With the failure to reach a compromise ahead of Thursday’s deadline to finalize the November ballot, the Service Employees International Union – United Healthcare Workers West vowed to fight for its proposed billionaire wealth tax.
According to reporter Ashley Zavala, a vice president at the union blasted Gov. Gavin Newsom’s opposition to the proposed state wealth tax, saying it puts him in “lock step with President Donald Trump.”
That is not exactly the look the governor wants as he looks ahead to the 2028 presidential contest. It’s no surprise, then, that Newsom has since pivoted to reinforce his left-wing bona fides.
On Friday, the governor declared in a Substack post, “It’s time for a national billionaires’ tax and a new social compact,” arguing, “We must democratize the American economy to save democracy.”
The political move here is fairly transparent. Newsom hopes he can buy himself credit on the left by saying he’s as upset about the wealth of billionaires as anyone, it’s just that he doesn’t like this specific state wealth tax proposal.
In his Substack post, the governor complains, rightly, that the proposal from the healthcare union would devote 90% of revenues from the 5% wealth tax specifically to healthcare.
But Newsom specifically laments that this allocation “ignores our public schools, as the California Teachers Association has rightly pointed out” and “turns a blind eye to safety-net clinics and reproductive healthcare providers that Planned Parenthood has fought for decades to protect.” In other words, he’s upset that one special interest group is trying to get all the money without sufficiently divvying it up with his favorite special interests.
Newsom’s post goes on to sketch out his ideas on a national billionaire tax, rehashing the classic leftist trope that “trickle-down economics has been a nearly 50-year experiment that has failed,” calling for revisiting inheritance rules, and making several assertions meant to buy him credibility on the left.
Whatever his actual motivations for opposing the SEIU-UHW’s wealth tax, he’s on the right side on that upcoming ballot measure (at least).
The union’s proposal, besides being a grotesque money grab, is sloppily written and already backfiring on California as billionaires take their money elsewhere. Voters definitely need to reject it when they get their ballots.
In the meantime, however, it’ll be amusing to watch Newsom’s political balancing act as he tries to defeat the state wealth tax while saving face with the left-wing of his party.