California Teachers Association

The California Democratic Party endorsed the ballot measure, while Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom opposes it.

Other opponents of Prop 40 include the California Teachers Association and Planned Parenthood, although some Planned Parenthood staff have broken with leadership to announce their support of the billionaire tax.

For more, we're joined in New York by Lorena González, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, which backs Prop 40, and in Boston, we're joined by Congress member Ro Khanna, Democratic Congress member from, uh, California.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Lorena González, let's begin with you.

That includes the guy teachers unions were backing, Richard Barrera, not Baccaria, who the Democratic Party has since endorsed.

She did it while the California Teachers Association spent close to $5 million backing him in the primary, and its president said the union would spend as much as it takes for him to win.

Shaw had raised about $260,000.

That candidate got outspent like 20 to 1 by the union's outside money alone, and she still won.

Look back at whether they told you they were going to do things like take the asbestos out of the walls, and now they're asking you again to take the asbestos out of the walls.

The California Teachers Association is supportive of local efforts for capital spending after decades of disinvestment.

CTA President David Goldberg says their main priority right now, however, is a pitch for Proposition 3, a constitutional amendment to indefinitely extend the income tax on the wealthiest Californians.

It is about 15% of our education budget now, so if this were to expire, we'd see some huge cuts in student programs, incredible increases in class size, and some layoffs across the state of California.

Uh, and it would, you know, take our state's already very shaky, uh, finances and, uh, put them in an even worse condition.

As someone who's been there for many battles in Sacramento, can you think of a time when the SEIU and the California Teachers Association have gone up against each other to this degree before?

Yeah, I don't know.

It's, uh, it's, it's very strange, and, uh, I, I do think the fact that you're seeing some opposition, uh, emerge from unusual quarters, uh, is a testament to just how, uh, misguided and potentially ruinous, uh, of a proposal this is.