Californias biggest election loser is Dave Regan, union boss who blew $32M in member dues on billionaire tax

Labor boss Dave Regan tried unsuccessfully to tax billionaires this election season, earning a humiliating, if unofficial, title: California’s biggest election loser.Regan, who serves as president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, led an unprecedented effort this year to levy a one-time tax on the state’s billionaires, kicking off a nearly $400 million fight on three connected state ballot measures.By the end of Tuesday, it was clear the most controversial of the measures, Proposition 40, would go down in flames with almost 56% of voters opposed to the wealth tax.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story And if that shellacking wasn’t bad enough, Regan’s other pet ballot measure — Prop.44, which could have forced community health clinics to spend 90% of their revenues on program services — was rejected by 82% of voters.

The union and its political spending arm squandered $17 million on the failed measure.“His members should be driving him out with a pitchfork,” one California Democratic strategist told The California Post.“He should be embarrassed, but he won’t be because that’s just the kind of guy who he is.”From past failed attempts to rein in dialysis clinics to this year’s billionaire tax and Prop.

44, the strategist estimated that Regan’s union had burned through more than $100 million in members’ dues on losing ballot fights over the years.The defeat came on the heels of an embarrassing September surprise in which Regan was accused of threatening female colleagues and assaulting ex-labor executive Courtni Pugh, a Democratic operative close with Gov.Gavin Newsom and Gov.-elect Xavier Becerra, who was working to defeat the billionaire tax.SEIU-UHW’s committee that backed the billionaire tax reported $37.3 million in expendi...