[ Voters in Massachusetts just ratified the Fair Share Amendment,
which taxes income above $1 million to fund public services. A broad
coalition of labor and community groups took on billionaire money and
won.]
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IN MASSACHUSETTS, UNIONS BEAT BILLIONAIRES  
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Paul Prescod
November 12, 2022
Jacobin
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_ Voters in Massachusetts just ratified the Fair Share Amendment,
which taxes income above $1 million to fund public services. A broad
coalition of labor and community groups took on billionaire money and
won. _

Jeron Mariani, the campaign manager for Yes on 1 (the campaign for
the Fair Share Amendment) speaks to attendees at the Yes on 1 and Yes
on 4 event for the 2022 midterm elections in Boston, Carlin Stiehl for
the Boston Globe via Getty Images

 

While the Democrats’ worst fears of a “red wave” did not
materialize, the midterms also didn’t feature many clear affirmative
wins for the Left. But in Massachusetts, working people scored a major
victory with a ballot measure to tax the rich and fund public
investment. Supported by a broad labor-community coalition, the
passage of the Fair Share Amendment [[link removed]] can
serve as a model for ballot initiative
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campaigns nationwide.

The Fair Share Amendment will create a 4 percent tax on annual income
above $1 million. The funds raised from this measure are mandated to
be spent on public education, transportation, and infrastructure
repair. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy,
the amendment will generate over $2 billion every year for the state.
The opposition campaign, funded
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by billionaires including New Balance’s Jim Davis and Patriots owner
Robert Kraft, was aggressive, and the contest was close: 52 percent of
Massachusetts voters ratified the amendment.

The campaign was spearheaded by Raise up Massachusetts, which has a
successful track record of winning important ballot initiatives in
Massachusetts. Across the country, ballot initiatives
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are proving critical to progressive strategy. Massachusetts is no
exception, having recently passed measures for minimum wage increases,
earned sick time, and paid family leave.

Raise Up Massachusetts had already almost scored a victory on the Fair
Share Amendment back in 2015, when the group collected 150,000
signatures and passed it at two state constitutional conventions. But
corporate interests responded by mounting a lawsuit that successfully
removed the amendment from the ballot based on a procedural
technicality.

This time, the coalition came back even bigger and broader. The member
organizations of the coalition included many labor unions, including
the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and
the American Postal Workers Union, alongside several local unions like
Sheetmetal Workers Local 17, Operating Engineers Local 4, IBEW Local
233, and Plasterers and Cement Masons Local 543. Community
organizations like the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance,
Boston DSA, and Our Climate also endorsed the campaign.

The message sailed past billionaire money to victory because it was
clear, compelling, and broad-based: make the rich pay so we have more
revenue to improve the lives of working people. The priority issues of
public education, public transit, and infrastructure both appealed to
ordinary people and garnered support from critical coalitional
partners.

A notable feature of this Fair Share Amendment is the high level of
support it had from the building trades. As in most of the country,
infrastructure issues have been getting more dire in Massachusetts.
The Massachusetts Department of Transportation has listed
[[link removed]] 641
bridges in the state as structurally deficient. In order to bring the
state’s transit infrastructure into a state of good repair in the
next decade, the state is looking at a transportation funding gap
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of $8 billion. Building trades unions rallied behind the vision of
addressing these infrastructural problems by creating good union jobs.

Labor unions also put their money where their mouth is as the main
source of funding for the campaign. Given the Fair Share Amendment’s
focus on public education funding, it’s not surprising that
teachers’ unions gave most enthusiastically. The Massachusetts
Teachers Association alone donated $4 million to the effort.

Fair Share Amendment campaigners faced a well-funded opposition that
spent millions
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on misleading television ads. Corporate entities like CrossHarbor
Capital Partners, a Boston investment firm that spent $500,000 trying
to defeat the amendment, mobilized to prevent the door from opening to
further taxation of the rich in the future. Prominent members of the
pro-corporate Massachusetts Competitive Partnership
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Jeffrey Leiden
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donated large sums against the effort as well.

The corporate-funded opposition played on anti-government sentiment to
craft arguments against taxing the rich. Even though the amendment
constitutionally requires that the funds raised through the income tax
be spent on education and infrastructure, opponents claimed that the
state legislature couldn’t be trusted with the public’s money.

They also exaggerated fears of the wealthy fleeing the state because
of the tax. In other scenarios, the data shows that these fears are
rarely justified. California, for example, has since 2011 had the
lowest average annual out-migration rate of people earning more than
$200,000, despite having the highest top income tax rate in the
country.

When these arguments didn’t work, the opposition coalition turned to
classic homeowner populism and claimed that the amendment would double
the income tax for people who sell their homes. However, Fair Share
Amendment activists were easily able to show that very few homeowners
would actually be affected by this. Last year, only eight hundred out
of one hundred thousand houses that were sold would’ve received an
additional tax under the amendment.

While the opposition almost exclusively articulated their arguments
through advertisements, supporters had an army of door knockers who
made the case face-to-face with working people. Organizers used
relational organizing apps that were a feature of the electoral
campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Canvassers found it easy to make the case that the vast majority of
people in the state would not see any tax increase — only
improvements in their daily lives. Speaking about her experience on
Class Matters Podcast
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University of Massachusetts Amherst professor and campaign supporter
Eve Weinbaum recounted that it was some of the easiest canvassing
she’s ever done. The amendment gathered support across the state,
not just in the more progressive Boston metro area. In Western
Massachusetts, vote shares ran as high as 75 percent in Williamstown
and 76 percent in Great Barrington.

Supporters see the victory as a watershed moment. The Massachusetts
Teachers Association said in a statement, “Following years of
austerity budgeting for education and a gubernatorial administration
with a diminished vision for what our public schools and colleges can
be, the passage of Question 1 [the Fair Share Amendment] provides us
with reason for profound hope.”

Ballot measures offer the Left an important opportunity to cut through
culture war distractions and petty partisan divides. They provide the
occasion to develop productive working relationships with important
allies like labor unions, and to talk directly to working people about
our common enemy and the need for public investment. Voters in
Massachusetts have shown us that with clear, broadly appealing
messaging and strong labor union support, it’s possible to take on
the rich and win billions for the public services we rely on.

Paul Prescod is a Jacobin contributing editor.

The new issue of Jacobin is out now. Subscribe today
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print and digital subscription.

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