California votes in November on Proposition 40, a onetime 5 percent tax on billionaire wealth expected to raise about $100 billion, most of it earmarked for health care. It exists because H. R. 1 blasted a $30 billion annual hole in Medi-Cal — part of a roughly $1 trillion national Medicaid cut over ten years, with new eligibility requirements landing October 1 and January 1. The California Democratic Party endorsed it. Governor Newsom, eyeing the White House, has vowed to defeat it.

Christie Offenbacher, a therapist and NYC-DSA Tax the Rich organizer, argues the initiative is being buried by an internal union fight timed to do maximum damage:

  • SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, led by Dave Regan, put the measure forward. SEIU California — the state council — stayed neutral on an initiative from one of its own member unions.
  • SEIU California and the international union commissioned investigations that found several allegations against Regan credible: that he tried to “extort” support for Prop 40 by threatening a governance investigation, and a 2009 assault claim by Courtni Pugh.
  • Regan denies all of it, calls the claims fabrications, and says the internal report was leaked to the LA Times — which is owned by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong.
  • Pugh now consults against Prop 40, is a longtime member of Newsom’s inner campaign circle, was his political director during the 2021 recall, and was appointed by him to a state board in 2024.
  • The California Labor Federation’s Lorena Gonzalez noted Regan’s members — overwhelmingly women and women of color — just reelected him.

The theoretical frame is Tariq Ali’s “extreme centre”: as the centrist base shrinks, its methods get more radical, and identity-inflected smear campaigns are one of them.

Offenbacher’s position is uncomfortable and worth taking seriously. She does not dispute that harassment in unions is real and must be stamped out — she argues the deployment of real allegations as election-season ammunition is what makes genuine offenders harder to punish, because everyone learns to read the next accusation as theater. The reckoning, she says, can happen after November. Fifteen million Californians’ coverage cannot.

The fight now sits with SEIU president April Verrett: suspend Regan while charges are heard, or defer the mess and help pass the tax.