Divided California Democrats Endorse Billionaire Wealth Tax After Dramatic Re-Vote
The party’s old power brokers tried to stop the billionaire wealth confiscation for their own reasons. The activist left prevailed.
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What Party Is This Now?
Some of the people trying to keep the California Democratic Party from endorsing Proposition 40 were working from an outdated playbook.
They assumed that elected officials, union leaders and the party’s institutional powers could lean on delegates and keep them from doing something reckless. There was a time when that might have worked. Not anymore.
Those people still have titles, money and influence. But they are increasingly passengers in a party whose activist base has moved well to their left.
Last weekend, at the party’s summer executive board meeting in San Diego, delegates endorsed Proposition 40, the November ballot measure that would take up to 5 percent of the covered assets of Californians worth more than $1 billion.
I don’t call it a wealth tax. Proposition 40 is not a tax on newly earned income or a transaction. It is a retroactive government claim on wealth accumulated over decades, based on where someone lived on Jan. 1, 2026 — months before voters decide whether to approve it.
Confiscation is the more accurate word.
How The Left Won…
The dramatic fight over the party endorsement tells us just as much about today’s California Democratic Party as the measure itself.
But…
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Below the paywall, paid subscribers can continue reading about:
How Rep. Maxine Waters helped reverse the first failed vote
Which powerful Democratic organizations tried to stop the endorsement
What the gubernatorial primary revealed about the center-left
What the endorsement gives the Proposition 40 campaign
Why the party may be a poor messenger to the voters who will decide the election
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