Dave Regan

Dave Regan has run SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West with a single, explicit insight: in California, qualifying a ballot initiative costs $3 million to $5 million, while defending against one can cost a target industry $100 million per cycle. Calling ballot initiatives 'the best bargain in American politics,' he has filed between 23 and 48 state and local measures since 2012, almost none of which passed at the ballot box because passing isn't the primary mechanism — leverage is.

Look at the two clearest tracks. On dialysis, where California has zero unionized dialysis workers, SEIU-UHW ran three nearly identical propositions in 2018 (Prop 8), 2020 (Prop 23), and 2022 (Prop 29), losing all three by 20-to-36-point margins while forcing DaVita and Fresenius to burn over $216 million. On hospitals, Regan filed executive-pay and pricing caps in 2014, 2016, and 2026, repeatedly withdrawing them in exchange for California Hospital Association deals on organizing rules, Medi-Cal lobbying, and dropping anti-union counter-measures — leading the California Primary Care Association to sue him personally for racketeering over Prop 44.

The steelman is that a union president's job is to win contracts and protect healthcare funding using every lawful pressure valve available. When Jerry Brown signed the $15 minimum wage (SB 3) in 2016 one week after checking the viability of SEIU-UHW's ballot signatures, and when Trump's federal budget threatened $30 billion a year in Medi-Cal cuts affecting one in three Californians, Regan used the only hammer big enough to force Sacramento to the table.

With Proposition 40, the 5% billionaire wealth tax, both motives are running at once: Regan literally offered Gavin Newsom to drop Prop 40 in exchange for a 2% legislative tax, proving the leverage playbook was live, while also aligning with his members' existential need to backfill Medi-Cal. He is completely transparent that withdrawals are 'tactical gains' — ruthless institutional hardball rather than hypocrisy.