Vote Alix

Here it is: my complete voter guide for California’s November 3, 2026 election. All 14 statewide propositions are in one place, plus my (minimal) thoughts on the candidates. If you’ve been following along, you’ve already read the propositions in four installments. This puts the whole ballot on one page, so it’s easier to share with your friends, your family, and that one uncle who keeps forwarding you voter fraud memes.

The short version, for those of you reading this on the way to the ballot drop box:

• Statewide offices:
  • Governor: Xavier Becerra
  • Lieutenant Governor: Fiona Ma
  • Attorney General: Rob Bonta
  • Secretary of State: Shirley Weber
  • Controller: Malia Cohen
  • Treasurer: Eleni Kounalakis
  • Insurance Commissioner: Ben Allen
  • Superintendent of Public Instruction: Richard Barrera
• A few other Bay Area races I care about:
  • U.S. House of Representatives, SF: Scott Wiener
  • Board of Equalization, District 2: Sally Lieber
  • RTM (Regional Transit Measure): YES
• California Supreme Court (retention votes):
  • Retain Associate Justice Joshua Groban: YES
  • Retain Associate Justice Kelli M. Evans: YES

• Prop 1 (The Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond): YES
• Prop 2 (Bigger Rainy-Day Fund): YES
• Prop 3 (The Temporary Tax That Wants Tenure): YES
• Prop 4 (Lift the Ban on Public Campaign Financing): YES
• Prop 5 (Fix the Recall): YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES
• Prop 37 (State-Backed Down Payment Loans for New Homes): YES (meh)
• Prop 38 (Immunology Research Bonds): NO
• Prop 39 (Voter ID Constitutional Amendment): HELL NO
• Prop 40 (One-Time Tax on Billionaires): YES
• Prop 41 (Audits + a Poison Pill): NO
• Prop 42 (Permanent Ban on Wealth Taxes): NO
• Prop 43 (Two-Thirds Vote for Citizen-Initiated Local Taxes): NO
• Prop 44 (Community Clinic Spending Mandate): HARD NO
• Prop 45 (Fast-Track Environmental Review for “Essential” Projects): NO

And the most important sentence in this entire guide: your yes on 40 only counts if you also vote no on 41 and 42. Keep reading and I’ll explain why.

Disclaimers

Before we begin, I should clarify that the opinions I express in my voter guides are my own and should not be attributed to my clients, my little girl, or my subversive artist collective. Please send all hate mail to me at info (at) votealix.com.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a single mom, a liberal Democrat, and an attorney whose passions include making government work better, helping professionals lead healthier lives, and protecting our environment for future generations. I’ve worked on/volunteered for more political campaigns than I can count, and I also like long walks on the beach.

The Candidates

I’m not re-analyzing the candidate races for November, since I did the deep dive in my June 2026 voter guide. In all but one race, one Democrat and one Republican advanced to the General Election. So here’s my advice: vote for the Democrats. Becerra, Ma, Bonta, Weber… they are all fine. And because this is California, they’re all going to win.

Insurance Commissioner: Ben Allen

The exception is Insurance Commissioner. For the first time since the office became elected, two Democrats are on the November ballot, and they could not be more different: Jane Kim and Ben Allen.

I’ll take a second stab at convincing you to vote for Ben Allen.

Allen has served in the State Senate since 2014, and his district includes neighborhoods that burned in the Palisades Fire, so he has seen California’s insurance crisis up close. He’s a wildfire and insurance policy nerd, and I mean that as a compliment. He has authored legislation to bring insurers, utilities, and local governments together to fund community-wide wildfire hardening, and he has pushed for stronger insurer disclosure requirements and fossil-fuel accountability, which has made the industry nervous.

Progressives say he’s not aggressive enough, and business groups worry he’ll regulate too much. When you have critics on both sides, you’re doing something right. He’s endorsed by Senators Schiff and Padilla, the California Democratic Party, the Consumer Federation of California, and former Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones. He is extremely qualified for the job.

Jane Kim is not. I’ve known her personally since before she ran for Supervisor in 2011, and she is a fierce reformer. I like some of her ideas. But she has no statewide policy or regulatory experience, and no background in insurance. The Department of Insurance is a massive state bureaucracy with roughly 1,400 employees and regulatory power over whether every Californian can insure their home. Reform is good, but if it isn’t rooted in how the industry works, it can do more harm than good.

Because character matters to me, I want to draw your attention to two episodes in Kim’s political career involving close male allies accused of sex crimes. In both, her first instinct was to stand by the man, and she changed course only after public criticism.

Enrique Pearce was Kim’s campaign consultant for both of her successful Supervisor races. He later pled guilty to child-pornography charges after investigators found thousands of images and videos of child sexual abuse on his computers. When Pearce was first arrested, before the worst details were public, Kim expressed concern for him and suggested attacks from political opponents may have contributed to his stress. After she was criticized, she said she was “utterly sickened” and called for him to be prosecuted. (I’ve found no evidence Kim knew about Pearce’s conduct before his arrest.)

Jon Jacobo worked on Kim’s mayoral campaign and as an aide in her Supervisor’s office. In 2021, activist Sasha Perigo publicly accused him of rape, which he denied. Afterward, Kim posted a birthday tribute calling him her “brother” and wrote, “Family holds each other, even tighter during the lows + the challenges. We don’t throw each other away.” Weeks after the allegation became public, she brought him to a prominent political fundraiser. After the San Francisco Women’s Political Committee criticized her, Kim apologized, said bringing him was a mistake, and said sexual assault should have “zero tolerance.” Three more women later came forward with allegations of sexual assault or abuse. Jacobo was criminally charged with rape and related counts in connection with Perigo’s allegation. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

I don’t hold Kim responsible for what these men did. I do hold her responsible for how she responded. Twice, when a close ally was accused of something serious, she defaulted to loyalty and recalculated only once it became a political problem. The Insurance Commissioner’s job is to stand up to powerful interests on behalf of people who’ve been harmed. I want someone whose first instinct is to protect victims and believe them.

Vote Ben Allen for Insurance Commissioner.

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Richard Barrera

The Superintendent of Public Instruction race is officially nonpartisan, so you won’t see a party label next to anyone’s name on your ballot. Don’t let that fool you. Sonja Shaw is a Republican, and back in June she was the only candidate in the race whose brand was intentionally confrontational and culture-war-oriented. I warned then that she might sneak into the November runoff if the Democrats split the vote. She didn’t sneak in. She came in first, with nearly 25% of the vote.

Shaw is president of the Chino Valley Unified school board. In 2023, her board passed a policy requiring schools to tell parents if a student identifies as transgender (the state has since banned policies like it), and at that same meeting she accused State Superintendent Tony Thurmond of “perverting children.” Her campaign centers on keeping transgender girls off girls’ sports teams, she’s endorsed by Moms for Liberty, and KQED calls her a “Trump-aligned Republican.” Even Anthony Rendon, conceding the primary, warned about her “dangerous, extremist ideology.”

In June I voted for Josh Newman, but I also said you couldn’t go wrong with any of the four Democrats, and Richard Barrera is one of them. He’s president of the San Diego Unified school board, with two decades helping run one of California’s largest school districts, and he’s endorsed by Tony Thurmond and the California Teachers Association. Supporters call him collaborative and pragmatic, someone who works well with unions, administrators, parents and local officials. Critics say he’s too tied to the education establishment to push real reform. Compared to a culture warrior running our schools, that’s a problem I’m happy to have. Vote Barrera.

Prop 1: The Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond. YES.

Once upon a time, California had redevelopment agencies, and those agencies had to set aside a share of their money for low-income housing, more than a billion dollars a year. Then in 2012, in the middle of a budget crisis, the Legislature killed redevelopment and never replaced the housing money. Since then, California has paid for affordable housing the way a college kid pays for spring break: sporadically, in lump sums, and on credit. Prop 1 is the latest trip to the ATM.

What it actually does: Prop 1 lets the state borrow $11.25 billion. Here’s where the money goes:

• $7.2 billion to the Multifamily Housing Program, the state’s main low-cost loan program for affordable rentals. Of that, $1.15 billion is for supportive housing for people leaving or at risk of homelessness (including $150 million for homeless and foster youth), and $750 million is for fixing up existing affordable housing.
• $1.25 billion for CalVet home loans
• $600 million to local agencies and nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity to help first-time buyers build or finance homes
• $500 million for down-payment assistance
• $500 million for infrastructure like water and sewer lines
• $450 million for farmworker housing
• $350 million for student housing, split evenly between UC and CSU
• $200 million for tribal housing
• $200 million for local pilots that “demonstrate innovative, cost-saving approaches”

The Chronicle calls this “a dizzying array of priorities” and “the product of years of legislative sausage-making,” which is the most accurate description of a California bond I have ever read. Everyone who helped build the coalition got a bucket.

“No new taxes” is the campaign slogan, and it’s technically true, the way “no new calories” is technically true of a loan to buy a cake. We pay it back at $500 to $600 million a year out of the General Fund for about 25 years. The exception is the veterans slice, which veterans repay through their mortgages.

The Legislative Analyst says this would subsidize up to 40,000 affordable apartments plus farmworker units, student beds, and homebuying help for up to 40,000 households. The state says we need at least a million new affordable homes by 2031. So this won’t come close to solving the housing crisis. It’s gap financing for housing that nobody builds without it.

The history: Prop 1 comes from the Legislature, not from anyone’s signature-gathering war chest.

We’ve done this kind of bond before, most recently with a $4 billion bond in 2018 ($3 billion for housing, $1 billion for veterans’ loans). The good news: the money actually built housing, and it pulled in a lot of other money with it. In one recent round, every state dollar brought in about $6.72 in outside financing. The bad news: the state can’t actually tell you how many homes $3 billion bought. The State Auditor found that California doesn’t even have a single dataset tracking the affordable units it funds. The auditor has spent years asking the Legislature to require better public reporting, and the Legislature has spent years not doing it.

The case against Prop 1:

The opposition has no campaign, and nobody even bothered to submit a ballot argument. So I’ll make their case for them:

• Borrowing doesn’t fix the cost problem. Affordable units cost $380,000 to $570,000 to build, and some Bay Area projects hit $1 million. Critics say we should drive costs down instead of borrowing billions to subsidize expensive buildings that barely make a dent.
• Bonds are pricey. Borrowing makes this about 15% more expensive than paying cash, and it lands just as the state is projecting years of deficits.
• The veterans branding is a costume. Veterans only get about 11 percent of the money.
• Nobody’s fixing the leaky roofs. Rents in 100% affordable buildings don’t cover upkeep, so a lot of existing affordable housing is falling apart. Prop 1 sets aside only $750 million for rehab, which even the Chronicle calls “a relative pittance.”

Opponents: Republican legislators, the California Policy Center, and Reform California.

The case for Prop 1:

• The line is out the door. Every dollar of the 2018 bond was committed by 2023. Tens of thousands of permitted affordable homes are stalled because they are waiting for funding.
• The leverage is better than ever. State money is the gap filler that unlocks federal tax credits. Congress loosened those rules in 2025 in a way the LAO says could as much as double California’s access to one of the main programs. Federal money is on the table, and this is how we pick it up.
• The “fix the rules first” crowd got their wish. California has since exempted infill housing from CEQA review, streamlined dense housing near transit, and started consolidating its maze of financing applications, which could cut $60,000 to $70,000 per unit. Projects that can finally get approved now need capital to get built.

Supporters: Gov. Newsom, the California Democratic Party, the California Apartment Association, the California AFL-CIO, the California Federation of Teachers, US Vets, Habitat for Humanity California, and a coalition of affordable housing developers, the Carpenters union, and tech donors. It’s the usual housing coalition: builders, labor, and billionaires who would like their baristas to live within 90 minutes of the café.

The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board endorsed it, with reservations:

The housing debate in California often feels a bit like fighting with your rambling uncle during Thanksgiving dinner. But there’s generally one island of universal agreement in a sea of rage: the need for more affordable housing.

San Francisco Chronicle editorial board

Why I’m voting yes: I’m voting yes, and I’m a little annoyed about it. I’m annoyed that the state can’t tell me what it bought with the last $3 billion. But the evidence we have says these programs do what they’re supposed to do, the demand is enormous, and the timing is good. The alternative to borrowing isn’t some leaner, smarter housing program that nobody has proposed. The alternative is nothing, and permitted projects sit in a drawer while rents go up.

So vote yes. Then call your legislator about two things. First, pass the reporting requirements the State Auditor keeps asking for. If we’re putting $10 billion on the credit card, we should get to read the statement. Second, do what Assemblymember Buffy Wicks says needs doing: create “sustained ongoing funding for affordable housing so that we’re not having to have this bond conversation every six years.” We had that once. It was called redevelopment.

Prop 2: Bigger Rainy-Day Fund. YES.

Oh man. I LOVE this stuff, and this one still made my eyes glaze over. I’ll keep it short to save you the suffering.

What it does: Prop 2 doubles the target for California’s rainy-day fund, from 10% to 20% of state taxes. It makes the state save more in boom years, and it requires extra debt payments for ten more years.

Why we’re voting on this: California’s budget is a roller coaster. When Silicon Valley is booming, Sacramento is swimming in cash. When the market tanks, the money vanishes. In just a few years we went from a roughly $100 billion surplus to a roughly $50 billion deficit. Sacramento keeps treating windfalls like permanent raises, then cutting programs when the boom ends. Prop 2 makes the state save more of the windfall.

And a big one is coming. SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are all headed to Wall Street, and the state’s own budget officials say the tax revenue will dwarf Facebook’s IPO. They also warn that it’s mostly one-time money. That’s exactly the kind of cash Sacramento loves to spend like it’ll last forever. Prop 2 says: Let’s lock some of it away instead.

The catch: In 1979, voters capped how fast state spending can grow. It’s called the Gann Limit. When revenue blows past the cap, the extra goes to schools and taxpayer rebates. Right now, money the state puts into savings counts against that cap. Prop 2 says savings don’t count until the state actually spends them.

Opponents say that’s a loophole that will cancel your tax rebate. That’s just silly. California has sent out exactly one Gann rebate check, in 1987. Deukmejian was governor, the state blew past the limit by $1.1 billion, and every taxpayer got somewhere between $64 and $236. Prop 2 does make the next Gann rebate a little less likely. I’m OK with that.

Who’s on each side: Supporters include Governor Newsom, legislators from both parties, firefighters, hospitals, educators and the Chamber of Commerce. Turns out nobody likes whiplash. Opponents include Republican legislators and Republican Carl DeMaio of Reform California, who has appeared in my voter guides before for opposing other spending measures.

My take: If your family skips a savings deposit because someone lost a job, that doesn’t mean emergency funds are a bad idea. It means you wish you’d saved more before the crisis. That’s exactly what Prop 2 is for.

And when the budget crashes, it’s not billionaires who get hurt. It’s people on Medi-Cal, kids in public schools and families who rely on food assistance. With Washington gutting the safety net, a bigger cushion matters more than ever.

As for the Gann Limit, it’s a Prop 13-era relic. I won’t cry over it.

The AI money is coming either way. The only question is whether we save it.

Vote yes.

Prop 3: The Temporary Tax That Wants Tenure. YES.

What it does: Prop 3 takes the “temporary” income tax on California’s top 2 percent, which has been temporary since “Gangnam Style” was on the radio, and makes it permanent. Nobody’s taxes go up. The current rates just never expire. An extra 1, 2, or 3 percent kicks in at about $371,000 for single filers, $742,000 for married couples, and $505,000 for heads of household. If those numbers made you laugh out loud, this tax is not about you.

Despite the name, the “Children’s Education & Health Care Protection Act” sends only about 40 percent of the money to schools. The rest goes into the General Fund, which is Sacramento for “wherever.” A No vote doesn’t cut anyone’s taxes. The rates would expire in 2031, as voters were originally promised.

The backstory: This is the third movie in the franchise. In Prop 30 (2012), California is broke, and voters approve a temporary tax to get through the crisis. In Prop 55 (2016), the crisis is over but the tax is still here, so voters extend it. In Prop 3 (2026), the tax decides it lives here now.

The California Teachers Association put this on the ballot. As of early October, the Yes side had raised more than $46 million, mostly from teachers’ unions. The No side had raised $5,500. CTA is spending $46 million to beat almost nobody. That’s what a first-year California teacher would earn in more than 700 years.

Supporters: Teachers’ unions, the rest of organized labor, the PTA, and the League of Women Voters. The San Francisco Chronicle’s endorsement is the most revealing. It opposed the 2016 extension, hoping that killing the tax would force real tax reform. Its (defeatist) update ten years later:

That didn’t happen.

San Francisco Chronicle editorial board

Opponents: The California Taxpayers Association and a couple of business groups, with almost no campaign money. Their best point is fair: we were told this tax was temporary, twice. Their slogan is “Fix spending first before making taxes permanent,” a sentence that has been said in Sacramento many times and followed there never.

My take: I’m voting yes, though I’m holding my nose.

The case for yes is solid. It’s not a tax increase, nobody has a plan to replace $5 to $15 billion a year, and voters have approved it twice already. A tax that has been “temporary” for two decades is just a tax.

My complaint is a nerdy one. These tax brackets are in the state Constitution. California’s regular income-tax rates are in ordinary law, where legislators can change them. These ended up in the Constitution more or less by accident, because Prop 30 was a constitutional amendment for unrelated reasons, and Prop 3 makes that permanent. California’s Constitution is already a junk drawer. This leaves three tax brackets in it forever, next to the dead batteries and the takeout menu from 1978. If we ever attempt real tax reform, the Legislature won’t be able to touch these rates without another statewide vote. Ugh.

So why yes? A No vote wouldn’t hurt schools until 2031, and in theory the Legislature could use that time to fix things. In practice, the Chronicle already tested “vote no to force reform,” and we have the results. I’m not betting the schools on a better outcome this time.

But CTA, if you’re reading: take the brackets out of the Constitution next time. You have the signatures for it.

Vote yes.

Prop 4: Lift the Ban on Public Campaign Financing. YES.

Prop 4 is a good-government measure backed by the California Democratic Party, labor unions, civil rights organizations, environmental groups, and every good-government nerd in the state. The only organized opposition comes from the anti-tax crowd, and neither side is spending real money on it. It’s not very controversial, so I’ll cut to the chase: it lifts a 38-year-old ban that stops California from even considering public financing of campaigns.

What it does: Prop 4 doesn’t publicly finance a single campaign. It repeals the ban and lets the Legislature, counties, and cities decide for themselves whether to create a program. If they create one, candidates have to show real community support before they get public money and accept spending limits once they do, and no program can favor incumbents or any party.

My story: In 2006 I ran for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, my first race, and raising money was by far the hardest part. Incumbents are experienced fundraisers with donor lists and relationships, and that advantage has nothing to do with who would do the job better. San Francisco’s public financing program gave me a fighting chance once I’d shown enough support from inside my district. In the end, I got almost 30 percent of the vote against a powerful, well-funded incumbent. That’s what public financing does: it gets first-time candidates in the door.

The backstory: Voters banned public financing in 1988 with Prop 73. Courts later exempted charter cities, which is why San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Long Beach have programs and nobody else can. The Legislature tried to repeal the ban in 2016, but a court said that since voters enacted it, only voters can undo it. California is the only state with a blanket ban like this.

Supporters: League of Women Voters, California Common Cause, California Clean Money Campaign, ACLU California Action, California Labor Federation, California Nurses Association, and the California Democratic Party.

This is about leveling the playing field, empowering everyday voters and opening the door for more diverse voices in public office.

Sen. Tom Umberg, author of Prop 4

Opponents: People who hate taxes generally: Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, California Taxpayers Association, and Reform California.

My take: The best counterargument comes from GrowSF, whose analysis found that San Francisco’s richer 6:1 match cost taxpayers $8.8 million in 2024 without making races more competitive. That’s a fair hit, and a badly designed program can be an expensive subsidy that changes nothing. But it’s an argument about how to design a program, not about whether anyone should be allowed to have one. Prop 4 sends that debate back to the Legislature and local governments, which is where it belongs. Fundraising is the moat around every incumbent in California, and public financing is one of the few ways a first-timer can get across it.

Vote yes.

Prop 5: Fix the Recall. YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES.

Remember the Schwarzenegger election?

In 2003, voters recalled Gov. Gray Davis, and on that same ballot we picked his replacement from 135 candidates. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arianna Huffington, Gary Coleman, Larry Flynt, and a sumo wrestler, all in one race. Arnold announced his candidacy on The Tonight Show and skipped the policy questions.

As an elections nerd, I want to kiss whoever wrote this measure, because Prop 5 makes that circus impossible.

What it does: Today, a recall ballot asks two questions: Should this official be recalled? And if so, who replaces them? The top vote-getter on the second question wins, majority or not. That setup makes the recall a handy political tool. If you can’t beat an incumbent in a regular election, you can gather signatures, force a recall, and hope to win a crowded replacement race with a fraction of the vote. And if you’re a celebrity, it’s even better: you skip the primary, the debates, and months of scrutiny, and run on name recognition alone. That’s how Schwarzenegger became governor in 2003, after just 77 days of campaigning and $26.6 million spent to cut through the noise. With 135 people on the ballot, nobody reads a white paper.

Prop 5 deletes the second question. A recall becomes a simple yes-or-no, and the seat gets filled the way California fills any other vacancy. For governor, the lieutenant governor takes over. If the recall happens early in the term, voters elect a new governor at the next statewide election. For other offices, normal vacancy rules apply, meaning an appointment or a later special election. One quirk: the recalled official can run in that special election.

The backstory: The 2021 Newsom recall (46 replacement candidates) exposed the math problem. Newsom could have gotten 49.9% to stay and still lost to someone who won a crowded race with far less. He survived 62-38, so we dodged it. That recall still cost about $200 million in the middle of the pandemic.

Afterward, Secretary of State Shirley Weber proposed splitting the two decisions apart, and then-Sen. Josh Newman carried the constitutional amendment, sponsored by California Common Cause. Newman knows recalls personally: he was recalled in 2018 over a gas-tax vote and won his seat back in 2020. The Legislature passed it in 2024. It amends the Constitution, so it needs our vote.

Supporters: California Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, the California Democratic Party, Indivisible CA: StateStrong, and the Sacramento Bee.

Opponents: The California Republican Party, Reform California, Election Integrity Project California, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and three newspapers: the Press-Enterprise, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle’s objection is narrow. It’s about one provision: letting recalled officials run in the special election to replace them.

A flaw so bizarre even the author doesn’t like it.

San Francisco Chronicle editorial board

As of early October, neither side had raised a single dollar.

The arguments for: A recall should answer one question: do we fire this person? The two-question setup is confusing, and only six other states use it. Letting someone take office without majority support is undemocratic. Picking a successor deserves a real campaign, not a free-for-all. And at $200 million a pop, recalls should be saved for serious misconduct or real unfitness, not petty grievances or a strategy to win a seat you couldn’t win in a regular election.

The arguments against: Voters lose the direct choice of successor. A recalled governor gets replaced by the Lt. Gov., who may be from the same party. Other offices could sit vacant until a later election. And the recalled official gets to run again.

My conclusion: This is just good government.

Even the Chronicle, which endorsed No, makes most of the Yes case for me: the system is confusing and undemocratic, and recalls are too expensive to use for grudges. Its whole objection comes down to one provision, letting the recalled official run in the special election. I agree that’s odd. But in a real election with a real campaign, if voters want that person back, that’s democracy. It’s not a good enough reason to keep the sumo-wrestler system.

The opponents’ biggest worry is that a recalled governor would be replaced by the lieutenant governor, possibly from the same party, instead of by someone voters pick. That doesn’t bother me. Under the California Constitution, the lieutenant governor is already the governor’s designated successor. If the governor dies or resigns, the lieutenant governor becomes governor. If the governor leaves the state or is temporarily disabled, the lieutenant governor serves as acting governor. Recall is the one exception. Prop 5 makes recall work like every other vacancy. And if the recall happens early in the term, voters still choose a new governor at the next statewide election, in a real race with time to size up the candidates.

Bonus: the Lt. Gov. job is excruciatingly boring, and Prop 5 gives it some real girth. Voters would have more reason to ask, “Would I be okay with this person as governor?”

Now the bad news. The only public poll, PPIC in early September, had Prop 5 losing 35% to 59%. Even Democrats were only at 40%. With zero dollars on either side and three of four newspaper boards saying no, nobody is going to explain this on TV, so it lives or dies on word of mouth. Tell your friends: YES on 5. Never again the sumo wrestler.

Prop 37: State-Backed Down Payment Loans for New Homes. YES (Meh).

What it does: Prop 37 lets the state housing finance agency sell up to $25 billion in bonds and lend the money to middle-income homebuyers as second mortgages. Buy a new $1 million house and you put down $30,000 (3%, and it has to be your own money, so your rich uncle can’t loan it to you). Prop 37 lends you $170,000, and a regular bank covers the rest. A 3% down payment is a lot easier than 20%, which is what keeps many people renting forever.

The catch is that the home has to be newly built, you have to be its first buyer and actually live in it, and your household can’t earn more than 200% of the area median income.* It’s a “revenue bond,” meaning the homeowners who receive the loans repay the bonds through their mortgage payments. That’s why the Legislative Analyst finds “no direct state or local costs,” a phrase you will almost never see on a $25 billion bond. Prop 38, sitting right next to it on your ballot, shows how the usual kind works: $8.4 billion in general obligation bonds that will cost the General Fund about $500 to $600 million a year for 20 years.

The backstory: Prop 37 took five years to write, and it makes a lot of people happy: middle class home buyers, real estate developers, realtors, good government nerds, and construction trades. It’s aimed at the “missing middle”: people who can handle a mortgage payment but can’t save up $200,000 while also paying $3,500 (or more) a month in rent. And the demand for this type of program is real. In 2023 the state offered $300 million in down-payment assistance, and it was gone in less than two weeks. The signature drive was paid for by the Realtors, the Carpenters union, and Building a Better California (Sergey Brin again!), which has put $6 million into this one. (This might be too inside baseball, but I have a theory that Brin supported this measure to purchase the building trades’ support for Props 41 and 42, the anti-billionaire-tax measures.)

Supporters and opponents: The Yes side is a who’s who of California Democrats: Treasurer Fiona Ma, Controller Malia Cohen, Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter, Tony Thurmond, Matt Mahan, Antonio Villaraigosa, Darrell Steinberg, and the California Democratic Party, along with the Carpenters and the Realtors. The San Francisco Chronicle endorsed it, although its endorsement sounds about as excited as mine: “Prop 37’s scope is limited enough that we don’t think it will fundamentally change California’s housing landscape.” Nobody even bothered to submit a ballot argument against it.

The case for: It’s a well-designed program. The money goes only to new homes, so it doesn’t bid up every existing condo in the state. It’s a loan, not a grant, and it costs the General Fund nothing.

The case against: California’s housing problem isn’t a shortage of buyers. When prices went bananas in 2020 to 2022, builders still didn’t build much more, because zoning, fees and construction costs are what hold them back. So many of these loans will go toward homes that would have been built anyway, probably out in the exurbs, where the commute is long and the fire insurance is theoretical.

My take: Meh, it’s fine. It will help some families buy a home sooner, and it won’t cost taxpayers a dime. What bugs me is that it’s on the ballot at all. If we learn in five years that it isn’t working, fixing it takes a 60% vote of the Legislature, the governor’s signature, and probably a lawsuit. This should have been a bill. It’s a shrug of a yes.

Vote YES, and keep your expectations modest.

Prop 38: Immunology Research Bonds. NO.

I’ve been doing this a long time, and this one still got me. I saw the title and got very excited: “OOH! Yessss! The Trump administration is taking a chainsaw to federal research funding, and here comes California in a lab coat to save science.” I had my enthusiastic endorsement half-written in my head. Then I read the fine print, which is where ballot measures keep their secrets.

What it does: Prop 38 lets the state borrow $8.4 billion through general obligation bonds for immunology and immunotherapy research. That’s the science of getting your immune system to do its job better: cancer immunotherapies, vaccines, engineered immune cells, and maybe someday treatments for Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and Parkinson’s. Great stuff. The General Fund would back these bonds, which means you do. The Legislative Analyst estimates the tab at roughly $500 to $600 million a year in interest for about 20 years. Yikes.

(In case you’re curious, the $500m-$600m in interest goes to bondholders, meaning: mutual funds, insurance companies, and wealthy individuals.)

The money splits in half. About $4.2 billion goes to competitive research grants for California public universities and nonprofit research institutions. The other $4.2 billion goes to one “qualifying” UC-affiliated nonprofit immunology institute. Hold that thought. At least $4.2 billion overall has to go toward cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s.

It also comes with some genuinely creative strings. Treatments developed with the money must generally be offered in California at a 20% discount. Mostly that’s a discount for your insurance company, although patients paying coinsurance or no insurance at all would feel it too. Recipients have to buy at least half their goods and services from California suppliers when reasonably possible. Admin costs are capped at 2%. And the state gets 10% of revenue from any discoveries, which goes first toward paying off the bonds. That last one is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the campaign ads. Stick with me, we’ll get there.

The backstory: The Legislature didn’t write this. It’s a citizen initiative, and the “citizen” in question is billionaire surgeon and inventor Gary Michelson. Michelson also happens to be co-founder and board chair of the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, a shiny new nonprofit affiliated with UCLA that he and his wife have put at least $120 million into.

Now, remember that $4.2 billion for one “qualifying” institute? Prop 38 never names it. It doesn’t have to. The initiative just lists the qualifications, and they’re remarkably specific. The lucky winner must have been founded before 2025, specialize in immunology, be affiliated with a UC campus whose medical center hits certain patient-volume numbers, meet physical size requirements, and have received two donations of at least $50 million for specified research programs. And wouldn’t you know it, the Michelsons once donated $50 million for programs whose descriptions closely match the initiative’s language. What are the odds.

CalMatters dug in and confirmed that exactly one qualifies. Guess which.

It is very clearly designed to support a specific nonprofit.

Political scientist Sarah Hill, to CalMatters

In fairness, Michelson isn’t personally pocketing $4.2 billion. It’s a nonprofit research institute, not a yacht. But you’d never know any of this from your ballot, which describes the measure very deceptively.

There is precedent for the basic idea. Voters approved $3 billion for stem cell research with Prop 71 in 2004 and another $5.5 billion with Prop 14 in 2020. Prop 38 wants to do for immunology what those did for stem cells, except with half the money pre-addressed to one mailbox.

Who supports it: An impressive lineup: the Michael J. Fox Foundation, Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Los Angeles, ALS Association, National MS Society, Kidney Cancer Association, Melanoma Research Alliance, Prostate Cancer Foundation, American Nurses Association/California, American Association of Immunologists, City of Hope, and the California Democratic Party.

Now follow the money. As of September 15, the Yes campaign had raised about $27.2 million. Well over $20 million of that came from Michelson and related entities. Another $5 million came from billionaire Meyer Luskin, who is (surprise) also a co-founder of the institute. And the California Democratic Party chipped in a whopping $1,247, which I assume covered the parking. So much for a grassroots movement. Nearly all of the money comes from the people behind the institute that gets half the bond money. Ick.

Who opposes it: Nobody with a checkbook. As of September 15, the No side had raised zero dollars, and independent spending against the measure was also zero dollars. There are real opponents, though, just broke ones. Robert Kaplan, a Stanford health-policy scholar and former NIH associate director, wrote the official ballot argument against it. The League of Women Voters of California opposes it, as do California Health Policy Strategies and the Orange County Register editorial board. So do Democrat Steve Maviglio and Republican Jon Fleischman, a bipartisan pair of political strategists who are both cancer survivors. When those two agree on something, pay attention.

The case for Prop 38: Prostate Cancer Foundation CEO Gina Carithers: “Immunotherapy is transforming the future of cancer care.” No snark here, because she’s right, and I’ve seen it up close. Two years ago, my beloved Aunt Lauren was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Cutting-edge immunotherapy gave her at least nine more months. It truly is a miracle, and it’s making some cancers far more treatable than they were even a decade ago.

It already treats melanoma, leukemia, and lung cancer, and researchers are chasing immune-based approaches to Alzheimer’s, heart disease, Parkinson’s, and ALS. Federal funding is now about as reliable as a Tesla on autopilot, and California’s world-class scientists need a stable, long-term funding source that federal politics can’t touch. Billions spent in California labs would also mean research jobs, biotech startups, and intellectual property that stays here. And with the 20% price discount and the 10% revenue share, Californians could actually get something back.

The case against Prop 38:

Half the money goes to one institution, by design. If the goal is great immunology research, why not put all $8.4 billion through competitive grants and let Stanford, UCSF, UCLA, UCSD, Gladstone, City of Hope, and everyone else fight for it like scientists normally do? As Kaplan dryly notes, “There is a lot of talent in immunology, immunotherapy research in California.” It isn’t all at one address in Westwood. LA Times columnist George Skelton: “The hang-up for me and others is that the ballot initiative was crafted to virtually assure that half the bond money would go to one outfit.”

It’s ballot-box science. Prop 38 locks in which branch of science California prioritizes for decades. Research priorities are supposed to change as scientists learn things. Twenty years from now the hottest field in medicine may be something nobody’s invented yet, and we’ll still be paying off immunology. I love you, voters, but most of you should not be setting the state’s biomedical research agenda. Neither should I.

Bonds are a weird way to pay for research. We usually borrow for things that stick around, like schools, reservoirs, transit, and housing. Research is an ongoing expense, and most of it will never produce a marketable drug. That’s not a flaw, it’s just science. But putting it on the state credit card makes it about 10% more expensive than paying cash, per the LAO. Maviglio and Fleischman: “The debt is guaranteed. The discoveries and royalties are not.”

We’ve heard “it pays for itself” before. The 2004 stem cell bond made the same promise about royalties rolling in. By 2022, according to the League, the stem cell agency’s royalty fund held $15.6 million. On a $3 billion bond. That’s roughly the return you’d get from finding a twenty in your winter coat. The research did real good, but medical breakthroughs and paying back the bond are two different things, and the LAO says any Prop 38 payback is uncertain and could take decades.

Why I’m voting no: I want California to step up where Washington has walked off the job. I really, really do, and after what immunotherapy did for my aunt, voting no on this one stings. If this were $8.4 billion in open, competitive grants, I might squint past the price tag and vote yes. But it’s half a billion dollars a year out of the General Fund for twenty years, and half of the money goes to one organization whose founders wrote the eligibility rules and bankrolled the campaign. A billionaire drafting a ballot measure so his own institute gets $4.2 billion of public money is not a playbook I want to reward, however good the cause.

Vote no, with a wistful sigh and a strongly worded note to your legislators.

Prop 39: Voter ID Constitutional Amendment. HELL NO.

Let’s make this quick. Prop 39 is California’s knockoff of Trump’s SAVE Act, and its biggest backer is Richard Uihlein, a Trump-loving packaging billionaire from Wisconsin/Illinois who has put $17 million into rewriting the voting rules of a state he doesn’t live in. Do I need to tell you more? I’ll tell you a little more, but honestly, you could stop reading here.

What it does: Prop 39 would require you to prove your identity every single time you vote, and it would write that requirement into the California Constitution. Vote in person? Bring a government-issued ID. Vote by mail? When you register, you’d designate an ID number, and every time you return a ballot you’d have to write the last four digits of that exact number on the envelope. Put your driver’s license digits on the envelope when you registered with your Social Security number? Congratulations, your ballot doesn’t count. The state would offer a free ID card, and counties would report yearly on how many voters have had their citizenship “verified.” The Legislative Analyst puts the cost at tens of millions up to the low hundreds of millions of dollars per year, plus startup costs.

In case you’re wondering: California already verifies voters. You attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury and provide a driver’s license or Social Security number when you register, and mail ballots are checked by signature. Prop 39 doesn’t fix a missing safeguard. It adds a new way for your ballot to get tossed.

How it got here: This is a citizen initiative led by Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio and Republican state Sen. Tony Strickland, who turned in more than 962,000 valid signatures. The proponents have been insisting this is a moderate, homegrown idea that has nothing to do with the SAVE Act. Sure. They’ve also spent a lot of time in court: they sued to change the Attorney General’s ballot title and lost, and they withdrew claims that Prop 39 would make voting “easier,” improve privacy, and save money after a judge found those claims misleading. That’s why your ballot will describe this measure, accurately, as: “Prohibits Citizens From Voting Unless They Present Government-Issued Identification.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

The case for it: It’s hard to say it with a straight face. Supporters say requiring ID boosts “public confidence in elections,” that signature matching is subjective and sometimes rejects legitimate ballots, that most people already have ID anyway, and that the free state ID card solves the rest.

Supporters: Richard Uihlein ($17 million and counting), Republican Carl DeMaio’s Reform California (over $3 million), Nicole Shanahan (yes, RFK Jr.’s 2024 running mate, because of course), billionaire venture capitalist and Trump donor Douglas Leone, the Trump-supporting crypto-enthusiast Winklevoss twins, the California Republican Party, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and Republican former Secretary of State Bill Jones. Common Cause counts at least nine Forbes-listed billionaires who have given to the Yes on 39 campaign. Turns out billionaires really want to keep you from voting.

The case against it: There’s no problem here to solve. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in California, or anywhere else in the country, and that includes the 2020 election that launched Trump’s whole crusade. Voter impersonation and noncitizen voting are vanishingly rare, and California already verifies who you are. What Prop 39 would do is trip up eligible voters who are elderly, disabled, low-income, recently moved, or just don’t drive. The mail-ballot number rule creates a brand-new way to invalidate a legitimate vote over a clerical slip. It puts pieces of your government ID numbers on the outside of an envelope that passes through many hands. And it costs a fortune to address fraud that isn’t happening.

Changed your name when you got married or divorced? Prop 39 doesn’t say what happens if the name on your ID doesn’t match your voter registration. It leaves that for the Legislature to figure out later. And if you designated a passport number and then got a new passport in your new name, your mail ballot envelope won’t match. The League of Women Voters warns that the measure creates problems for women who change their names after marriage, and for transgender Californians.

Opponents: the California Democratic Party, League of Women Voters of California, ACLU, Common Cause, California Labor Federation, California Nurses Association, Sierra Club California, Sen. Alex Padilla, and (my favorite surprise guest) the California Libertarian Party.

A bid to turn Trump’s election conspiracy fantasies into California law, and a proposal so disingenuous it’s caused Democratic legislators to sue the Democratic secretary of state in an attempt to stop the misinformation surrounding it.

Anita Chabria, Los Angeles Times

Why I’m voting NO: A Midwestern billionaire wants to put Trump’s voter suppression playbook into our state constitution, charge us hundreds of millions a year for it, and throw out ballots over a mismatched ID number. California voters already get verified. What we don’t need is a new hurdle that exists mainly to prop up the lie that our elections are full of fraud. We are not voting to make it harder to vote.

Vote NO on 39.

Props 40, 41 and 42: The Billionaire Tax and Its Evil Twins

Let me get this out of the way: billionaires should not exist. There’s no good reason for that much wealth to sit with a handful of people whose main hobby is making sure their grandchildren’s grandchildren have personal yachts. Meanwhile, Medicaid, Medi-Cal, Head Start and food stamps, the parts of our safety net that keep people from dying, starving or living without dignity, are being gutted TODAY.

Exhibit A: Mark Zuckerberg commissioned a 7-foot statue of his wife “in the Roman tradition.” Bold choice, Zuck. The Roman Republic collapsed after a tiny elite hoarded the land and the wealth while everyone else got squeezed. Just saying.

So yes, I’m voting for the billionaire tax. I did change my mind a few times, though, because there are strong policy arguments on both sides. I’ll walk you through them. You also need to understand Props 41 and 42, because they were written by billionaires for one purpose: to kill Prop 40. I’m analyzing all three together, because they’re really one fight wearing three different outfits.

How the three fit together (pay attention, there will be a quiz)

Prop 40 is the billionaire tax. Props 41 and 42 are dressed up as “good government” measures, but their real job is to kill Prop 40, and they’ll tie the hands of voters on future taxes while they’re at it.

It’s possible (even likely) that all three will pass. When measures on the same subject conflict, the one with more yes votes wins. Props 41 and 42 each include a clause saying that conflicting measures are void if 41 or 42 gets more yes votes. So Prop 40 could win a majority and still never become law.

In plain English:

• 40 passes, and 41 and 42 get fewer yes votes than 40: the billionaire tax moves forward.
• 40 passes, but 41 gets more yes votes: 41 can override the conflicting parts of 40.
• 40 passes, but 42 gets more yes votes: Prop 40 is dead on arrival.
• 40 fails, and 41 and/or 42 pass: no billionaire tax, and 41 and 42 become law anyway.

People tend to overlook that last one. If Prop 40 loses, 41 and 42 have nothing left to poison, but they don’t go away. They become permanent parts of California law, so each one has to stand on its own merits. And in every scenario where they collide, the courts get the final word. Hello, years of litigation! Lawyers everywhere are already pricing their boats.

Prop 40: The One-Time Billionaire Tax

What it does: Prop 40 imposes a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of California residents worth more than $1 billion as of January 1, 2026. Not millionaires. Not your dentist. Not anyone you know, unless you know some very interesting people. Legit billionaires.

The tax covers almost everything a billionaire owns, anywhere in the world (minus their debts): stocks, family companies, intellectual property. It doesn’t include real estate, pensions, retirement accounts, or physical property (art, yachts, Burning Man art cars) held outside California. The tax is due in 2027, and billionaires who are feeling cash-poor (sad trombone) can spread their payments over five years, at additional cost. Ninety percent of the money goes to health care, and the rest goes mainly to education and food assistance.

Proponents say it will raise about $100 billion. The Legislative Analyst won’t go that far, but agrees it would bring in “tens of billions of dollars,” while warning that the number is unusually hard to predict. (It’s hard to count money when the people who own it pay armies of accountants to make it look smaller.)

Supporters: This is SEIU-United Healthcare West’s baby. Yes, the dialysis-ballot-measure people. I’ve spent three voter guides yelling at SEIU-UHW for clogging our ballots with revenge measures, and nobody is more surprised than I am to be on their side this time. The Yes on 40 / No on 41 & 42 committee has raised about $31.8 million, almost all of it from SEIU-UHW and its affiliates. Other supporters include the California Nurses Association, Teamsters California, the California Democratic Party, Rep. Ro Khanna, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Robert Reich. Six Nobel Prize-winning economists, including Joseph Stiglitz, Peter Diamond and Paul Krugman, signed a letter in support.

Their case is simple. Congress just cut Medicaid and other safety net programs while handing the wealthiest Americans another tax cut. Supporters say California should claw some of that money back from the people who got the tax cut, instead of cutting health care or raising taxes on everyone else. According to the official ballot argument, Prop 40 would hit only about 250 billionaires, and the money it raises will “replace the funding Trump and his billionaire donors took from working people.” Bernie Sanders says it could protect health care for 3 million Californians.

They also point out that billionaires play by different tax rules than the rest of us. Most of their wealth is unrealized gains: stock that has shot up in value but hasn’t been sold, so it’s never taxed as income. Instead of selling, they borrow against those assets at low interest rates and live off the loans. When they die, the gains get wiped clean for their heirs under federal tax law. Tax nerds call this “buy, borrow, die.” Meanwhile, your paycheck gets taxed every two weeks. Their fortunes can go untaxed for generations. A wealth tax is the only way to reach that money.

As for the criticism that a “one-time” tax doesn’t cut it, supporters say that’s the point. Prop 40 isn’t meant to permanently overhaul California’s tax system. It’s an emergency response to an emergency: a federal government that just yanked the rug out from under millions of people’s health care.

And they note that California is ground zero for extreme inequality. As the Nobel Prize-winning economists put it, “The explosive growth of the state’s billionaires over the past few decades has made it one of the most unequal places in America.” Their letter ends with this:

“As Californians head to the polls, their vote may well come to be seen as a turning point in the battle between democracy and oligarchy.”
Daron Acemoglu, Abhijit Banerjee, Peter Diamond, Esther Duflo, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz

BOOM.

Opponents: This coalition is weird. It includes Governor Newsom (friend of billionaires), Xavier Becerra (aspiring friend of billionaires), the California Teachers Association (I’ll explain), Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California (huh?), the California Medical Association, the California Primary Care Association, the firefighters, the building trades and the California Chamber of Commerce. The San Francisco Democratic Party voted to oppose it, even though the state party supports it. And the money behind the opposition comes from (surprise!) billionaires: more than $84 million so far, much of it through Building a Better California, whose top donors are Google co-founder Sergey Brin and venture capitalist John Doerr.

Opponents’ arguments fall into three buckets.

Bucket #1: “The billionaires will leave!” Will Prop 40 drive the richest Californians out of the state, taking their income taxes with them? That’s Governor Newsom’s argument. The No campaign claims a $25 billion loss in tax revenue, citing a study by Stanford economists. The Legislative Analyst’s estimate is much smaller: probably less than $1 billion a year in lost income tax.

To be fair to the No side, a few of them did pack. Larry Page dropped $173 million on two waterfront mansions in Miami, and Sergey Brin and Peter Thiel reportedly moved their family investment operations out of state, all before the January 1 cutoff. Bon voyage, gentlemen. Enjoy August.

But not everyone is fleeing. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, who would owe an estimated $8 billion, reportedly called paying it “a privilege.” Imagine that.

And billionaires are famous for avoiding taxes in the first place, so the threat of losing their tax dollars is a little rich (pun intended). Everyone says they’ll leave California if voters pass [insert measure here], and most of them never do. California is the place to be. Have you been to Austin in August?

Personally, if a few more billionaires do leave, I’ll help them pack. Fewer billionaires means fewer billionaire-funded ballot measures, which means a shorter voter guide, which means I get my Septembers back.

Bucket #2: “You can’t calculate this fairly.” Net worth is easy to measure when it’s all publicly traded stock. It’s much harder for a stake in a private company, which has no market price. Prop 40 solves this with a formula instead of an appraisal, and critics say the formula can produce absurd results. Most notably, it presumes a founder owns at least as much of their company as their share of the voting power. A founder with a small economic stake but a lot of votes could be taxed on far more than their shares are worth. The California Society of CPAs opposes Prop 40 on administrability alone, which is the most CPA reason imaginable to oppose something.

There’s also a timing issue. The tax applies to anyone who lived in California on January 1, 2026, ten months before anyone gets to vote on it, even if they’ve since moved away. Opponents call that retroactive, and it guarantees a court challenge. (See: lawyers, boats.)

Bucket #3: “We like taxing billionaires, just not like this.” This is the most interesting bucket, because it comes from people who are fine with taxing billionaires. They object to how this measure is built:

• It’s one-time money for ongoing costs. Health care bills don’t stop in 2027. Planned Parenthood, which lost about $300 million in federal funding, put it bluntly in its ballot argument: “Prop. 40 doesn’t help the need for stable healthcare funding. Prop. 40 makes it worse.” (Worse? Not sure I buy that, but OK.)
• It cuts out schools. Prop 40 routes its revenue around Prop 98, the constitutional guarantee that gives schools a share of new state revenue, and around the state spending limit. The No campaign says schools lose about $3 billion a year (their number, not the Legislative Analyst’s). As the Teachers Association’s president put it, “It intentionally goes around public education funding, it cuts it out of receiving resources.”
• The providers weren’t at the table. SEIU-UHW drafted the measure without the hospitals, clinics and doctors who actually deliver care. The Legislature keeps wide discretion over where the money goes, so there’s no guarantee it reaches patients.

Now you know why the teachers, Planned Parenthood and the doctors are on the same side as Sergey Brin. Politics makes strange bedfellows.

Prop 41: Audits and the State Spending Limit

What it does: Prop 41 bundles two very different things. The first is an audit requirement. When the sponsors of an initiative for a new special tax (like Prop 40) collect 25% of the signatures they need, the State Auditor reviews the programs that would get the money. If the measure qualifies, a summary of the audit goes in the voter guide, and if it passes, those programs get audited every four years.

The second is a constitutional change: California generally could no longer create a new tax whose revenue is exempt from the state spending limit. Prop 40 does exactly that. That’s the poison pill. If 41 gets more votes than 40, it guts the billionaire tax.

Supporters: The California Society of CPAs, the CalAsian Chamber of Commerce, the California Taxpayers Association, the California Chamber of Commerce and Reform California. And the money: nearly $60 million, almost all of it from Building a Better California (the billionaires). Supporters argue that voters should know whether programs actually work before approving new taxes to pay for them, and that new taxes shouldn’t be designed to dodge the voter-approved spending limit.

Opponents: SEIU-UHW, Bernie Sanders, the California Democratic Party and the rest of the Prop 40 coalition. They call the audit language a shell game that hides the real purpose, which is killing Prop 40. The Legislative Analyst says the net fiscal effect is unknown. Audits cost money (probably in the low millions a year, and growing), although they could theoretically turn up savings.

Prop 42: A Permanent Ban on Wealth Taxes

What it does: Prop 42 amends the state constitution to prohibit new state taxes on financial assets or other personal property. That covers stocks, investment accounts, business interests and intellectual property. It also limits retroactive taxes. The Legislative Analyst says explicitly that if 42 gets more yes votes than 40, Prop 40 is stopped from becoming law. No ambiguity there.

Supporters: This coalition is broader than 41’s. It includes California Professional Firefighters, the State Building and Construction Trades Council, the Peace Officers Research Association of California, AMVETS, Reform California, Building a Better California and Sergey Brin himself. The Yes campaign has reported more than $73 million, essentially all of it from the billionaires. Their pitch: California should tax income and transactions, not the mere fact that you saved or invested money you already paid income tax on, and people should be able to rely on the tax rules in place when they made their financial decisions.

Opponents: SEIU-UHW, Sanders and the California Democratic Party. They point out that no ordinary Californian faces a state wealth tax on their 401(k), so the retirement-savings pitch is a scare tactic. The Legislative Analyst says 42 would restrict California’s future tax options and could reduce future revenue, although it can’t estimate by how much.

About that retirement pitch. The Yes on 42 campaign wants you to believe Sacramento is coming for your 401(k), and that Prop 42 is the only thing standing in the way. It isn’t. As CalMatters points out, there is no such proposal. Lawmakers have floated asset taxes before, those bills went nowhere, and any new tax like that would need a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. KQED’s Marisa Lagos says she’s seen “no serious proposals” to tax 401(k)s. And Prop 40 itself exempts pensions and IRAs (except Roth IRAs holding more than $10 million, which I promise you don’t have), and it only applies to about 200 billionaires. So why spend tens of millions of dollars warning you about a tax nobody in Sacramento is seriously pushing? Because the scare is the strategy. They need you to vote yes on 42, because if 42 gets more yes votes than 40, the billionaire tax dies. Your retirement account is the bait. Sergey Brin’s fortune is what they’re protecting.

What the polls say (Yikes!)

A September Public Policy Institute of California survey of 1,103 likely voters found:

• Prop 40: 52% yes, 46% no
• Prop 41: 51% yes, 44% no
• Prop 42: 54% yes, 43% no

Voters currently support all three at the same time. If those were the final results, Prop 40 would pass AND Prop 42 would pass with more yes votes, which would stop the billionaire tax from ever taking effect. Voters would approve a tax and a ban on that tax on the same day. You cannot make this stuff up.

Support for 40 has grown a bit since August, when Berkeley IGS had it at 48% yes, 41% no and 11% undecided. But all of these numbers are within shouting distance of the margin of error, and California tax measures historically lose support as Election Day approaches. So nobody should be popping champagne. Not even the billionaires, and they can afford the good stuff.

Mostly, those numbers tell me that voters are confused, and that nearly $120 million in countermeasure advertising is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

My take on 40, 41 and 42: YES, NO and NO

Yes on 40, because billionaires shouldn’t exist. Look, I’m a lawyer and a government nerd. I can see Prop 40’s flaws as well as anyone. Is it the wealth tax I would have drafted? No. Do I wish SEIU-UHW had sat down with the teachers and health care providers before filing it? Obviously. But nobody else is offering to make billionaires pay anything, and people need health care now, not after the next Democrat wins the White House and we also control both houses of Congress.

We’re talking about a one-time 5% tax on people worth more than a billion dollars. Take Warriors owner Joe Lacob, whom Forbes puts at about $2.3 billion. His bill would be roughly $115 million, leaving him with a measly $2.2 billion. He’ll be fine. He will still be sitting courtside at every game.

Together, it’s estimated that Brin and friends have spent over $200 million on these three measures. If they’re willing to spend that much to kill this thing, it clearly works. As Senator Sanders noted, “Instead of paying their fair share of taxes, billionaires are now spending $229 million — 0.01% of their wealth — to oppose a 5% tax on their wealth.” That tells you everything you need to know.

And think about what happens if Prop 40 fails. Every billionaire in America will point to California, the bluest state in the country, and say, “See? Even THEY don’t want to tax us.” That talking point will kill wealth tax proposals in statehouses from Olympia to Albany for a decade. But if it passes? California has a long history of going first and dragging the rest of the country along with it: auto emissions standards, the minimum wage, marriage equality. Other states would follow. Maybe someday even Congress would follow. (A girl can dream!)

At a moment when the federal government is cutting health care for working families to pay for tax cuts for the richest people on earth, California has a chance to send a very loud message: nobody makes a billion dollars alone. They got rich on the backs of the rest of us: the workers who built their products, the public roads and schools and research that made their companies possible, and the taxpayers who footed the bill while they paid a lower rate than their nannies. It’s time they paid their fair share. Let’s send that message together.

No on 41, and this is my softest no. I like the audit idea. Putting an independent auditor between an initiative sponsor’s sales pitch and your ballot is small-d democracy at its best: it doesn’t stop anyone from proposing anything, it just gives voters real information. But it’s very narrow. It only covers special taxes, so it wouldn’t have touched a single dialysis measure. (Grrrr.) We’d also pay for audits of initiatives that never even qualify. And the audit piece is chained to a permanent constitutional restriction that binds the Legislature and future voters, and exists mainly to kill Prop 40. If someone puts the audit provision on the ballot by itself, I’ll probably vote yes. This version comes with too much baggage.

No on 42, and this is my hardest no. Prop 42 is the one that outlives this entire fight. It permanently removes wealth taxes from California’s toolkit, for the Legislature AND for future voters. None of us knows what California’s finances will look like in 2040. If Prop 40 loses and 42 passes, whoever writes the next, smarter billionaire tax never gets a shot without amending the constitution first. Prop 42 isn’t protecting your 401(k). It’s protecting Sergey Brin’s grandchildren’s yachts, forever.

Did I mention I’m not a fan of California’s direct democracy process? Countermeasures designed to confuse voters into killing a measure they support are the ballot measure system at its most cynical. Look at those poll numbers again. The billionaires don’t need to win the argument on Prop 40. They just need Prop 42 to get more yes votes than 40 does.

So remember: your yes on 40 only counts if you ALSO vote no on 41 and 42. Voting yes on all three is exactly what they’re counting on.

YES on 40. NO on 41. NO on 42. Sergey, I’m coming for you, wherever you live these days.

Prop 43: Lets One-Third of Voters Block Local Taxes. Vote NO.

Every ballot needs a plot twist, and this year’s comes courtesy of Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. She wrote Prop 43, and now she’s campaigning against it. Imagine baking a cake and then standing next to it all night shouting “don’t eat the cake.” There is a method to the madness: she wrote it as part of a deal to get a much nastier anti-tax initiative off the ballot. More on that below.

What it does: A little history first. Under Prop 13 (yes, that one, the gift from 1978 that keeps on taking), and later Prop 218, any special tax a city puts on the ballot needs two-thirds of the vote to pass. Special taxes are the earmarked ones: money set aside for transit, parks, libraries, fire, or kids. General taxes that go into the city’s general fund only need a simple majority, but voters rarely trust their city with a blank check. (Having worked in city hall, I understand.) So the services people care about most face the highest bar.

Two-thirds is a brutal threshold. It means 33.4% of voters can kill anything. Picture a group project where a third of the team can veto everything, and the group project is your kid’s preschool. In a state where a big chunk of voters will vote no on any tax, no matter what it pays for, that turns a lot of popular measures into losers.

Then in 2017, the California Supreme Court’s Upland decision opened a door. It said the two-thirds rule applies to taxes that governments put on the ballot, not to ones citizens put there by gathering signatures. Citizen initiatives only need a simple majority.

Oakland shows how this plays out. In 2018, a citizen-led campaign put Measure AA on the ballot: a $198 parcel tax for 30 years to pay for early childhood education and college readiness. It got 62% of the vote. Everyone, including the ballot materials, assumed it needed two-thirds, so it looked dead. It failed. Then it didn’t. Supporters pointed to Upland, and the City Council voted 5-1 to certify it. The Jobs and Housing Coalition and a group of property owners sued. A trial court struck the measure down, but the Court of Appeal reversed, ruling that because AA was a citizens’ initiative, a simple majority was enough. Today, Oakland’s preschool expansion runs on that money.

Prop 43 shuts that door. Going forward, citizen-initiated special taxes would need two-thirds, just like government ones. (AA itself is safe, since the measure isn’t retroactive.) But the next Measure AA, with 62% of voters behind it, loses. Democracy!

How we got here: The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which has never met a tax it didn’t want to put in a headlock, has been fuming about Upland since 2017. It qualified an initiative for this ballot that would have retroactively wiped out past citizen-passed taxes that fell short of two-thirds. The LAO said that could cost local governments up to $2 billion a year, mostly from real estate transfer taxes in 26 charter cities, 18 of them in the Bay Area. To get it pulled, legislative leaders cut a deal: the Legislature would put a milder, forward-only version on the ballot, and HJTA would withdraw theirs. Wicks wrote it, the Legislature passed it on June 25, and HJTA backed off. Which is the political equivalent of “relax, we’re only taking one kidney.”

The Yes side: Supporters say it closes a legal loophole and puts citizen and government tax measures on equal footing. They argue special interests exploit the majority threshold in low-turnout elections to sneak taxes through. Measure AA passed in a November general election, by the way. Very sneaky, putting it on the ballot where everyone could vote on it. HJTA’s Jon Coupal is thrilled that the Legislature itself voted to make taxes harder to raise, and honestly, who can blame him? He got a Democratic supermajority to carry his water, and they even brought their own buckets.

Supporters: Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, Reform California, the Southern California News Group editorial board, and assorted business groups.

The No side: Opponents point out it doesn’t cut anyone’s taxes. It just hands a veto to a minority of voters over services like fire, 911, schools, roads, hospitals, and affordable housing. And the author herself said on X that she wrote the measure “not because I wanted it to become law. But because it was the only path left to get the more dangerous initiative off the ballot before time ran out.” That sounds more like a prisoner exchange than an endorsement.

Opponents: Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, the California Democratic Party, Evolve California, SEIU Local 1000, and the Sacramento Bee editorial board.

Why I’m voting NO: Majority rule is a pretty good system. It’s even the system we use to pass Prop 43, which needs only 50% plus one to take away your ability to pass things with 50% plus one. If that sentence made your head hurt, good, that means you’re paying attention. When the author of a constitutional amendment is begging you to reject it, take the hint. Vote NO on 43, and let Buffy have her cake back.

Prop 44: Community Clinic Spending Mandate. Hard NO.

Let’s talk about SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, the union that wrote Prop 44. SEIU-UHW treats California’s initiative process the way a mob boss treats a small business: nice clinic you’ve got here, shame if something happened to it.

I’m a Democrat. I support organized labor. And I resent the hell out of SEIU-UHW, which has turned our ballot into its personal bargaining table. The playbook goes like this: pick a health care industry, draft an expensive regulation aimed squarely at it, gather a million signatures, and wait for the phone to ring. Sometimes the industry cuts a deal and the measure disappears. Sometimes it doesn’t, and the rest of us get stuck figuring out how to vote on dialysis clinic management. Again.

This year SEIU-UHW qualified THREE statewide measures. One, a $450,000 cap on hospital executive pay, vanished in June after SEIU and the hospital industry reached a deal. Funny how that works. Apparently the measure was worth more as a hostage than as a law. The other two are still with us. Here’s their recent statewide record:

• 2018, Prop 8: Capped dialysis clinic revenues. Failed, 59.9% No.
• 2020, Prop 23: Required a doctor on site at dialysis clinics. Failed, 63.4% No.
• 2022, Prop 29: Required a doctor on site at dialysis clinics. (No, that’s not a typo.) Failed, 67.3% No.
• 2024: Nothing! Why? Because the 2023 deal that produced the $25 health care minimum wage included an agreement restricting SEIU-UHW from running certain health care ballot measures. So the one year SEIU-UHW stayed off the ballot, it was contractually required to. That’s not restraint. That’s a non-compete.
• 2026, Prop 40: Billionaire wealth tax.
• 2026, Prop 44: This one.
• 2026, executive pay cap: Qualified with over a million signatures, then withdrawn in a deal.

Voters rejected the dialysis measures three times, each time by a bigger margin. SEIU-UHW heard “no” in 2018 and took it as “try again in 2020.” It heard “NO” in 2020 and took it as “third time’s the charm.” It was not the charm. At some point you have to take the hint.

Statewide measures are just the visible part. According to CalMatters, since 2012 SEIU-UHW has sponsored 48 state and local initiatives and spent roughly $120 million on them, and most were withdrawn or defeated. That works out to about $2.5 million per initiative, mostly for nothing. And these are the people lecturing clinics about wasting money.

The LA Times noted at the time that the dialysis campaigns ran alongside SEIU’s unsuccessful effort to organize dialysis workers. And remember that mob boss joke? Turns out the clinics weren’t laughing either. On September 18, the California Primary Care Association and several clinics sued SEIU-UHW and Dave Regan in federal court under RICO, the racketeering law Congress wrote to go after the mafia. The complaint alleges the union spent $216 million on a scheme to use ballot initiatives as bargaining chips. It also alleges SEIU-UHW offered to drop Prop 44 if the clinics agreed to union election procedures that would bring in 25,000 new members, or if they dropped their opposition to the billionaire tax and put their campaign money behind it. In the complaint’s words, SEIU-UHW “filed initiatives designed not to pass, but to subjugate and terrify.” These are allegations, not findings, and civil RICO cases are notoriously hard to win. But when your political strategy gets you sued under the same law as the Gambino family, it might be time for new leadership.

What it does

Prop 44 requires nonprofit community health centers (the clinics that provide primary, dental, prenatal and mental health care to low-income and uninsured Californians) to spend at least 90% of their revenue on patient care. Administration, overhead and everything else get 10%. A clinic that falls short pays the state a penalty equal to the shortfall, which it can earn back if it complies within five years. Falsifying the numbers can bring criminal charges. And the clinics pay for the state’s enforcement costs, estimated at the low tens of millions a year. So the measure meant to cut clinic overhead starts by adding a new line of clinic overhead. Bold choice.

For context, California clinics currently average about 80%. So this isn’t about trimming a few bad actors. It’s a sector-wide overhaul written by people who don’t run clinics.

The case for Prop 44

Supporters say these are nonprofits living on taxpayer money to serve vulnerable people, so the public has every right to demand that the money go to patients rather than executive pay, consultants and fundraising. The Yes campaign says some clinics spend less than half their revenue on care while patients wait for appointments in understaffed clinics with outdated equipment. With federal Medi-Cal cuts coming, they argue, every dollar matters more than ever. And the 90% isn’t just doctors and nurses: interpreters, transportation, care coordination, medical equipment and patient-care IT all count.

Supporters: SEIU-UHW. That’s the list. The Yes coalition could hold its strategy meetings in a phone booth. SEIU has put up about $16.9 million, which is essentially all the money on the Yes side. The official voter guide lists supporters as “None submitted,” which is technically a paperwork quirk but also feels spiritually accurate.

The case against Prop 44

The 90% figure appears to have come from nowhere relevant. An SEIU analyst told the Chronicle it was partly modeled on New Mexico’s rule for insurance companies, which are a completely different kind of business. That’s like writing restaurant health codes based on the rules for gas stations. There’s no clinic industry standard anywhere that uses 90%.

“Overhead” is not a synonym for “waste.” Clinics need billing, HR, compliance, cybersecurity, medical records, lawyers and insurance. Squeezing all of that into 10% invites exactly the kind of underinvestment that causes data breaches and billing disasters.

The penalties are backwards. A struggling clinic that misses the target has to hand over more money, which it then can’t spend on patients. Opponents estimate $1.7 billion in penalties in the first year. That’s their number, not a neutral one, but even the Legislative Analyst acknowledges some clinics could close. And the measure may not even catch the abuses SEIU keeps pointing to: AltaMed’s roughly $266,000 in European art purchases was booked as a “program service,” which could still count toward the 90%.

To be fair about the money: the No side is funded mostly by the clinics themselves, led by AltaMed at about $6 million. Yes, the art people. Nobody here is a saint.

Opponents: The teachers union, the California Democratic Party, and literally everyone in healthcare. California Primary Care Association, California Medical Association, California Hospital Association, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, American Academy of Pediatrics–California, California Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Emergency Physicians–California, ACOG District IX, California School Nurses Organization, NASW–California.

The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board summed it up in its headline: Prop 44 “uses California’s most vulnerable patients as cannon fodder.”

Why I’m voting no

I don’t object to the goal. Clinics that take public money should be accountable for how they spend it. I object to the mechanism. This is detailed health care accounting regulation: a specific ratio, a penalty formula, waivers, enforcement machinery and criminal liability. That’s the Legislature’s job. Lawmakers can hold hearings, look at the actual financial data, decide whether the right number is 80, 85 or 90, and fix it when it inevitably needs fixing. Once voters pass an initiative statute, the Legislature can’t just tweak it. Nobody in a voting booth can tell you whether 2,000 safety-net clinics can survive on 10% overhead, and nobody should be asked to guess.

SEIU already tried this in the Legislature in 2025, and it failed. So now they’re asking us, the way a kid asks the other parent. Given their track record, I’m not convinced they even want it to pass so much as they want what it can buy them at the negotiating table.

Vote NO on 44. And SEIU-UHW, knock it off. Get a hobby. Or better yet, get a new President.

Prop 45: Fast-Track Environmental Review for “Essential” Projects. NO.

In 2021, a developer proposed 495 apartments on a Nordstrom parking lot at 469 Stevenson Street in San Francisco, a few blocks from BART. The Planning Commission approved it. Then the Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to send it back for more environmental review, which meant studying the environmental impact of replacing a parking lot with homes. (Don’t tell Joni Mitchell!) That cost the project 18 months. By the time it was re-approved in 2023, construction costs and interest rates had soared, and it’s still a parking lot today. Nordstrom, meanwhile, closed. The parking lot outlived the store it was built for.

The law that made this possible is the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, signed by Governor Reagan in 1970, back when Republicans signed environmental laws. CEQA requires the government to study the environmental impact of projects it approves, from apartment buildings to highways to power lines. CEQA has led to more thoughtful development throughout California, and it has also been used as a weapon by NIMBYs and project opponents. CEQA lawsuits can tie a project up for years. Stories like 469 Stevenson are why the Legislature passed major CEQA reform in 2025, and why the California Chamber of Commerce is now spending $42 million on Prop 45 to go much further.

As a former Deputy City Attorney in the real estate division, where I spent several years as counsel to the redevelopment agency, I had a front row seat to the weaponization of CEQA, so I fully expected to endorse Prop 45. I won’t. The Legislature already fixed the part that mattered most, and Prop 45 goes a lot further than the problem.

What it does. For a long list of “essential projects” (housing, transportation, water, clean energy, hospitals, schools, broadband, wildfire prevention, and, by my count, nearly everything), developers can opt into a fast-track version of CEQA. Agencies get 365 business days to finish environmental review, and courts get about nine months to resolve lawsuits. Deadlines are fine. I love a deadline. But Prop 45 also changes the substance. The developer picks the one alternative the agency has to consider, which is a bit like letting the defendant pick the jury, and the jury is one person. Environmental standards are frozen on the day the application is filed. And if a court finds the review broke the law, it can only halt the part of the project that broke it. To amend any of this, the Legislature needs a two-thirds vote, which in Sacramento is roughly as easy as redeveloping a Nordstrom parking lot.

The backstory. Thanks to the 2025 reforms, most urban infill housing is now exempt from CEQA altogether, and more than 10,000 units used that exemption in the first year. CalChamber filed Prop 45 four months after Governor Newsom signed those reforms. You know the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie? This is If You Give a Chamber of Commerce a CEQA Exemption. The business community saw what the Legislature passed and decided to ask for a lot more.

The case for Prop 45. Supporters say California doesn’t just have a housing problem. It has a building problem. Housing, transmission lines, water systems, hospitals and wildfire projects all spend years in environmental review and then more years in court, and every year of delay adds financing, labor and legal costs that renters, ratepayers and taxpayers end up paying. They also argue that CEQA lawsuits are too often filed for reasons that have nothing to do with the environment: neighbors who don’t want the project, unions looking for leverage, and competitors trying to slow each other down. (All true.) Prop 45 doesn’t repeal CEQA. Projects still get reviewed, other environmental laws still apply, people can still comment and sue, and developers choose whether to use the fast track at all. Supporters say it just makes the process end at a predictable time instead of dragging on until a project dies.

Supporters. The people you would expect: CalChamber, the California Building Industry Association, the California Association of Realtors, the California Hospital Association, the California Housing Consortium, and GrowSF. Edison International has put in $2 million, and homebuilders like Lennar and KB Home have chipped in hundreds of thousands more, which tells you who expects to be doing the building. The San Diego Union-Tribune calls it a “rare victory for common sense.”

The case against Prop 45. Opponents say Prop 45 isn’t just a speed-up. It changes what environmental review looks at and what courts can do about it. Today the agency comes up with a range of alternatives for a developer to consider. Under Prop 45, the developer supplies one alternative. Public comment periods get capped. And when a court finds the review broke the law, it can no longer stop the project while the problem gets fixed. Opponents also say the “essential project” label covers far more than housing and hospitals, and that communities already dealing with pollution would have less say over what gets built next to them. Finally, nothing in the measure requires developers or utilities to pass any savings on to the people paying the bills. And speed isn’t free: the LAO estimates that meeting the new deadlines will cost state and local governments tens of millions of dollars a year, partly covered by fees, with long-term savings uncertain.

Opponents. Sierra Club California, California Environmental Voters, the California Environmental Justice Alliance, Western Center on Law & Poverty, the State Building & Construction Trades Council, and the California Democratic Party. Yes, the Sierra Club and the Building Trades are on the same side. Write down where you were when it happened. From the official ballot argument: “Proposition 45 limits both the environmental review of major new development projects and the public’s right to be heard.”

My take. The most telling thing about Prop 45 is who’s sitting it out. SPUR and California YIMBY, two of the loudest voices for CEQA reform and big backers of the 2025 package, both declined to endorse it. When the YIMBYs won’t say yes to a building measure, pay attention. SPUR says Prop 45 “would make broader changes that conflict with SPUR’s vision for urban growth.” It could speed up good projects like housing near transit and zero-emission energy. It could just as easily speed up sprawl, highway expansions, and gas infrastructure, especially since land at the urban edge is cheaper.

That’s my problem with it too. The infill housing we actually need already got its exemption in 2025. What’s left for Prop 45 to fast-track is ugly subdivisions on the fringe and the roads to serve them. Freeways qualify as “essential,” by the way. High-speed rail is specifically excluded, which I guess makes sense, since nothing about high-speed rail in California has ever been fast.

There’s a real case for faster permitting on transmission lines and solar farms, and I’d like to see it made. That’s a job for targeted legislation, which Sacramento is already doing. It shouldn’t be done through an initiative that takes a two-thirds vote to fix when something goes wrong.

Vote no. And will somebody please build something on that parking lot.

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