The California Democratic Party convened its executive board this past weekend in San Diego to vote on endorsing or opposing the 14 ballot measures that will be decided in the November general election.
The most notable endorsement was for Proposition 40, a one-time tax on billionaires that has now divided the party from the highest-profile Democrats in the state. Gov. Gavin Newsom and gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra have expressed opposition to this proposition.
Newsom posted on Substack in June that a state-level tax is the wrong approach to taxing billionaires, and called for a national wealth tax instead. “Wealth is movable, and it shops for the state with the lowest taxes,” Newsom wrote. “The fight belongs at the federal level, where this broken system was created in the first place.”
Becerra’s office directed KPBS to a statement given to Politico earlier this year.
“Every Californian must pay their fair share, and no billionaire should pay taxes at rates lower than teachers, firefighters or nurses,” the statement said. “But this is sketchy policy.”
That opposition at the highest level stands in contrast to local democrats like Will Rodriguez-Kennedy, chair of the San Diego County Democratic Party. He said the stakes are too high not to support this tax.
“Because of the Trump administration's cruel cuts on healthcare and food assistance, people are literally going to die,” Rodriguez-Kennedy said. “They're going to die because hospitals are going to start shutting down. They're going to die because they don't have food – the food assistance that was normally granted and that now, now we have to – now people will literally starve.”
“What we're doing is we're asking people who are doing better off than they've ever done before to do a little bit more so that people literally don't die and starve in the streets,” Rodriguez-Kennedy continued.
More than 4 million people nationwide have lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, as a result of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" signed by President Donald Trump.
And at least 5 million people have dropped Affordable Care Act or ACA insurance policies since the Republican-controlled Congress let ACA subsidies expire.
County Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe said during a board meeting that 93,000 CalFresh food assistance recipients in the county could lose access due to the bill, and supported county efforts to backfill cuts to the program.
And county supervisors Montgomery Steppe and Terra Lawson-Remer said hundreds of thousands of Medi-Cal recipients in the county could lose their benefits as well.
Prop. 40 would allocate 90% of its revenue to support healthcare in the state, and the other 10% would backfill food assistance programs, according to the California secretary of state’s ballot measure information page.
“Prop. 40 could potentially raise tens of billions in revenue in the short-term to preserve critical services, but may also lead to some income tax revenue losses in future years to the extent that billionaires leave the state to avoid the tax,” the California Budget and Policy Center wrote in a report on the proposition.
The San Diego Lincoln Club Business League Chairman Scott Bedingfield said in a statement to KPBS the potential long-term losses aren’t worth the immediate financial boon.
“California is already one of the most expensive and heavily taxed states in America,” Chairman Bedingfield said. “Proposition 40 risks driving investment and jobs elsewhere while doing nothing to address Sacramento’s spending problem. We should be making California more affordable and competitive, not giving successful people and businesses another reason to leave.”
Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) is the official proponent of the proposition. “We refuse to accept a future where tens of millions of working families pay the price for tax cuts that benefit 200 billionaires,” SEIU-UHW Chief of Staff Suzanne Jimenez said in a statement to KPBS. “We are proud to stand alongside California Democrats in fighting for passage of the billionaire tax — Prop 40. We will work together to put patients first. We will ask those who have gained the most from our economy to help preserve the healthcare access, including to emergency services, that every Californian needs and deserves.”
Voters will receive an information booklet before the Nov. 3 general election that will show the Democratic Party’s endorsements, including for Proposition 40.
