Billionaire funds ads against wealth tax, then governor endorses his ban on future ones

…(cont) On October 2, the Washington Examiner reported what Prop 40's backers actually want: not just California's money, but a template. Passage would make Prop 40 the first state-level wealth tax in the country, and proponents hope to run the same play in other states.

On October 7, The Guardian found the other states already pushing back. Washington's own millionaire tax — a 9.9% levy on income above $1 million, on the books since March — faces a conservative-backed repeal initiative on the same November ballot, built on the claim that this one tax on high earners is a slippery slope toward taxes on everyone else.

Then, on Friday, Governor Gavin Newsom closed the loop. He endorsed Proposition 42, a competing measure that would cancel out Prop 40's billionaire tax and prohibit any new taxes on the ownership of financial assets or other personal property. The group funding Prop 42 is Building a Better California — the same group, bankrolled by the same Sergey Brin, that spent August running ads against the tax it is now asking voters to replace.

SEIU-UHW's Debru Carthan put the trade in dollar terms: millions of children and families keep losing healthcare coverage so a couple hundred billionaires do not have to pay once. That is the gap this week's record leaves sitting in plain view — not between two separate campaigns, but inside one donor's two-step. The ad blitz bought time. The endorsement buys the ban. Both invoices went to the same account, and neither one bills California's billionaires a dime.

Sacramento will count the November votes. Olympia will count its own. Building a Better California already knows which column it wants both totals to land in.