This is the worst measure on California’s ballot — and Gavin Newsom supports it

Gov. Gavin Newsom is catching a lot of flak from Democrats for his opposition to Proposition 40, the billionaire wealth tax.

Yet no one seems to be talking about his backing of what’s arguably the worst measure on California’s November ballot: Prop 38.

It’s easy to see why Newsom’s support is flying under the radar. At first glance, voting for Prop 38 seems like a no-brainer. Who wouldn’t support funding medical research into potential treatments and cures for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s? It’s no surprise that polls show 57% of voters supporting it.

But you are being deceived.

The measure is a Trojan horse that would funnel billions of taxpayer dollars into an untested pet project founded by the same group of billionaires that paid to put Prop 38 on the ballot.

“Shady” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

Prop 38 would permit the state to issue $8.4 billion in bonds for medical research into immunology and immunotherapy, scientific fields that examine how the body’s immune system can be harnessed to fight disease. Californians would get a 20% discount on drugs that receive commercial approval, with 10% of revenue flowing back to the state.

So far, so good.

That was until the online news site CalMatters discovered that the measure stockpiles half the funds — $4.2 billion in taxpayer dollars — for a single unnamed institute that meets a long list of strange requirements, some of which have nothing to do with the ability to conduct high-quality medical research.

Among them: The institute must occupy a minimum 200,000-square-foot space, be linked to a University of California campus healthcare system with more than 35,000 annual inpatient hospital admissions and have received a $50 million donation for a “microbiome research program.”

Only one facility in the state meets those criteria: The California Institute of Immunology & Immunotherapy.

This recently formed institute — which has an opaque affiliation with UCLA but will operate mostly independently — was founded by the same group of billionaires that gathered signatures to put Prop 38 on the ballot: Surgeon Gary Michelson, businessman Meyer Luskin and the Trump-pardoned “junk bond king,” Michael Milken, who’ve raised nearly $72 million to flood the airwaves with ads touting the measure.

But it has no track record of doing, well, anything.

It’s not even fully built, despite receiving $250 million in philanthropic money — and an infusion of $200 million in California taxpayer funds.

In 2024, Newsom trumpeted that investment as one that would help “cement California’s global economic, scientific, and technological dominance into the 22nd century and beyond.” But an institute spokesperson acknowledged that construction on a “majority” of its space isn’t expected to be completed until 2028.

The institute doesn’t even have a director. In fact, it only had three employees as of September, despite having planned to hire 51 by last year, CalMatters reported.

In other words, it’s nowhere near ready for primetime.

Despite that, Prop 38 also grants the institute “primary responsibility” for negotiating sale and licensing agreements for all drugs developed through research funded by the measure — even those created by other universities or nonprofit institutions, which would have to compete for the remaining $4.2 billion in bond money.

California has some of the top scientific research institutions in the world, yet Prop 38 is poised to hand control of a huge funding pipeline to a partially constructed facility with no one in charge and fewer employees than your local Starbucks.

It isn’t just ridiculous; it’s insulting.

All we’ve heard this election cycle is that the pending Trump administration-supported healthcare cuts by Congress are going to leave California’s most vulnerable residents without care.

Yet the billionaires behind Prop 38 have the audacity to ask California residents to eat decades of debt payments — about $500 million to $600 million annually for 20 years — to fund a project they could easily pay for themselves. All while papering over that selfishness by invoking vulnerable patients and suffering families.

And then there’s our governor.

Newsom’s support of Prop 38 is particularly infuriating given that there’s a $7.5 billion scientific research bond headed for the March 2028 ballot. Authorized by a bill from state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, the measure would create a state foundation to award grants and make loans through a peer-reviewed process to universities, research companies and institutes for biomedical, behavioral health and climate research.

Wiener’s bond better aligns with how scientific research should be funded, said Robert Kaplan, senior scholar at the Stanford School of Medicine Clinical Excellence Research Center and former associate director at the National Institutes of Health.

Money should be competitively awarded, not handed to just one institution or prioritized for just one field of study, Kaplan, a Prop 38 opponent, said. He added that unlike Prop 38, Wiener’s bond “has the kinds of transparency protections that I think taxpayers would expect.”

Newsom made a huge show of signing Wiener’s bill — his final one as governor — in an ostentatious ceremony atop the Golden Gate Bridge.

Yet his backing of Prop 38 risks undermining support for that effort, as voters tend to get confused and fatigued by a surplus of bond measures.

In other words, Newsom is tipping the scales toward a sketchy institute that might not even have a completed building by March 2028 over a far superior effort with the potential to deliver meaningful scientific advances.

Asked for comment, Newsom’s press office referred me to his campaign team, which didn’t respond to multiple inquiries.

That’s not surprising. This is an impossible position to defend.

As someone who suffers from an autoimmune condition, I don’t take issue with investing in immunology and immunotherapy research. Far from it.

But I do object to handing a pot of gold to an unproven institute — the lab equivalent of a nepo baby — instead of prioritizing funds for rigorously vetted research projects that show the greatest possibility of making a difference.

And I take issue with Prop 38’s backers cramming their crooked measure onto a crowded ballot, crossing their fingers that voters won’t have time to do their research.

Honestly, Newsom’s willingness to back this deceptive measure is so bad it should be a deal-breaker for anyone considering supporting his likely quest for the Oval Office.

Emily Hoeven is a columnist and editorial writer for the Opinion section.

Original column at the San Francisco Chronicle ↗