In America, there is almost no class solidarity, except among one demographic: the superrich. Their economic kinship transcends all the barriers that tend to keep so much of the rest of America divided: race, ethnicity, even political party. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the two deep blue states where the highest-profile Democratic oligarchs are now locking arms with Republicans to spearhead multimillion-dollar campaigns aiming to block tax hikes on the wealthy.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has joined with Trump-aligned moguls to lead the campaign to block Democrats’ ballot initiative that would impose a one-time wealth tax on billionaires, and use the proceeds to prevent hundreds of thousands of Californians from losing their healthcare coverage.

Newsom’s move looks like a ploy to court prospective presidential campaign donors. But it is also an act of class solidarity, considering that one set of prominent West Coast billionaires are the Getty family, which bankrolled Newsom’s own massive business fortune and which are so obsessed with avoiding state taxes that they reportedly tried to use Nevada to eschew California’s levies. Other billionaire families that could get hit by the tax are the Pritzkers and anti-tax Fishers, who were among the “coterie of San Francisco’s wealthiest families (that) has backed (Newsom) at every step of his political rise,” according to The Los Angeles Times .

“(Newsom) came from their world, and that’s why they embraced him without hesitancy and over and above everybody else,” former California Democratic House Speaker Willie Brown once said. “They didn’t need to interview him. They knew what he stood for.”

Earning his French Laundry reputation, Newsom is also currently pushing separate ballot measures to permanently ban such wealth taxes on billionaires in the future. It’s consistent with his yearslong campaign to block wealth tax initiatives from Democrats in his state’s legislature. Newsom’s class war has also included appearing in television ads to help oligarchs block a 2022 ballot measure to raise taxes on the rich to fund climate resilience programs.

Is it any wonder that this class warrior was the one Democrat to proudly defend politicians who attend oligarch fundraisers in ritzy wine caves?

In Colorado, it’s much the same story. Here, centimillionaire Gov. Jared Polis (D) is leading the crusade to stop a Democratic Party-endorsed ballot measure that would convert the state’s flat income tax into a progressive income tax, raise levies on his fellow tycoons, lower taxes for the bottom 95 percent, and generate revenue to prevent brutal cuts to healthcare, K-12 education, and childcare. As The Lever reported this week, Polis has gotten a boost from Colorado’s former Democratic senator and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who, after a $3 million payday as a corporate lawyer, is now cutting ads for the ballot measure’s opponents.

Like Newsom, Polis’ move is no Johnny-come-lately intervention. It is an expression of intense class solidarity. The electronic-greeting-card tycoon-turned-governor has been leading his class’ war on tax fairness since he bought himself a U.S. House seat almost two decades ago. Indeed, just six months into his first congressional term in 2009, he made national headlines obstructing President Obama’s Affordable Care Act on the grounds that it included a surtax on the wealthy.

“A group of Democrats elected in recent years from some of the country’s richest congressional districts have emerged as a stumbling block to raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for President Barack Obama’s ambitious health-care overhaul just as the plan has begun to meet increasing resistance over its cost,” the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. “Polis — representing Boulder, Vail and some of the tonier suburbs of Denver — joined Republicans to vote against Mr. Obama’s top-priority health-care overhaul… One reason was a one-percentage-point surtax on couples earning between $350,000 and $500,000 — gradually increasing to 5.4 percentage points on earnings more than $1 million — to pay for it.”

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Polis circulated a letter to lawmakers asserting that Democrats’ $544 billion income tax surcharge on the wealthy would “kill the goose that will lay the golden eggs of our recovery” and “negatively affect small businesses (and) discourage entrepreneurial activity and job growth.”

Ultimately, Polis prevailed; the surtax was dropped. Now, almost two decades later, his final outgoing act as governor may not be merely freeing MAGA election-denier Tina Peters to help her plot with Trump to overturn the 2026 midterms. His swan song may also be defeating a tax measure so that he himself doesn’t have to pay one cent more to prevent his fellow Coloradans from being thrown off the Medicaid programs Trump has slashed.

Taken together, Newsom, Polis, and Salazar are a reminder of the famous words of billionaire Warren Buffett.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” he said . “But it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

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