California voters rejected Proposition 40, a proposed wealth tax on the net worth of billionaires, spurning a ballot proposition that would have imposed a one-time 5% tax on any Californian whose net worth exceeded $1 billion.
With 100% of precincts reporting results as of Monday evening, 52.8% of Californians who voted for the measure, or 5,909,899 people, voted against it, according to California’s secretary of state.
Despite a sweeping blue wave that saw numerous prominent progressive Democrats such as Los Angeles Mayor-elect Nithya Raman win their races, the far-left pet policy wealth tax did not make it past the state’s voters thanks in part to Gov. Gavin Newsom taking a stand against the measure.
Newsom, a rumored 2028 presidential hopeful, wrote a lengthy Substack post in June explaining why he’d be voting against the measure while imploring Californians to do the same.
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Rather than come out generally against a wealth tax, Newsom objected particularly to the fact that, under the measure’s text, revenue taken from the state’s billionaires would go exclusively to funding healthcare.
“I’m voting no because this measure dedicates almost all of the revenue it raises to a single category of state spending,” he wrote in the post.
“There is nothing for housing, nothing for childcare, nothing for public safety workers who must answer 911 calls, and nothing for our public universities that have powered California’s economy for a decade,” Newsom added.
The California governor has still said that he supports a national wealth tax on anyone with a net worth over $100 million.
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Newsom joined a number of the state’s trade associations and unions in opposing the measure, including the California Teachers Association, California Medical Association, California Children’s Hospital Association and California Professional Firefighters.
“Proposition 40 was a reckless experiment conducted on our state’s economy with little regard for the harms it would cause,” a coalition of the groups opposed to the proposal wrote in a statement.
Also opposing the measure, and pouring millions of dollars into political action committees to defeat it, were a number of California’s wealthy technology executives. Google co-founder Sergey Brin spent over $100 million of his own money to help nix the measure.
A wealth tax has long been a popular policy for progressives like Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Opponents to the measure feared it could drive the state’s billionaires — whose taxes are a key revenue source for the state — elsewhere. The ballot initiative was crafted with a potential exodus in mind, and would have retroactively taxed any billionaire living in California on or before January 1, 2026. Despite this, some of the state’s most wealthy, like Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, openly pledged not to leave.
Supporters of the measure have already begun running advertisements in key Democratic primary states such as New Hampshire and Virginia criticizing Newsom for opposing the measure.
Fox News Digital contacted Gov. Newsom’s office, the California Teachers Association, California Medical Association, California Children’s Hospital Association and California Professional Firefighters for further comment.
