Next Tuesday’s midterm elections are sure to have far-reaching political consequences, especially as Donald Trump is at an all time low in popularity. Much attention is deservedly on several swing state races that have the potential to end Republican control over the House and maybe even the Senate. But even in the solidly “blue state” of California, there are major, nationwide implications of congressional races, a mayoral race in Los Angeles, and Proposition 40, a high-profile ballot initiative that aims to create a wealth tax targeting billionaires.
Since Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral elections last November, several other self-described democratic socialist or progressive candidates have emerged to challenge incumbents representing the Democratic Party establishment. In at least two cases, these incumbents had served for over two decades in office. A DSA-backed candidate appears likely to become the next mayor of Washington, D.C. And in Los Angeles, one of the two most important cities in the country, Nithya Raman, who is endorsed by the DSA, is ahead in the polls against her competitor, incumbent Karen Bass, the candidate backed by California’s business elite.
The Legacy of Karen Bass
Bass has presided over a city that has become increasingly out of reach for working people. Homelessness continues to grow. Just last year, the city experienced a nearly 8 percent increase in its unsheltered homeless population with a total of close to 30,000 people without shelter or a permanent home. The housing crisis and cost of living crisis were further exacerbated by major wildfires in 2025, which wreaked havoc on the city; 31 people were killed and thousands of homes and other buildings burned. According to the Guardian, nearly half of those who saw their homes damaged or destroyed had to “take on debt to stay afloat and 20% have had to delay rebuilding or repairs due to financial constraints.”
And when Trump deployed ICE to the city to round up and deport immigrants, Bass’s police force, already one of the most heavily militarized in the world, violently suppressed demonstrations against the agency. In at least five cases, demonstrators lost an eye after LAPD shot plastic or rubber bullets into the crowd. The Los Angeles Press Club filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging that around a dozen journalists had been injured by police while covering the protests.
Big business, recognizing Bass as its most faithful supporter in , has heavily backed her campaign. AirBnB has donated more than $7 million to the incumbent mayor’s re-election bid and candidates for other elected positions in Los Angeles Among the business groups endorsing Bass include the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and the Building Owners and Managers Association of Greater Los Angeles. The union representing LAPD officers meanwhile chipped in $3 million to oppose Bass’s challenger, Nithya Raman, and other candidates in city elections that it deems a threat to officers’ interests.
And no wonder. While working people in the Los Angeles area struggle to cover the increased cost of housing, groceries, and utilities, various corporate sectors are raking in billion dollar profits under Bass’s administration, particularly those in the housing and real estate markets and in the entertainment industry.
The Billionaire Wealth Tax
Faced with a scenario in which billionaires living in California are seeing windfalls while the vast majority experience insecurity, low wages, and inadequate health care, a major union representing health care workers succeeded in putting forward a state ballot measure that, if passed, would be one of a kind in the country. Dubbed the billionaire tax, the initiative – officially Proposition 40 – would levy a five percent wealth tax on those with assets of $1 billion or more, with the proceeds funding a state public health care program.
Unlike the income taxes or capital gains taxes, a wealth tax would target existing assets of California’s approximately 200 billionaires, which would make it the only tax of its kind in the United States.
Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the union representing over 100,000 workers that sponsored the ballot measure, describe Prop 40 as a “one-time, emergency 5% tax to prevent the collapse of California healthcare and help fund California public K-14 education and state food assistance programs. This would protect healthcare jobs and ensure working people and families can get the care they need.”
Several of these billionaires have already mobilized to defeat Prop 40. Google co-founder Sergey Brin has already put more than $100 million toward sinking the wealth tax, according to a Los Angeles Times report. Well-financed opposition groups have also put two “poison pill” initiatives on the ballot, Proposition 41 and Proposition 42 that, with confusing and vague language, aim to nullify Prop 40 should it pass.
It is unsurprising that the politicians who have relied most heavily on big business support, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom or the aforementioned Mayor Bass, have forcefully denounced the wealth tax measure. However, even many of California’s supposedly progressive candidates, like Bass’s challenger, Nithya Raman, have stayed virtually silent on the ballot measure and refused to publicly endorse it. In so doing, Raman is making clear that she would not meaningfully challenge Los Angeles’s elite or big business interests if she wins next Tuesday.
Raman and the DSA Controversy
The LA chapter of the DSA, which today boasts 6,000 members, endorsed the candidacy of Nithya Raman in September. However, last week, the DSA’s National Political Committee emailed LA local leaders saying that “they were out of compliance with R22, a DSA resolution that “requires local chapters to inquire about a politician’s positions on the BDS movement before they are endorsed”. DSA-LA leaders acknowledged that they did not “vet” Raman’s position on BDS and other reasons for concern.
Raman has never publicly endorsed BDS, and while recognizing that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza, she has taken several questionable actions, such as accepting a campaign donation from the group “Democrats for Israel.”
Although Ramen lacks the popular support and social base that secured Mamdani the New York majoralship, she will probably get widespread popular support, and it is understandable that in this election she is capturing the vote of young people, the working class, and the immigrant community—which has been hit hard by Trump’s Gestapo, ICE.
The rejection of Karen Bass and the Democratic establishment—and the desire to bring about fundamental change in a city where politicians govern for the super-rich and Silicon Valley—is understandable. However, the discontent within the DSA at the national level regarding support for Raman in Los Angeles indicates that a sector within the DSA is deeply outraged by supporting politicians who receive money from Zionist organizations and is increasingly questioning support for politicians on the Democratic ballot whose independence from the regime is nonexistent. Although DSA national leadership has called to revisit endorsement for Raman in response to enormous pressure from the rank and file, this is not enough.
The very relationship with the Democratic Party and the regime is in question based on the experience of one year of “municipal socialism” in New York and is being debated throughout the DSA, given that Mamdani has maintained a collaborative stance with the New York Police Department and Jessica Tisch, infamous for her repression of the pro-Palestine movement. It is essential that the anger toward Trump and the far right, the bipartisan regime, and the thirst for socialism that is flourishing among American youth be channeled into organizing the struggle against the fascistic onslaught led by ICE—following the example of Minneapolis and Los Angeles.
It is essential to organize the struggle against the cost of living crisis and declining health care and to make the billionaires pay for the economic debacle they caused, not the working class. It is urgent to put forward independent workers’ candidates towards 2028 backed by the DSA and the broader left, thereby building a movement of struggle that can also secure our right to our own political representation while we build the social force in the struggle that can actually defeat the Far Right, war, genocide, and austerity.
The post A Wealth Tax, a Mayoral Race, and DSA Reckoning in California appeared first on Left Voice.
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