In California’s Wealth-Tax Fight, You Can Make $30,000 Collecting Signatures

California’s labor unions and billionaires are spending lavishly on a political battle over a proposed new tax on the state’s wealthiest citizens. To take their cases to the voters, they depend on people like Benjamin Israel.

He’s part of a small army of so-called petition circulators who are vying for enough signatures to get more than a dozen policy initiatives on the state ballot this fall — and collecting bounties of as much as $15 per John Hancock. The potential tax on billionaires is firing people up, Israel says, and he expects to make close to $30,000 over a few months compared with $18,000 ...