california voter

California voters are souring on a Nov. 3 ballot measure to impose a one-time tax on billionaires to help fund healthcare programs, a proposal that has triggered one of the most expensive political battles in state history.

Half of likely voters plan to vote against Proposition 40, the proposed wealth tax on billionaires’ assets, while 42% support it, according to a new poll by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. The findings mark a significant decline in support of the measure, which was crafted by an influential California healthcare union to compensate for an estimated $100 billion in federal healthcare cuts approved by President Trump and congressional Republicans.

The survey also found that a solid majority of likely voters opposed Proposition 39, which would require Californians to provide identification when voting and election officials to verify registered voters are U.S. citizens. The findings come as the Trump administration continues to attack California as a haven for voter fraud, including unfounded allegations of rampant illegal voting by undocumented immigrants.

Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s director, said previous surveys showed support for Proposition 40 has been fragile, and the most recent shows its prospects have dimmed as election day approaches.

The increase in opposition to Proposition 40 is “broad-based and spans virtually all major segments of the electorate,” DiCamillio said. The ballot measure was leading in a Berkeley poll conducted just six weeks ago, albeit by a slim margin, so its reversal of fortune is significant, he said.

The declining support comes after an onslaught of money spent opposing Proposition 40, including a torrent of television and social media ads airing everywhere from NFL games to “Everybody Loves Raymond” reruns. Nearly $368 million has been contributed to efforts opposing the billionaire tax, while $36 million has been donated to support the proposed levy.

Proposition 40 would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of billionaires who resided in California as of Jan. 1, with some exceptions. Democrats and their allies are splintered over the proposal. Some, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, argue it will prompt the wealthy to flee California, further harming its volatile budget, which is dependent on the state’s richest residents. The California Democratic Party and leading progressives support the measure, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) calling it a modest tax necessary to help Californians struggling because of cuts imposed by Republicans to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy.

While Republican voters overwhelmingly oppose Proposition 40, nearly two-thirds of Democrats support it and more than a quarter opposing it. There is also a generational divide, with 6 out of 10 voters 65 years old or older opposing the measure, while more than two-thirds of those under 30 supporting it, according to the poll.

The findings are similar to a Public Policy Institute of California poll released Tuesday, which found 52% of likely voters would vote against Proposition 40, while 46% supported it.

The campaign against the wealth tax, funded by some of California’s richest tech moguls, is centered on three intertwined ballot initiatives: Proposition 40 and Propositions 41 and 42, both of which would undercut Proposition 40 through a series of changes to state tax laws and spending restrictions.

Proposition 41 would cut wasteful government spending by requiring audits of new state special taxes and would bar new state taxes that are exempt from a state spending limit. Proposition 42 would prohibit new taxes on retirement holdings, individually owned assets and other personal savings. Both Propositions 41 and 42 would nullify the billionaire tax if it passes, provided either measure receives more votes.

A plurality of voters oppose Propositions 41 and 42, a reversal from just six week ago, according to the poll.

In mid-September, voters were closely divided about Proposition 41 — 37% in favor and 33% opposed — with a large number of undecided. In the current poll, 38% of likely voters favor the measure and 47% oppose it. Proposition 42 led by 9 percentage points in the Berkeley/L.A. Times poll in September — 43% in favor and 34% opposed. Now, 43% of likely voters support it and 45% oppose it.

DiCamillo said backers of a ballot measure also should be concerned any time support registers below 50%, since voters who are undecided or unsure tend to vote no.

“It’s below 50%, and it’s trending down. Both of those are ominous signs,” DiCamillo said. Proposition 42 is “still very close. I’m not saying it’s definitely going down, but it’s moving in the wrong direction late in the campaign, and usually movement in a late poll is even more significant than the actual numbers themselves,”

He added that while many voters were unaware the two proposed ballot measures were designed as poison pills to kill the billionaire tax, among those who knew, the opposition was significantly greater.

If all three measures fail, that still would be a victory for the billionaires who spent aggressively to tank the wealth tax.

Another notable finding was voters’ support of Proposition 3, which would make permanent a higher income tax rate on the wealthy that funds education. A majority of voters — 54% — support continuing the levy, while 37% oppose it, according to the poll. DiCamillo says the disparity in support of the proposed billionaire tax and the extension of the existing wealth tax has been consistent in IGS’s polls, and is likely because of the differing foundations of the levies.

“Proposition 3 is already in place, and if you read the fiscal impact, if this were to pass, it maintains $5 billion to $15 billion of annual funding,” he said, “It’s a big revenue generator, and I think that is something that’s already in place.”

“Voters kind of understand the progressive nature of California’s tax system, and they kind of support that, but they don’t support nearly as much the idea of some new kind of tax, the wealth tax, which is taxing assets rather than income,” he said. “So that’s the distinction.”

These ballot measures are among 14 that voters will decide on Nov. 3, as well as statewide, congressional, local and judicial elections.

Among the other controversial measures is Proposition 39, a measure pushed by Republicans that would require all voters in future elections to show government-issued identification every time they vote in person or provide a special PIN or the last four digits of their Social Security number when submitting mail-in ballots.

The measure also would require the California secretary of state and county election officials to verify that registered voters are U.S. citizens by “using government data,” which according to supporters could include information in the federal Social Security Administration database, jury summons information and other government records.

Nearly 6 in 10 likely voters oppose the effort, while more than a third support it, split largely along party lines. More than half of voters who are registered as “no party preference” or with a smaller political party oppose the proposal, which DiCamillo said was an indication of trouble for the proposition given the state’s Democratic majority electorate and the proximity of the election.

“It’s hard for Republicans to push something over the finish line by themselves,” he said.

Other prominent ballot measures:

• Proposition 43, which would prohibit local governments from imposing certain new special taxes unless two-thirds of voters approve the proposal. Such proposals need a simple majority vote to be approved. While 46% of likely voters oppose the proposal, 36% support it, challenging numbers this close to election day, DiCamillo said. “It needs to get to 50,” he said. “We’ll see how you do that this late in the campaign.”

• Proposition 4, which would repeal a prohibition of public financing of campaigns, allowing state and local governments to support candidates if they abide by several rules. Likely voters are evenly split about the proposal, with 41% supporting it and opposing it, and 18% undecided. “It’s close, but it’s still below 50%. Most voters tend to vote no in the late going if they’re not convinced,” DiCamillo said, adding that he viewed the lack of support among voters who do not affiliate with a political party as a signal of potential failure.

The poll of 2,787 registered California voters was conducted online in English and Spanish Oct. 19-25 and has a margin of error of about 3 percentage points in either direction.

A sweeping campaign by federal immigration agents to identify voter fraud by noncitizens through door knocks, street stops and other field interviews in California and eight other states must be reined in ahead of the Nov. 3 election, after a federal judge in Northern California ruled it has intimidated U.S. citizens and interfered with the work of voting rights groups.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguin said in a ruling Wednesday that limiting the Department of Homeland Security’s surging operations in those states — which she wrote “sweep in U.S. citizens for investigation” — does not prevent the Trump administration from “exercising their authority to investigate voter fraud by lawful means.”

A Homeland Security spokesperson said the agency is “laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote,” and has “no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.”

The ruling was the latest to come out of an unprecedented legal war playing out between the Trump administration and California in recent days, in which an array of election cases are working their way through the federal courts at breakneck speed.

There is, for example, the lawsuit the U.S. Justice Department filed against California and state and local elections officials last week, demanding that they set aside any ballots from a list of 20,000 individuals identified by immigration officials as “likely noncitizens.”

There are also two cases out of Washington, D.C., in which a coalition of Democratic leaders, immigrant rights groups, voting rights experts and naturalized citizens in California are challenging the Trump administration’s use of Homeland Security data to target voters.

The litigation is playing out amid an intense political debate about election security at the national level — driven in part by President Trump, a longtime election denier — and a sweeping campaign by his administration to root out and parade examples of alleged voter fraud in the final days before the election.

White House, Homeland Security and Justice Department officials have all defended the administration’s efforts as necessary to ensure that noncitizens are not illegally diluting the votes of U.S. citizens. First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, has claimed to have “overwhelming evidence” that tens of thousands of noncitizens are doing so in California.

‘That is not normal’

Democratic leaders and prominent elections experts, meanwhile, have cast the administration’s claims as baseless and intentionally exaggerated to stoke uncertainty about election security and ultimately challenge midterm results the president doesn’t like, and the Justice Department’s legal arguments as fundamentally flawed and wildly out of line with long-established department policy to stay out of elections in the lead up to voting.

“That is not normal. We have literally never experienced that in American history. Not once,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former Justice Department elections attorney. “The fact that the administration appears poised for the first time to act as an adversary to the states and counties who have [the] undisputed constitutional authority to run elections? That is unusual.”

At the same time, Becker and other experts stressed that those efforts to date have failed, and state and local elections have largely proceeded in recent weeks without incident, with millions of Americans having already cast their ballots.

“California voters need to know that they’re in good hands, that we have leaders at the state and local levels who are protecting our ballots and are ensuring that these attempts by the federal government to root out supposed noncitizen voting are not going to prevent Californians from casting our ballots,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “Part of the strategy here is to distract people and scare people and raise fears, and the important thing is to continue to stay focused on … making a plan to vote.”

Status of cases

Federal courts have already rejected multiple Trump executive orders seeking to enforce nationwide voter ID and citizenship requirements. The Supreme Court blocked an administration plan for the U.S. Postal Service to vet mail ballots. The Justice Department has compiled a stunning record of losses in its 30 lawsuits demanding state voter rolls — with 26 of those cases, including the one in California, so far dismissed.

And election experts said they expect the Trump administration to rack up more losses in coming days — including in the Justice Department’s case challenging California officials’ refusal to segregate the ballots of some 20,000 voters based on the administration’s unsubstantiated claims they are noncitizens.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, shown in 2023, is overseeing a lawsuit in which the Department of Justice says 20,000 California ballots may have been sent to “likely noncitizens.”

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

That case was taken up — and scheduled for a Tuesday hearing — by Judge David O. Carter, an appointee of President Clinton who in January rejected the administration’s demand for California’s voter rolls, calling it a clear federal overreach that would have a “chilling effect” on voters and threaten American democracy.

California has called for the case to be dismissed outright, on the grounds that the administration has zero authority to make such demands, and that the demands are unlawful. The Trump administration has asked Carter to immediately rule in the matter.

“Every minute of [ballot] processing that occurs without segregating the ballots of suspected non-eligible voters causes untraceable disenfranchisement and dilution of the votes of United States citizens,” wrote Julie Hamill, an assistant U.S. attorney in Essayli’s office.

In D.C. federal court, Judge James E. Boasberg set an Oct. 30 hearing in a case in which UCLA Voting Rights Project attorneys, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, and a California voter named Pedro Trujillo are challenging the administration’s use of unproven federal databases to allege California voters aren’t citizens.

Carl Bergquist, an attorney for CHIRLA, said he looked forward to bringing a host of recent Trump administration actions to the court’s attention — including the administration’s lawsuit against California, the charging this week of 28 legal permanent residents in California with election-related crimes, and Trump’s threats to arrest California elections officials who don’t comply with his administration’s demands.

“The events of the last few days, from threats to state and local officials, increased general immigration operations, the random knocking on doors by federal agents and the recent arrests are causing a chill in the community,” Bergquist said. “People, including naturalized citizens, are making their plans to vote and the Federal Government is doing its utmost to quash their attempts to exercise this fundamental right that they have lawfully acquired.”

The argument that naturalized citizens are being intimidated also features prominently in a second lawsuit filed in D.C. federal court Tuesday, in which top Democrats in Congress joined Nevada party officials and a California immigrant named Erick Jose Jimenez to challenge the Trump administration’s unprecedented voter fraud probes.

That lawsuit, also assigned to Boasberg, says Jimenez, a naturalized citizen since 2006, fears being “unlawfully targeted for voting and disenfranchised (or worse).”

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said there is “so much noise” around the election right now, in part because the administration has been making wild legal arguments about its authority over elections.

But he said “none of the federal government’s attempts to assert power that they do not have are working,” and voting “for 99.999% of the public” will remain “wonderfully normal.”

The Trump administration on Thursday sued California over its handling of voter fraud claims, asking a federal court to immediately bar the state from counting ballots from about 20,000 voters statewide — many in Los Angeles County — whom the administration alleges are “likely noncitizens.”

The lawsuit is highly unusual, particularly given that California voters have already begun voting in the Nov. 3 midterms via mail ballots, experts said.

It’s also highly inappropriate and based on questionable federal data that have proved wildly inaccurate in other states, state officials said.

“This is a sad, desperate attempt by Trump to use his politicized Justice Department to try to suppress California voters just three weeks before Election Day,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X. “Courts have made clear the federal government has no role in running state elections. We will defend free and fair elections in the Golden State and call out every authoritarian attempt to undermine our democracy.”

U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche, in his own statement, defended the lawsuit.

“State-facilitated voter fraud is unacceptable in the United States of America,” he said. “If found responsible in a court of law, the State of California will have seriously undermined confidence in our electoral system and violated laws that protect our nation’s representative system of government.”

The lawsuit states that “as part of an investigation into unlawful voting,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted a “multiagency and multilevel review” of state voter and federal citizenship data and determined with “high confidence” that around 20,000 “likely noncitizens” are registered to vote in the state.

It then forwarded those names to Homeland Security Investigations, which conducted its own investigation and concluded the same, the lawsuit says.

“This means that, consistent with state law, nearly 20,000 noncitizens in California have been sent a vote-by-mail ballot to participate in the federal election (or will receive one), with many addresses listed in Los Angeles County,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit comes two days after Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Trent McCotter wrote to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, giving them 48 hours to set aside the same ballots in order to investigate those voters’ citizenship status.

McCotter had said the Trump administration would be forced to file for emergency relief in the courts if Weber and Logan did not comply.

The lawsuit comes about three months after Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote his own letter to Weber, alleging that there may be more than 190,000 noncitizens registered to vote in California.

The lawsuit makes no mention of that prior estimate, or why Homeland Security’s initial estimate was so much larger than its current estimate. It does say that USCIS identifying with “high confidence” that a voter is a likely noncitizen “means that the match between voter information on the voting roll and USCIS’ internal records is strong and consistent based on multiple identifiers that support a strong identity link.”

It also said, “The Federal Government notified California months ago that numerous noncitizens may be registered to vote in California. Despite knowing that California must send vote-by-mail ballots to every registered voter, the State made no serious attempt to work with the Federal Government to determine whether noncitizens are registered to vote.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for more information as to how the 190,000 figure dropped to 20,000.

In a letter back to McCotter, Weber noted both figures and accused the Trump administration of pushing forward to disenfranchise voters at the last minute before the midterms based on shoddy data work and no certainty that those voters are ineligible.

“Nowhere has the federal government clarified the basis for suspecting — not even confirming with any level of certainty — the listed individuals are non-citizens. And as one court recently noted, the federal government’s citizenship records are ‘known to be unreliable,’” Weber wrote, referring to a case brought against the Justice Department by the organization Common Cause. “To give just one example, in a similar incident in the State of Nevada, DHS initially alleged that Nevada’s voter roll included nearly 16,000 potential non-citizens. However, after working with the State of Nevada, DHS officials failed to establish that a single non-citizen was on the voter rolls.”

Weber called it “remarkable” that the Justice Department would demand that her office “review and confirm the citizenship status of each of the approximately 20,000 individuals on the list on the eve of an election and within a mere 48 hours” despite providing no clear evidence that those individuals are wrongly registered.

“This is an emergency of the DOJ’s creation,” Weber wrote. “California’s election administration will continue to be governed by applicable federal and state law, not by unsubstantiated claims and outrageous demands.”

First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, posted about the lawsuit on X, noting the 48-window given to Weber and Logan had lapsed and writing, “Time is up for California.”

“This is not political or controversial,” he wrote. “We will not allow California to dilute the votes of American citizens.”

The Trump administration’s lawsuit says that while the U.S. “actively investigates and prosecutes incidents of unlawful voting,” it “is not practicable or feasible for the United States to investigate before the 2026 election concludes thousands, let alone tens of thousands, of individuals that two federal investigative offices identified on the California voter roster as likely being sent vote-by-mail ballots.”

Because of that, it argues, “California is thus knowingly imposing an obstacle on the United States’ ability to enforce [federal election law] by facilitating unlawful voting rather than working with the Federal Government to prevent it,” and the state is therefore legally barred from sending mail ballots to the 20,000 voters Homeland Security has flagged.

It asks the federal court in the Central District of California to declare the state’s actions — including providing and counting ballots for those 20,000 people — to be barred by law and in violation of the Supremacy Clause, and to issue an injunction barring the state from counting those ballots in federal elections “until those individuals’ citizenship status can be verified.”

The Trump administration’s attempts to use immigration data to reach conclusions about California voter rolls and intervene in California’s election is already being challenged in a separate federal case in the district of Washington, D.C., brought by attorneys with the UCLA Voting Rights Project on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, and a California voter named Pedro Trujillo.

The UCLA attorneys filed their own emergency petition Thursday to preclude the Justice Department from moving forward with such actions against California, citing the letters McCotter sent to Weber and Logan.

A judge in that case ordered the parties to meet and file a status report with the court by Friday as to when each side would be able to brief the court on the issue.

Times staff writer Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.

SACRAMENTO — Supporters of a high-profile Nov. 3 ballot measure that would require Californians to show identification when they vote accused state Democratic leaders of falsely stating that President Trump has endorsed the initiative.

Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego, one of the measure’s authors, on Thursday called Democratic gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra a “bald-face liar” over comments he made during Wednesday’s gubernatorial debate hosted by CNN.

Becerra said during the debate with Republican Steve Hilton that Trump was instrumental in the voter ID measure, Proposition 39, qualifying for California’s November ballot. Trump for years has tried to cast doubt about American elections, and unsuccessfully pushed Congress to pass a strict voter ID and proof of citizenship measure known as the SAVE America Act.

“Prop. 39 is an initiative that is backed by Donald Trump,” Becerra said during the hourlong debate. “He couldn’t get his SAVE Act out of Congress, which tries to interfere in elections. So he’s gone around the country and put initiatives on the ballot. In California, it’s Prop. 39.”

Though Proposition 39’s provisions are less restrictive than those in the SAVE America Act, its proponents echo Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that voter fraud and noncitizen voting are widespread in California and therefore stricter ID measures are needed.

DeMaio said the ballot measure qualified for the ballot because of strong support from California voters, including many Democrats and independents. Supporters collected more than 1 million petition signatures in support of the measure, surpassing the 874,641 needed to qualify.

“It was not put on the ballot by Donald Trump,” said DeMaio, who also founded the conservative advocacy group Reform California.

Becerra is “showing that he’s not willing to be truthful with California voters,” DeMaio said.

Meredith Shields, press secretary for the Yes on Prop. 39 committee, reiterated that Trump hasn’t taken a position on the initiative.

“The opposition will do anything to advance their cause and protect their power,” Shields said. “It will come as a surprise to no one that career politicians don’t always tell the truth, and they certainly aren’t telling the truth here.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s position on Proposition 39.

The measure would require anyone voting in person in California to present a government-issued ID, and those voting by mail ballot to include the last four digits of the ID number provided when they registered to vote. State and county election officials would be required to verify the U.S. citizenship of registered voters using government data and publicly report the findings.

The ballot measure is backed by DeMaio and several deep-pocketed Trump supporters. Julie Luckey, director of the group Californians for Voter ID, is the mother of billionaire tech entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, a major Trump fundraiser and Republican donor. Richard Uihlein, chief executive of the shipping and packing supplies company Uline, has given the campaign $17 million.

Representatives for Becerra and the No on Prop. 39 campaign on Thursday argued that Trump pushed for voter ID in California before Proposition 39 officially qualified for the ballot, pointing to a March 11, 2025 news release on Reform California’s website acknowledging Trump’s support.

In January 2025, Trump endorsed “CA Voter ID” as a “condition” for continued federal funding to the state, according to the release, which was updated this year with an editor’s note to clarify that Proposition 39 hasn’t been endorsed by Trump.

“Carl DeMaio knows Prop. 39 is central to Trump’s voter suppression playbook, and he’s doing everything he can to hide that from voters,” said Jonathan Underland, spokesperson for Becerra’s campaign.

The No on Prop. 39 campaign repeatedly has sought to link Trump to the measure, which has not been a surprise given that the Republican president remains extremely unpopular among a majority of Californians.

“The fact that Donald Trump has endorsed it tells you everything you need to know,” Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and Senate pro Tempore Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) said in a statement released by the “No” campaign this year.

U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) suggested to reporters at a rally organized by the “No” campaign last month that Trump is behind Proposition 39.

“Carl DeMaio has been the face of this in California, but don’t be fooled into thinking this has nothing to do with Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda nationally,” Padilla said.

Separately, DeMaio on Thursday accused Secretary of State Shirley Weber, another Democrat, of falsely stating that Proposition 39 would end California’s vote-by-mail system. The vast majority of Californians use mail-in ballots.

Weber, in a television interview that aired this week on KCRA in Sacramento, said the state already requires ID for those who register to vote.

“But if you tell me everybody has to take their ID to the poll, Californians should be concerned because 90% of them don’t want to do that,” she said. “They want to vote by mail, and you would effectively eliminate vote by mail.”

DeMaio questioned whether Weber understood what Proposition 39 proposes.

“If she truly is concerned about trust and confidence in our elections, she should start with her own behavior by refraining from spreading misinformation about Prop. 39 and our election,” he said.

Weber, when asked about her statement this week, said in an email to The Times that Proposition 39 would “cause disruption” in the state’s mail-in voting system because it would require voters “to write private personal information on the ballots.”

A Weber campaign spokesperson followed up with another response Thursday.

“What Dr. Weber actually said was that, if passed, this very poorly drafted proposition could cause people to decide not to vote by mail because it creates unnecessary and burdensome steps,” the spokesperson said.

California voters will decide whether to establish a $7.5-billion state scientific research arm — similar to the National Institutes of Health — after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will put the proposal on the March 2028 ballot.

The new state fund would aim to blunt federal research cuts by the Trump administration and ensure state and private institutions — including the University of California and California State University — can continue to produce scientific breakthroughs.

If voters approve the measure, $7.5 billion in bonds would fund California scientific and medical research into diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s and ALS. Other research areas include reducing wildfire risk and fighting pandemics and climate change.

“This is a research and science bond that does the opposite of what Donald Trump is doing that will allow us to double down on what makes this state great — what makes America great,” Newsom said Wednesday during a bill signing atop the Golden Gate Bridge. “We are the tentpole of the U.S. economy because we invest in the future so that we can all do well there.”

The legislation to establish the bond measure, state Senate Bill 895, was authored by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who in a statement called it a “bold step to protect science, improve lives, and continue California’s global leadership on innovation for many years to come.”

The bill was sponsored by the Union of American Physicians and the University of California, as well as the United Auto Workers Local 4811, which represents some 60,000 UC academic workers.

The bond measure represents a pullback from what Wiener and supporters first proposed.

Originally conceived as a $23-billion bond measure that the Legislature would approve to go before voters in November, it was whittled down to $12 billion. But lawmakers then did not approve it in time for the November ballot.

Wiener said legislative leaders and the governor’s office then worked out a compromise, deciding on a $7.5-billion bond measure for 2028.

The measure also calls for the new state fund to establish regulations that would allow it to recoup part of its investments while not damaging innovation.

“This is a major achievement, made possible by an extraordinary coalition of people who understand the importance of investing in scientific research,” UC President James B. Milliken said in a statement.