Intraparty feuding isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes these feuds are necessary for political movements to define themselves.
That’s part of the reason there’s value in Texas’ Democratic primary between Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico for a Senate seat, and it’s why the budding dispute between Democratically aligned Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and California Gov. Gavin Newsom over an upcoming ballot initiative to impose a tax on billionaires is worth watching.
The proposal calls for a one-time, 5% tax on the state’s billionaires to help pay for health care and education services affected by federal budget cuts.
Sanders held a rally in Los Angeles on Wednesday to mobilize voters in support of the tax. During the rally, he rebuked fearmongering over the tax and called out the lavish lifestyles of California-based billionaires, naming Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, to argue that the “billionaire class” has more than enough money to afford an additional tax.
Newsom, along with a bunch of wealthy executives, has opposed the billionaire tax. Over the past month in particular, he has emphasized his fear that rich people will flee the state as a primary reason for his opposition to the one-time tax.
Among the main opponents of the bill is Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whom Newsom invited to one of his weddings. Brin and other billionaire oligarchs are behind a push to mobilize voters against the tax and, if it passes, to undercut its power. California has more resident billionaires than any other state by a wide margin. An analysis from The Wall Street Journal last year found that the state is home to 255, or roughly a quarter, of the nation’s billionaires. Some might argue that the state could afford to lose a few. But that a one-time tax on 200-some individuals with mind-boggling wealth is a point of contention among two popular liberals means the outcome in November could be revelatory in terms of what it says about the future of the Democratic Party. Particularly, whether it will be a party that tempers its policies to assuage the concerns of the uber-wealthy. Some people suspect the Democrats, thanks in no small part to populist fury toward the country’s budding oligarchy, are positioned for a Tea Party-esque wave of progressive victories in this year’s midterms. The outcome of the vote on California’s billionaire tax in November will be one key indicator as to the existence and strength of such a wave.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
