Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder and one of the wealthiest people in the world, is donating $20 million to a new California political drive weeks after he took steps to leave the state to avoid a possible billionaire tax.
It is Mr. Brin’s largest and most visible political move ever, and it is the primary contribution to seed a $35 million effort by billionaires to fund ballot measure campaigns in California, according to a disclosure obtained by The New York Times on Wednesday.
The donations indicated that California’s billionaires were prepared to spend big this year on state initiative drives — and could serve as a warning shot that a nascent wealth tax proposal could face a barrage of opposition funding if it ever reaches the ballot.
So far, the first checks from the new coalition, Building a Better California, are not directed against the billionaire tax proposal, but rather toward two initiatives that aim to make housing more affordable in a state where the median home price has surpassed $850,000. Organizers said Mr. Brin and other wealthy donors, after facing the prospect of a wealth tax, became more motivated to find ways to help middle-class workers pay for housing.
“We support forward-looking policies aimed at making the state more livable and affordable — while protecting innovation and entrepreneurship, which help support a strong economy and good-paying jobs,” Abby Lunardini, a spokeswoman for Building a Better California, said in a statement.
Forming the group is one of several strategies that wealthy Californians have been exploring ever since a health care workers union drafted the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act and began collecting signatures to place it on the November ballot. That initiative, if it reaches the ballot and is approved by voters, would impose a onetime 5 percent tax on the assets of billionaires and devote most of the revenues to health care.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
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