Billionaires or Democracy

The fight over the California billionaire wealth tax ballot initiative has been covered largely as a state tax and budget issue, but that is too narrow a lens. At its core, this fight over the health and well-being of millions of Californians is about democracy.

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In a democracy, there is a simple principle: Voters decide, not the people with the most money. Today, that principle is under extraordinary strain. The 170 biggest-spending billionaire families have already contributed a record-breaking $1.7 billion to the 2026 midterm elections. Elon Musk, now the world’s first trillionaire, has spent more than $480 million to bend the outcome toward his own financial and political interests. Billionaires are deploying unprecedented sums to drown out the voices of ordinary voters, and they are proving a hard truth: We can have a government of, by, and for billionaires, or the people, but we cannot have both.

The fight over Prop 40—which would impose a one-time 5 percent tax on the net assets of billionaires to provide healthcare, as well as food assistance and education, to millions of Californians—is Exhibit A in the threat that runaway extreme wealth poses to our society. Californians overwhelmingly support taxing the ultrarich. So, instead of persuading voters differently, a handful of billionaires have spent the past year trying to stop them from voting at all.

§ First, they tried to price democracy out of reach, driving up the cost of signature collection to keep the Billionaire Tax Act off the ballot;

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§ When that failed, they tried to buy the company collecting the signatures; and

§ When that failed, they bankrolled two poison-pill measures, Props 41 and 42, designed to confuse voters, undermine Prop 40, and shield their fortunes from taxation permanently.

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Now they are flooding the airwaves with misinformation, pouring more than $429 million into anti-wealth-tax efforts—more than Musk spent in the 2024 presidential election that landed him influence to grow his wealth to trillionaire status. And as a recent report shows, the billionaires complaining about Prop 40’s one-time 5 percent tax have seen their wealth surge by an average of 65 percent during the past 20 months and have paid only 0.26 percent of their wealth in state income taxes over five recent years. But the opposition’s playbook has nothing to do with morality or the merits. It is about whether concentrated wealth can override the will of the majority and drown out our votes.

That is why this fight matters so much for California and the nation. For people who spend more than $330 million and barely notice, this is a pilot program. If it works, every billionaire in America learns the lesson: When voters want something you don’t, then you obstruct, confuse, and outspend them until they give up. We cannot let that become the playbook. And the stakes will only grow as artificial intelligence threatens to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of these very tech bros on a scale the world has never seen.

A democracy responsive to the many rather than the few requires policies that check the wealth and power of the ultra-wealthy, starting with taxing the largest fortunes. California voters have the first chance to show it can be done.

The question on the ballot in California is not just about taxes. It is about who governs. Let’s answer it clearly: The people do.

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##### John Bonifaz

John Bonifaz is a constitutional attorney and the cofounder and president of Free Speech For People, a national nonprofit public interest organization dedicated to defending our democracy and our Constitution across the country.

##### Christina Livingston

Christina Livingston is executive director of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment Action (ACCE Action) and chair of the California Working Families Party. She has over two decades of experience organizing at the intersection of racial and economic justice.

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