Laurel Rosenhall

And that income tax is what keeps most of the state of California running.

It pays for schools and public safety and roads and all of the other things that the state funds.

And that is one of the reasons that Governor Gavin Newsom is so

vocally against this tax.

He's very concerned about a short term bump in tax revenue from the billionaire tax, but a long term loss from that ongoing loss of income taxes from people who leave.

Meanwhile, some of the most influential unions in the state, the teachers union, the umbrella group for SEIU, they haven't publicly taken a position.

And privately, they're concerned about the idea of a tax that gets locked up in this special box and doesn't fund the programs that most tax dollars do.

So there's a lot of different angles of potential concern.

And that's also why many of the Democratic candidates who are running for governor have expressed some reservations.

Even while they're saying, we think that rich people should pay more, they are raising concerns about the structure of this thing.

Again, getting into the weeds about how the money is spent.

And so depending on how far this thing goes, we may wind up seeing a situation where the billionaires luck out if they can form an alliance with other groups that are much more sympathetic to the voters.

I also want to say that this thing has a lot of different potential outcomes, but there is the possibility here for a really strange bedfellows kind of coalition to come together.

Well, I think we have to start off by acknowledging that there are a lot of chess pieces on this board, and we just don't know exactly how it's going to play out.

California has this ballot initiative system that a lot of political actors use as leverage to get what they want out of the legislature and the governor.

And so now that this thing has qualified for the ballot, this is a period over the next couple months where there could be some backroom negotiations to try to get this thing off the ballot.

Sergey Brin and the committee that he created, they have put money into a couple of ballot measures that would negate the billionaire's tax.

And it's possible that those could be used as leverage.

Perhaps Governor Newsom gets involved and he could try to help negotiate something that would keep this from going on the ballot.

And then there's another path, which is these things all go on the ballot and they duke it out in front of the voters.