Instead of uniting the left, California's billionaire tax measure has split Democratic allies

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Set us as preferred SACRAMENTO — For all the media attention California’s proposed billionaire tax has generated nationally — with some blasting it as a foolish Left Coast assault on American enterprise — the November ballot item has actually triggered a rift among progressive labor unions and Democrats, groups critical to the measure’s success.Championed by California’s largest health workers union, Proposition 40 would levy a one-time, 5% tax on California’s roughly 200 billionaires.

The measure aims to backfill Medicaid cuts signed into law last year by President Donald Trump, and would raise an estimated $100 billion.Dave Regan, the measure’s architect and president of Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, said the tax was intended to prevent “the imminent collapse of California’s health care system because of the Trump cuts in the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill.’”Regan, who has become well-known for using ballot measures as leverage in negotiations with state lawmakers and the healthcare industry, seemed poised to channel public anxiety over economic affordability, access to medical care and anti-Trump sentiment when the initiative was announced last fall.Today however, the initiative not only faces heavy and well-funded opposition from those it aims to tax, but also divided support among groups who traditionally favor taxes on the wealthy — labor unions.

Both the powerful California Teachers Association and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California have come out against Prop.40, while Teamsters California and AFSCME California support it.

Others unions have yet to weigh in, including the California Federation of Labor Unions and SEIU California, a parent organization for Regan’s healthcare worker union.Establishment Democrats are also divid...