Earlier this month the California Democrat Party held a vote to endorse the California billionaire tax which is on the ballot in November. As I described here, it was a surprisingly close vote which failed when it first came up and barely passed on a second attempt.
The pitched and often emotional vote over Proposition 40 exposed deep fissures in the state party over how to respond to growing grassroots anger over wealth inequality. And the endorsement, which narrowly failed to clear the 60% threshold on its first vote, only occurred after two delegates switched sides on a subsequent round.
Delegates and observers erupted into cheers after 61% of the 235 executive board delegates in attendance voted to support Prop. 40.
Insiders revealed that the deciding moment was the intervention of Rep. Maxine Waters.
A first floor vote barely failed on Sunday, but then Waters walked in to cheers, according to two attendees. On a re-vote, she turned to a room full of around 200 board members and proxy voters with her card in hand. The motion cleared the 60 percent margin it needed by less than two percentage points.
And with that vote the state party was formally behind the wealth tax proposal known as Prop. 40. But earlier this week Democrats in San Francisco held their own vote and came out strongly against the tax. Unlike the state level vote, this one wasn't close.
The San Francisco Democratic Party broke with the statewide party Wednesday, voting overwhelmingly to oppose a proposed tax on California billionaires — the latest sign of how the measure had divided Democrats across the state.
Of the 22 members present, 17 voted to oppose Proposition 40, a one-time tax of 5% on California’s billionaires. The vote came after the lengthiest debate of the night, with supporters of Prop. 40 questioning who the local Democratic Party represented: billionaires and the wealthy? Or the working class?
Unlike other contentious votes held on Wednesday night, it only took one round of voting for the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee to break with California’s statewide democratic party in rejecting the billionaire tax.
Opponents of the tax pointed out that the people being targeted, about 200 billionaires in the state, could simply leave.
Members of the Democratic County Central Committee, the local party chapter, said California would suffer from billionaires fleeing the state.
“[My union is] particularly disturbed, because we feel it sets up an uneven playing field for California,” said Patrick Boileau, a DCCC member and the political director of the Operating Engineers Local 3. “The billionaires that are going to be taxed with this measure also have the ability to vote with their feet and move out of California.”
Supervisor Matt Dorsey put it bluntly: “This is terrible public policy.”
Lanier Coles, a DCCC member who was diagnosed with a chronic neurological disorder at 28 and had trouble getting healthcare coverage, said she opposed Prop. 40 because it is not “a long-term viable solution to provide affordable healthcare.”
But the more progressive members of the committee didn't want to hear about the problems.
“California needs this money now,” said Michael Nguyen, a progressive DCCC member. “There are reasonable questions here around implementation, long-term revenue projections, but those questions cannot become an excuse for doing nothing.”
Gordon Mar, another member, agreed. “The bottom line is Prop. 40 is the only proposal before voters and on the table, more generally, that approaches the scale of this crisis.”
What's really happening here is that no one in the party seems to have any real problem with the idea of a wealth tax or taxing billionaires and seizing what they own. The only reason some unions and Democrats object to this is that it was created by the SEIU to commit at least 90 percent of the money to state-funded healthcare services.
That means the powerful teachers unions and lots of other unions won't get a cut. And that's why many of them oppose this. Had the SEIU agreed to split the spoils of this terrible idea a bit more evenly with other unions, there would be universal support and San Francisco Dems would be happy to vote for it.
In any case, Party member Peter Gallotta gave the most impassioned plea to soak the rich and stick it to Fox News.
The richest people in California do not need the San Francisco Democratic Party to be their shield. Billionaires already have plenty of lobbyists, political allies, and money to fight for their interests. They do not need this party to join them. Meanwhile, working families who are barely holding on here in San Francisco and across the state are paying their taxes. Billionaires making ungodly sums of money with more wealth than they could ever spend in their lifetimes can afford to contribute more. That should not be controversial for Democrats, especially San Francisco Democrats. And it should come as no surprise that this body is considering doing the bidding of the billionaires given its cozy relationship with some of the loudest opponents of Prop 40, including, and I will say names, Chris Larson and Gary Tan. But this vote, I want to be clear, has consequences. When opponents of a billionaire tax can point to San Francisco Democrats and say even they agree with us, that is politically damaging. It is politically damaging for all of us and for what it means to be a San Francisco Democrat. We should not hand billionaires and Fox News a talking point against this measure.
That's the voice of legalized theft. He's defending this effort to single out a handful of people and seize their stock in companies they created. And if he's willing to do it once, he (and the rest like him) will do it again and again as many times as it takes until everyone who creates something valuable knows to stay away from California.
Seizing from people who build things is a short-sighted and ultimately destructive way to govern. Hopefully the voters in California are wise enough to recognize that this November.
Note: The person pictured above is Nancy Tung, current chair of the SF Democrat Party.
Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has been infected by socialism, and it's spreading FAST. Democrats are claiming there's nothing to worry about, but we know the truth.
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