The 39-year-old French-American Berkeley professor is campaigning to have voters approve, in a November 3 referendum, a measure that would temporarily impose a 5% tax on the wealth of billionaires living in the state. Some of his colleagues consider that his activism has begun to overshadow his scientific approach.
Page F121From§Eachthe morning edition — 18 October 2026
Newsom endorses the measure that cancels the billionaire tax he let California's voters decide on his own
As it ran on the front
Proposition 40 asks California voters, on November 3, to impose a one-time, 5 percent tax on the wealth of billionaire residents, with proceeds earmarked for health care, education and food assistance. In August, two campaign groups formed to stop it — Building a Better California and Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes — launched an advertising blitz. The money behind the ads traces to Google co-founder Sergey Brin and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, two of the state's richest residents, the kind of resident the tax is written to reach.
The ads kept running into September, when six Nobel Prize-winning economists, including Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist of the World Bank, signed an open letter backing the measure. The letter called it what could be the first billionaire wealth tax approved by American voters, if they approve it this November — a conditional the campaign against the tax did not wait around to see resolved.…
…(cont) On October 1 came a defection from the other side of the ledger. John O'Farrell, a former partner at the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, posted a twelve-part thread under his own name explaining why he would be happy to pay the tax himself. He said so as the man who would owe the check, not the man asking someone else to write it.
Ten days later, on October 11, Gov. Gavin Newsom supplied the countermove. He endorsed a rival ballot measure built to cancel Proposition 40 out — and, in the same measure, to bar any future tax on the ownership of financial assets in the state, not only this one. Newsom signed nothing; a ballot measure is not enacted by a governor's signature, it is decided by the same voters the Nobel letter is addressed to. His endorsement asks them to cancel, this November, what that letter asked them to pass. SEIU-UHW's vice president, Debru Carthan, called it Newsom showing the state his true colors.
Some of his colleagues say the touring has started to crowd out the scholarship. The two measures reach the same ballot together: one asks voters to tax the people funding the campaign against it, the other, endorsed by the state's governor, asks the same voters to make sure nobody gets asked again.
“Here's the trick: you put the tax and the eraser on the same ballot, and the governor endorses the eraser. That's not two stories, hon, that's one hand writing the check and the other hand voting against it. Two hundred people can fund both sides of a fight and still only lose one of them.”
“Look, the governor's just being fiscally responsible, protecting California's competitiveness, he's not — okay, he endorsed the measure that cancels the other measure, I see how that reads. But banning future wealth taxes too, that's just — that's just good planning. Did I say that? That doesn't sound like me.”
Earlier in this story
- Newsom pitches a federal stock-trading ban, then endorses the measure canceling his state's billionaire tax. By Ruth · the afternoon edition, 17 October 2026
The receipts
California Gov. Gavin Newsom ramped up his opposition to a proposed tax on the state's billionaire residents on Friday by endorsing a competing ballot measure that would both cancel out the billionaire wealth tax initiative and prohibit any new taxes on the ownership of financial assets or other personal property. "He’s showing…
· 'I Know Where I Want to Live': Ex-Venture Capitalist Explains Why He'd Be Happy to Pay California Billionaire Tax from the morgue, 1 Oct 2026
· Nobel Prize-Winning Economists Back First Billionaire Tax in US from the morgue, 21 Sep 2026
· Billionaire-Backed Groups Launch Ad Blitz Against California Wealth Tax from the morgue, 25 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.