Silicon Valley billionaires spent a small fortune to successfully defeat the Billionaire Tax Act. The battle against Proposition 40 was the largest coordinated effort by the tech industry’s wealthiest since the failed gubernatorial campaign of San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. That endeavor was marred by infighting between Silicon Valley’s biggest egos with an all too inevitable outcome; Mahan finished 6th with a scant 3.5% of the vote.

The Mahan campaign was a learning experience. Silicon Valley’s oligarchs came back savvier: In January of this year, two Google veterans, cofounder Sergey Brin and former Chair Eric Schmidt created Building a Better California, the political action committee that led the charge in fighting Prop 40.

From its inception through Oct. 17, Building a Better California received more than $333 million in contributions from tech billionaires. In the same period, it spent a staggering $62 million, an average of $2 million a day. Brin, until recently a political novice, was the biggest donor by far, contributing more than $100 million to the PAC. His fellow billionaire and former colleague, Schmidt gave slightly more than $40 million. Crypto billionaire Chris Larsen, a longtime contributor to city, state and national campaigns, donated more than $13 million.

The final months of the campaign were marked by frantic activity. In the first 17 days of October, Building a Better California received more than $57.5 million including a $11.6 million contribution from Stripe Chief Executive Patrick Collison and another $13.1 million from Schmidt. Joining them were other billionaires, including tech investor James Coulter who gave $2.5 million and Brook Byers of Kleiner Perkins who contributed more than $1 million while his venture firm matched his donation.

The money was spent on deceptive advertising that framed Prop 40 as a tax on average Californians. But, fear-mongering was not the only weapon in their arsenal. After spending millions to unsuccessfully keep the measure from the state ballot, and more millions to flood the media with deceitful ads, they deployed a fail-safe: Two “poison pill” propositions to invalidate Prop 40. 

Propositions 41 was exclusively supported by Californians for Transparency and Accountability which received $71.5 million from Building a Better California. Similarly, Proposition 42, supported by Protect Retirement & Life Savings, was the recipient of $138 million from Building a Better California.

The money and energy went toward defeating a one-time 5% tax on the state’s estimated 200 billionaires of which 90% would have rescued the state’s healthcare system in the wake of President Donald Trump’s devastating tax cuts. The remaining 10% was earmarked for the state’s community colleges and public food banks. The fight against Prop 40 illustrated the lengths the state’s billionaires were willing to go to protect their massive wealth.

An effort of this magnitude would not have been possible without practice. The Astroturf Network began its political involvement in 2022 with the recall of San Francisco’s reform-minded District Attorney Chesa Boudin and three progressive members of the city’s school board. Since then, billionaires like Larsen and former venture capitalist Michael Moritz have spent lavishly on local conservative causes and candidates including initiatives to weaken civilian oversight of the San Francisco Police Department, criminalize homelessness and electronically surveil city residents.

Brin, and his tech industry compatriots, are now nationalizing the Astroturf project. The Google cofounder, who attended a lavish dinner at Trump’s White House last September, has donated $443,000 to the Republican National Committee while his company, Google, ponied up $1 million for Trump’s inauguration fund. Similarly, Larsen contributed $5 million to Trump’s inauguration through his company Ripple Labs. 

What all their political spending has in common is self-interest. Trump earned their fealty by promising to prevent nascent technologies like cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence from being regulated by the federal government. Prop 40, the billionaires worried, would make them pay their fair share for the common good, something they were loath to do.  Prop 40 may have gone down to defeat, but it outed the tech lords’ chief priority  — the protection of their overflowing wallets.