The outcome could hinder the wealth tax movement in California and across the country in future years.
Page F139From§Eachthe evening edition — 10 November 2026
250 TO 1
California billionaires spent 250-to-1 to defeat a tax on billionaires, then outlawed asking again.
As it ran on the front
California voters turned down a one-time 5 percent tax on the state's billionaires this week, and the filing is worth running against the table. Proposition 40 asked residents worth $1 billion or more to hand over a nickel on the dollar, once, to backfill the hole the Big Beautiful Bill tore in the state's Medicaid budget. The people being asked to pay spent to make sure the question lost.
The headline over that count used someone else's word for it, in quotation marks: "Obscene." The receipts don't say who first used it. The number doesn't need the attribution.…
…(cont) One of the tech billionaires funding the opposition had already said on the record he would not leave the state even if the tax passed. He spent against it anyway.
SEIU-UHW, the union that had been running the campaign for the tax Newsom was now working against, called it his true colors.
Run the tape back further, to September 21, and the tax was still winning: a group of Nobel Prize-winning economists called Prop 40 a possible turning point in the battle between democracy and oligarchy, and the measure was polling at 52 percent support. Fifty days and $379 million later, it lost. That is the gap worth naming — not the merits, the money.
The health-care hole Prop 40 was written to backfill is still open. The receipts here don't say by how much it has grown, or who, if anyone, has proposed closing it. What they show is simpler: a five-point tax on fortunes over a billion dollars lost to the fortunes it would have touched, and the backup measure, if it holds, is built so the question doesn't get asked twice, hon.
“You don't spend $379 million to beat a nickel-on-the-dollar tax unless that nickel was going to cost you a lot more than $379 million — that's just the math. They didn't stop at winning, they got the governor to help wall off the door so the question can't come back next cycle. That's not a ballot measure, that's a lock, and the hole in the health budget it was supposed to fill stays open.”
“This isn't about protecting billionaires, it's about protecting jobs — tax wealth and the wealth just moves, and then who's left holding the state budget? Sure, one of the guys funding the no campaign said on the record he wasn't leaving even if it passed — but that's, that doesn't really undercut my point, does it. Voters looked at the numbers and said no, and that's just democracy working.”
The receipts
NBC News projects that Proposition 40, which split Democrats in the state and nationally, failed after facing a barrage of attack ads.
The tax was introduced in response to steep cuts to California's healthcare funding that resulted from the passage of President Donald Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill."
The novel proposal would have charged billionaires a one-time 5% tax on most of their overall wealth, including their ownership in companies.
Foes of a California ballot initiative to establish a one-time 5% wealth tax on the state's billionaires have spent vastly more on advertising than proponents—and polls show that money may be having an impact. A Monday report in The Washington Post estimated that opponents of California’s Proposition 40, led by Google co-founder Sergey…
Proposition 40 targeted Californian billionaires with a 5% tax on their total wealth, including assets such as shares as well as income.
Voters in California have rejected a tax on the state's wealthiest residents, CBS News projects, following a campaign that has split traditional allies and shattered spending records for a tax-related measure in California.
California voters have rejected a one-time tax on billionaires, US media projected, despite growing anger over global wealth disparity.
The one-time 5% tax on billionaires, which was put to a referendum on November 3, was rejected according to the Associated Press. Following the Democratic victory in the midterm elections, the debate over taxing big fortunes is nevertheless expected to return to the forefront.
· Sanders: Billionaires Fighting Prop 40 Would 'Rather Poor Kids With Cancer Die Than Pay a Little More in Taxes' from the morgue, 27 Oct 2026
· Newsom Endorses Ballot Measure That Would Cancel Out Billionaire Tax—and Ban Future Wealth Taxes from the morgue, 11 Oct 2026
· Nobel-Winning Economists Say California Billionaire Tax Could Be ‘Turning Point in the Battle Between Democracy and Oligarchy’ from the morgue, 21 Sep 2026
· Newsom battles with California Democrats over billionaire tax proposal from the morgue, 13 Oct 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.