Billionaires to California’s Rescue

Kudos to Ken Griffin and Sergey Brin, the two billionaires going public against leftist outrages in New York City and California. They understand that standing ground and fighting back against adversaries has great potential while accommodation hasn’t ceased the recriminations against their success.

Griffin blasted Mayor Zohran Mamdani for showboating in front of the entrepreneur’s Manhattan residence to promote his bizarre pied-à-terre tax. Brin boldly stepped forward with a $57 million contribution for countermeasures to California’s proposed five percent wealth tax while pointedly invoking his family’s 1979 flee from socialism and “the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union.” Several other California billionaires and business leaders have joined Brin to defeat what the Wall Street Journal has called “the biggest act of economic self-sabotage in U.S. history.”

But if Brin and his financial peers want to make their efforts last for years ahead, they should apply their vast resources to shape common sense governmental, tax, and regulatory policies and make a run at California’s governorship. Now that they’re in for the half, they should go in for the whole.

There is a brief window of opportunity before June 2’s gubernatorial primary where they can slow or potentially reverse the disaster wrought by Gavin Newsom and an increasingly democratic socialist legislature. With just a fraction of their fortunes, it might be possible to affect the outcome of the governor’s race and prevent the accession of another vassal into California’s left-wing kingdom.