![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/GavinNewsomEconomyGetty-698df8f6.jpg\")
<\/p>\nProposition 40 proponents say the tax would help backfill federal Medical cuts. But as Newsom weighs a presidential run, is he also looking ahead to how it might play to donors and voters?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Gov. Gavin Newsom looks on at the California Economic Summit in Long Beach, California, on Oct. 14, 2026. While polls indicate a tight race, some billionaires seem to be preparing for the possibility of the tax passing.\u00a0(Patrick T. Fallon\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
To hear Gov. Gavin Newsom<\/a> talk about billionaires and inequality, you\u2019d think he would be squarely behind a proposal on California\u2019s November ballot that would levy a wealth tax on the richest Californians to help pay for healthcare.<\/p>\n In a video<\/a> posted to his Substack and YouTube channel in June, Newsom argued that the country\u2019s tax system is \u201cfundamentally broken.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThink about this: Just 10% of the people, 10% of the people in the country, own two-thirds of the wealth. A 30-year-old, for the first time in American history, is not doing better than his or her parents. That\u2019s a five-alarm fire,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s time for an economic reset, a true minimum tax. A true minimum tax on billionaires that ensures the people at the very top pay at least the tax rate their own workers pay.\u201d<\/p>\n But like many high-profile Democrats and some of their strongest allies in this deep blue state, the governor is opposed to Proposition 40.<\/p>\n The ballot measure, proposed by a healthcare union, would impose a one-time, 5% tax on the overall wealth of the state\u2019s approximately 200 billionaires. The money would be used to backfill deep federal budget cuts to Medicaid, which provides health insurance to low-income Americans \u2014 including nearly 15 million Californians.<\/p>\n Newsom has argued Proposition 40 is bad for California. He said this kind of tax should be imposed on the national level, so billionaires won\u2019t just pack up and leave the state. And he insisted that the tax will ultimately hurt the state\u2019s budget more than it will help, by chasing wealthy entrepreneurs and their businesses to other states with lower tax burdens.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s made no secret of it \u2014 he\u2019s going to run for president. And that\u2019s why he\u2019s not just opposed to Prop. 40. He\u2019s vehemently campaigning against it because he needs those billionaires on his side,\u201d Chakrabarti said.<\/p>\n But the billionaires may not be Newsom\u2019s only audience. Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University, said he thinks Newsom\u2019s opposition to the billionaire tax will help him with centrist Democrats he would need to capture the Democratic nomination in 2028.<\/p>\n \u201cIt defuses him being the total lefty from California,\u201d said Guerra, who predicted that the tax will get defeated.\u00a0<\/p>\n If it loses, Guerra said, that only gives Newsom more fuel \u2014 especially because the coalition opposing the tax includes the California Teachers Association and some other big unions with political muscle. Guerra said that coalition allows Newsom to make a credibility argument and not just with moderate Democrats.<\/p>\n If it loses, \u201che\u2019s going to say, as he did with the (unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial) recall and other things, hey, the voters have spoken, and they defeated this thing. And I was on the right side. I was on the side of the majority of the voters in California, just like I\u2019ll be on the right side with you,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Jim Kessler at the center-left think tank Third Way said that while more left-leaning candidates could attack Newsom in a presidential primary for opposing Proposition 40, those critiques could backfire.<\/p>\n \u201cThat might help him, even in a Democratic primary, because the top issue for Democratic primary voters in presidential elections is, is this person electable? And they don\u2019t think someone overly progressive is electable,\u201d Kessler said. \u201cNo one believes that California is an under-taxed state. So there isn\u2019t a belief out there that, oh, there\u2019s all sorts of tax breaks for people and wealthy people in California.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the billionaires who plans to support Newsom in 2028 is Chris Larsen, who\u2019s donated over $12 million to oppose Proposition 40. Larsen said on KQED\u2019s Political Breakdown podcast that he thinks the AI explosion is one of Newsom\u2019s biggest assets in a presidential run.<\/p>\n \u201cYou mean that he comes from the fourth largest economy in the world that\u2019s had the highest number of job growth?\u201d he said, joking that the state is \u201cso messed up that this is the center of the most powerful technology ever created.\u201d<\/p>\n Those AI founders could have gone to Miami or Austin, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not there. They\u2019re all here,\u201d he said. \u201cCalifornia is kicking ass.\u201d<\/p>\n But the politics of the proposition do appear to be more complicated than either side is letting on: Some high-profile California Democrats have purposefully stayed mum on the tax<\/a> \u2014 including former Vice President Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, seeming to want to stay out of a fight between deep-pocketed donors and labor unions.<\/p>\n And while polls indicate a tight race, some billionaires seem to be preparing for the possibility of the tax passing: Just last week, Meta struck a new deal with CEO Mark Zuckerberg to keep him in California after he had warned he was considering leaving the state if Proposition 40 passes \u2014 offering him a new non-voting class of shares he can sell to foot a multibillion-dollar tax bill.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, backers of Proposition 40 are becoming increasingly aggressive about their disappointment with the governor \u2014 and their sense that his opposition to the tax is politically motivated.<\/p>\n On Friday, the Yes on Prop. 40 campaign announced new TV and digital ads calling out Newsom.<\/p>\n But those ads aren\u2019t running in California, where the yes side is being heavily outspent: They\u2019re running in key early presidential primary states, including South Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and New Hampshire.<\/p>\n Dave Regan is president of SEIU-UHW West and the architect of the billionaire tax. In a July interview with KQED\u2019s Political Breakdown, he noted reports that Google co-founder Sergey Brin \u2014 who\u2019s been the most prolific contributor among the tech billionaires who oppose Proposition 40 \u2014 confronted Newsom about the wealth tax in a treehouse<\/a> at Larsen\u2019s holiday party last winter.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t go to treehouse parties with billionaires. I think most Californians don\u2019t go to tree house parties with billionaires,\u201d Regan said. \u201cHe is not living in the same world, and he is trying to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from these folks \u2026 he is acting like a politician with a campaign problem and not a governor with a healthcare problem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Proposition 40 proponents say the tax would help backfill federal Medical cuts. But as Newsom weighs a presidential…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-508340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Prop40BillionairesTaxGetty.jpg\")
A supporter with the Billionaire Tax Now coalition holds a placard during a media briefing in Los Angeles on April 27, 2026.\u00a0(Frederic J. Brown\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/060226CHAKRABARTI_GH_007-KQED.jpg\")
Congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti addresses supporters during an election night event at The Chapel on June 3, 2026, in San Francisco.\u00a0(Gustavo Hernandez\/KQED)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/261015-CHRIS-LARSEN-ON-PB-MD-01-KQED-4442b2c5.jpg\")
Chris Larsen speaks with Marisa Lagos on Political Breakdown at KQED in San Francisco on Oct. 15, 2026.\u00a0(Martin do Nascimento\/KQED)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/MetaGetty.jpg\")
CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg (center), attends the inauguration ceremony of Donald Trump as he swears in as the 47th U.S. President in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.\u00a0(Kenny Holston\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n