm elections, a California ballot fight over taxing billionaires has turned into a public test of some of the party’s most prominent figures. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders traveled to Los Angeles on Wednesday to campaign for the proposal, saying the country is at a crisis point where “massive income and wealth inequality” has concentrated power among the “billionaire class,” even as working-class Americans struggle to pay household bills.
Sanders told supporters at an evening rally near downtown that passing the tax would demonstrate that people still have “some power” in a democratic society. He said “Enough is enough,” arguing that “The billionaire class cannot have it all” and that “This nation belongs to all of us.” The senator, who has campaigned for decades against what he characterizes as wealthy elites and the widening gap between rich and poor, has remained a California political force—winning the state’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary in a runaway.
The proposal Sanders backed is being advanced by a large health care union that is seeking to place it before voters in November. Supporters describe it as a one-time 5% tax on the assets of billionaires, including stocks, art, businesses, collectibles and intellectual property, with the goal of backfilling federal funding cuts to health services for lower-income people that were signed by President Donald Trump last year.
Newsom, a leading figure in the state’s Democratic Party, has pushed back sharply. In opposing the measure, he has warned it could leave government finances in crisis and put California at a competitive disadvantage nationally, positions that have put him on the same side of the ballot debate as Republicans who have criticized the proposal for potentially erasing jobs.
The intraparty split has also sharpened the debate over what the tax would and would not accomplish. Brian Brokaw, a longtime Newsom adviser who is leading a political committee opposing the tax, said none of the issues motivating Democrats this year—affordability, health care costs, and cuts to schools—would be fixed by the proposal and that, if anything, they would be “made worse.” A University of California, Berkeley political science professor, Eric Schickler, said in an email that it is “always better” for a party to focus on issues where it is unified rather than divided, adding that having Newsom and Sanders—and others—on different sides is “not ideal.”
Sanders’s argument at the rally blended economic inequality with cultural and political themes. He did not mention Newsom during his nearly 30-minute speech, but he name-checked billionaires including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Sergey Brin as examples of wealthy elites who, he said, “no longer sees itself as part of American society.” He also urged the crowd to support the tax by citing protests against federal immigration raids in Minnesota, arguing that Californians can show, when they “stand together,” they can “take on the oligarchs and the billionaires.”
Opponents and supporters are already preparing for a possible ballot fight. Coinciding with Sanders’s visit and an upcoming state Democratic convention this weekend, the opposition effort is sending targeted emails and social media ads aimed at influencing party insiders. It is not clear whether the proposal will ultimately make the ballot: supporters must gather more than 870,000 petition signatures to place it before voters.
The dispute is emerging in a wider context of voter unease across party lines. Distrust of government and doubts about its ability to deliver are widespread, and analysts say that, for California, an exodus of billionaires could mean losing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue for the nation’s most populous state. Supporters of the plan argue, by contrast, that the funding is needed to offset federal cuts that could leave many Californians without vital services.
Sanders’s campaign also intersects with California’s own political landscape beyond the ballot measure. The issue has “trickled” into governor contests and down the ballot, with Republican candidates for governor including Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton warning the tax would erase jobs. Democratic candidate Matt Mahan, a San Jose mayor, has said inequality starts at the federal level, where the tax code contains loopholes.