谢尔盖·布林曾将政府形容为“充满党派偏见的巨大火堆”，并长期置身于政治舞台之外。然而近几个月来，这位谷歌联合创始人逐渐成为加州政治领域的重要力量，投入了大量资金来反对一项针对亿万富翁的税收提案。
Sergey Brin once called government a “giant bonfire of partisanship” and spent years on the political sidelines. But in recent months, the Google co-founder has emerged as a political force in California, pouring unprecedented sums into the fight to defeat a proposed tax on billionaires.
仅今年一年，布林的捐款金额就相当于他过去二十年政治捐款总额的40倍，使他成为加州历史上个人对政治提案捐款最多的捐赠者。
This year alone, Brin has spent about 40 times what he put into politics in the previous two decades, making him the biggest individual donor to a ballot measure campaign in California history.
他投入了约1亿美元来反对 Proposition 40（该提案提议对亿万富翁的资产征收5%的税），这一行动构成了一个更广泛的政治运动的核心。该运动由布林领导，并得到了加州一些最富有人士的支持；即便选民最终通过了该提案，他们仍致力于推动两项旨在使其失效的法案。此外，他们还投入了1700万美元支持其他两项旨在促进住房建设和加快环境审批流程的提案。
His roughly $100 million effort to defeat Proposition 40, a proposed one-time 5% tax on billionaires’ assets, is the centerpiece of a new political operation that reaches well beyond the measure. Led by Brin and funded by some of California’s wealthiest residents, the group is also backing two initiatives designed to invalidate the tax even if voters approve it. It has put $17 million behind separate ballot measures to spur housing construction and speed environmental reviews.
布林的这些反对措施直接冲击了全国进步派民主党人的核心诉求——伯尼·桑德斯曾称这项税收提案是美国最重要的政治议题。如果他能够继续维持今年启动的这项政治行动，并继续在加州的高昂政治竞选活动中投入巨额资金，他很可能在未来多年内对加州政治产生重大影响。
His spending against the wealth tax is undercutting one of the top priorities of progressive Democrats nationally — what Bernie Sanders called the most important ballot measure in America. And if he sustains the operation he launched earlier this year, spending heavily in the state’s expensive ballot wars, he could wield outsized influence in California politics for years to come.
“布林本可以轻松地只开展一场反对运动来击败[40号提案]，但他却建立了一个完整的组织，”资深投票提案顾问布兰登·卡斯蒂略说，他并未为财富税运动的任何一方工作。“这激发了他。他想成为一名政治参与者。”他的介入让该州的政治观察人士措手不及。今年早些时候，一位知名竞选律师向加州检察长办公室提交了五项拟议提案，在萨克拉门托的投票提案观察者中引发了一场“猜谜游戏”。
“Brin could have easily just run a No campaign and defeated [Prop 40], but he built a whole organization,” said Brandon Castillo, a veteran ballot measures consultant who is not working on either side of the wealth tax campaign. “They’ve awakened him. He wants to be a political player.”His entry caught political observers in the state off guard. Earlier this year, a prominent campaign lawyer delivered a quintet of proposed initiatives to the California attorney general’s office and set off a whodunit among Sacramento’s ballot-watchers.
这五项提案似乎都是专门设计来削弱财富税的，但最初无人认领。同一天，一个名为“建设更美好加州”的新委员会正式成立，文件上列出了一位来自布林个人办公室的官员。
All five seemed purposefully designed to undercut the wealth tax, but no one initially took credit. On the same day, a new committee called Building a Better California came into existence with an official from Brin’s personal operation listed on the paperwork.
布林在当月晚些时候披露了他的参与情况。虽然该超级政治行动委员会最初淡化了其对财富税的关注，强调最初的捐款用于聚焦住房的提案，但此后它已斥资超过2亿美元以阻止该税收征收——其中包括用于那五个神秘提案中的两个、即41号提案和42号提案，这两项提案将使40号提案失效。
Brin revealed his involvement later that month. While the PAC initially downplayed its focus on the wealth tax, stressing initial checks for the housing-focused measures, it has since spent more than $200 million to halt the levy — including on two of those five mystery measures, Proposition 41 and 42, that would invalidate Prop 40.
这对一个长期以来捐赠零星且与特定事业挂钩的人来说，是一个急剧的转变——他似乎和当时的其他科技高管一样，满足于通过创新和慈善事业来塑造世界。
It was a sharp turn for a man whose giving had long been sporadic and tied to specific causes — seemingly content, like other tech executives at the time, to shape the world through innovation and philanthropy.
随着他的初创公司成长为科技巨头，布林成为世界上最富有的人之一。在过去十年里，随着包括谷歌在内的硅谷公司在敌对的政治环境中大幅扩大支出，他已向竞选活动投入了数百万美元。
Brin became one of the world’s richest people as his startup grew into a tech behemoth. And he has poured millions into campaigns as Silicon Valley companies, including Google, vastly expanded their spending in a hostile political climate over the last decade.
随着民主党政治人物越来越多地将科技公司及其亿万富翁领导人描绘成对民主不负责任的威胁，谷歌加大了在萨克拉门托的游说力度。在2015-2016年立法会期，该公司在游说上花费了约56万美元；到上一会期，这一数字飙升至1350万美元。本轮选举周期，该公司还向加州各项竞选活动投入了超过800万美元，而十年前这一数字为39万美元。
As Democratic politicians increasingly cast tech companies and their billionaire leaders as unaccountable threats to democracy, Google ramped up its Sacramento lobbying activity. It spent about $560,000 on lobbying during the 2015-2016 legislative session; last session, that figure soared to $13.5 million. The company has also poured more than $8 million into California campaigns this cycle, up from $390,000 a decade ago.
甚至在40号提案出现之前，许多科技巨头——饱受舆论围攻、对民主党治理感到失望——就已开始讨论如何在加州施加更大的政治影响力。政治顾问吉姆·德布说，财富税“让一切都加速了”，而布林率先带头冲锋。
Even before Prop 40, many tech titans — besieged by public opinion and disillusioned with Democratic governance — had begun discussing how to exert more political influence in the state. The wealth tax “sped everything up,” said political consultant Jim DeBoo, with Brin leading the initial charge.
“布林最了不起的一点是，他挺身而出，早早挨了很多箭，社区里的人看到这一点后说，我们需要介入帮忙，”德布说。他正在参与反对财富税的工作，但并非为布林或“建设更美好的加州”效力。他还说，布林的团体“有一项超越这次选举的长期战略，而且这不会停止”。2004年谷歌上市时，布林一夜之间成为世界上最富有的人之一。在随后的采访中，他似乎一直在努力应对一种新的身份，这种身份与他6岁时从苏联来到美国的计算机科学博士生身份相去甚远。
“The big thing about Brin is he stepped out there and took a lot of arrows early, and people in the community saw that and said we need to step in and help,” said DeBoo, who is working against the wealth tax but not for Brin or Building a Better California. Brin’s group, he added, “has a long-term strategy that goes beyond this election, and that’s not going to stop.”When Google went public in 2004, Brin instantly became one of the richest men in the world. In interviews afterwards, he seemed to be grappling with a new identity that was far removed from the computer-science doctoral student who had come to the United States from the Soviet Union at age 6.
“我不认为有了更多钱，我的生活质量真的会提高那么多，”他在2004年的一次采访中说，当时谷歌IPO使他成为亿万富翁已有数月。“这需要很长时间来适应，”他在2006年对《时代》杂志说。“我内心深处一直认为，金钱会给你买来一点幸福。但事实并非如此。”两年后的2008年，在英国的一场座谈会上，他似乎对自己新身份将给生活带来的影响几乎感到恐惧。
“I don’t think my quality of life is really going to improve that much with more money," he said in a 2004 interview, months after the Google IPO made him a billionaire. “It takes a lot of getting used to,” he told Time Magazine in 2006. ‘I always figured in the back of my mind that money will buy you a little bit of happiness. But it’s not really true.”During a panel in the UK two years later in 2008, he seemed almost fearful of the effect his new status would have on his life.
“开车穿过不同街区，你大致能看出哪些地方的人更加与世隔绝，因为他们拥有更大的房子、更大的地块，也更富有，”布林说。“我认为，对于那些突然变得富有的人来说，需要格外小心，以避免陷入那种陷阱。”布林绝非禁欲主义者。他发表这些言论的同年，即2008年，他与谷歌联合创始人拉里·佩奇一起购买了一架战斗机。
“You drive through different neighborhoods, you can kind of see where people are more secluded because they have bigger houses, bigger lots, and they're wealthier,” Brin said. “I think it requires great care for people who come into sudden wealth, if you will, to avoid those kinds of traps.”Brin was by no means an ascetic. That same year he made those comments, in 2008, he bought a fighter jet with Google’s Larry Page.
两年后，他在旧金山以南的富人聚居地洛斯阿尔托斯山丘购买了一栋价值500万美元的豪宅。他投入数百万美元用于太空旅游业务，这笔投资实际上是他未来离开大气层旅程的定金。
Two years later, he purchased a $5 million mansion in Los Altos Hills, a wealthy enclave south of San Francisco. He invested millions into space travel tourism, serving as a functional deposit for his future trip out of the atmosphere.
他偶尔参与州政治，从其巨额财富中拿出六位数的款项，用于保护同性婚姻、推动干细胞研究，并维持加州的碳排放交易制度。他并不反对增税，花费100万美元推动通过一项石油开采税，该运动还得到了包括佩奇和风险投资家约翰·多尔在内的其他科技巨头的资助。
He engaged in state politics occasionally, doling out six-figure dollops of his immense fortune to preserve same-sex marriage, boost stem-cell research, and uphold California’s cap-and-trade system. He was not averse to tax hikes, spending $1 million to pass an oil-severance tax in a campaign also funded by fellow tech titans like Page and venture capitalist John Doerr.
他支持的一些事业有一个共同主题：抵制他所认为的政府越权行为。
Some of the causes he embraced shared a theme: resisting what he saw as government overreach.
在2008年谷歌博客的一篇文章中，他阐述了对加州8号提案的反对——该提案旨在禁止同性婚姻，后来以微弱优势通过。他说，该措施越过了界线，鼓励“政府侵入个人生活”。“我们希望加州选民对8号提案投反对票——无论性取向如何，我们都不应剥夺任何人与所爱之人结婚的基本权利，”他写道。
In a 2008 Google blog post, he outlined his opposition to Prop 8 — the California ballot initiative to ban gay marriage, which would go on to narrowly pass. The measure crossed a line, he said, by encouraging “government encroachment on personal lives.”“We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone's fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love,” he wrote.
2010年，据报道，布林领导了谷歌退出中国的推动，原因是该公司认为网络上的政府审查日益加剧。布林告诉《华尔街日报》，中国对异议的镇压让他想起了自己在苏联童年时警察上门的黑暗记忆。
And in 2010, Brin reportedly led the push for Google to withdraw from China due to what the company viewed as encroaching government censorship on the web. Brin told the Wall Street Journal that Chinese repression of dissent conjured dark memories of police visiting his home while a young boy in the Soviet Union.
作为一名不久前毕业于斯坦福大学、在硅谷造富生态系统中崭露头角的年轻人，布林“绝对是民主党人，并信奉民主党的所有观点”，一位硅谷筹款人在获准匿名以便坦诚发言的情况下说道。
As a not-so-distant Stanford graduate ascending through Silicon Valley’s millionaire-minting ecosystem, Brin was “absolutely a Dem and believed in all the Dem views,” said a Silicon Valley bundler who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
然而，除了少数政治事业外，布林将大部分捐赠用于慈善事业，其中包括帮助其家庭移民美国的希伯来移民援助协会。尽管他是奥巴马总统的支持者，曾在2012年向奥巴马连任竞选活动捐款3.6万美元，但他表现出对政治的厌恶，谴责大选前夕党派斗争加剧，并敦促政客们“无论名义还是精神上”都以独立人士身份参选。
Beyond a handful of political causes, however, Brin directed much of his giving to philanthropy, including the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which helped his family come to the U.S Although he was a supporter of President Barack Obama, giving $36,000 to Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, he projected disgust with politics, decrying heightened partisanship in the runup to the election and urging politicians to run as independents “in name and spirit.”
2016年唐纳德·特朗普当选后，布林在泄露的讲话中告诉谷歌员工，作为一名移民，这一结果令他“深感冒犯”。次年，布林参加了在旧金山国际机场举行的抗议活动，反对总统签署的首个移民禁令，并再次提及苏联的阴影。当时似乎布林正走向更深度的政治参与，准备对抗新政府的政策。
When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Brin told Google employees in leaked comments that the outcome was “deeply offensive” to him as an immigrant. The following year, Brin joined a protest at San Francisco International Airport over the president’s first immigration ban, and again raised the specter of the Soviet Union. It seemed as if Brin was on the way to becoming more politically engaged, poised to counter the policies of the new administration.
然而，布林随后基本从政治舞台消失了近十年，直到去年以一套更为保守的价值观重新现身。
Instead, Brin essentially disappeared from the political sphere for close to a decade, emerging last year with a more conservative set of values.
在过去16个月里，他参加了万斯的筹款活动，向共和党全国委员会捐赠了近45万美元，资助共和党人史蒂夫·希尔顿竞选加州州长，支持共和党人斯宾塞·普拉特竞选洛杉矶市长，甚至加入了特朗普白宫的科技委员会。布林还向支持温和派民主党人马特·马汉竞选加州州长的一个超级政治行动委员会捐赠了100万美元，与其他支持这位亲科技候选人的硅谷巨头站在了一起，但马汉最终竞选失败。
In the past 16 months he attended a JD Vance fundraiser, gave nearly $450,000 to the Republican National Committee, contributed to Republican Steve Hilton’s campaign for California governor, supported Republican Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayoral race, and even joined the Trump White House’s tech council. Brin also contributed $1 million to a PAC supporting moderate Democrat Matt Mahan’s unsuccessful bid for California governor, joining other Silicon Valley titans who backed the tech-friendly candidate.
据报道，他目前正与 Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto 交往，后者是一位 30 岁出头的健康领域网红，特朗普曾称她为布林的“真正了不起的 MAGA 女友”。近年来，Gilbert-Soto 挤进了特朗普核心圈子，并于 2025 年出席了一场白宫晚宴，同时赢得了总统坚定捍卫者的名声。
Today, he is reported to be in a relationship with Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto, a wellness influencer in her early 30s whom Trump has referred to as Brin’s “really wonderful MAGA girlfriend.”In recent years, Gilbert-Soto has elbowed her way into Trump-world inner sanctums and a White House dinner in 2025 while earning a reputation as a dogged defender of the president.
“他的财富越来越多，结交了许多富人，这些人要么是共和党人，要么处于财富保护模式，这往往倾向于共和党，”这位筹款人说。“过去 12 到 15 年他一直朝那个方向发展，但由于他身边围绕的人——尤其是他亲密交往的那个人——这种趋势被放大了。”
“He’s gotten wealthier and wealthier and has hung out with a lot of wealthy people who are either Republicans or in wealth-protection mode, which tends to lean Republican,” the bundler said. “He’s trended in that direction the last 12 to 15 years but it’s been amplified by the people he’s surrounded himself with — especially the person he’s intimate with.”
布林未回应本文的采访请求。但在一份声明中，“建设更美好加州”组织的一位发言人表示，该组织旨在“保护我们独特的经济，并推进明智、负责的政策，提高所有人的负担能力和生活质量”。“这些目标并不冲突；它们相互依存，这也是我们支持的每一项措施背后的思考，”该发言人说。
Brin did not respond to requests for an interview for this article. But in a statement, a spokesperson for Building a Better California said that organization was intent on “protecting our unique economy and advancing smart, accountable policies that improve affordability and quality of life for everyone.”“Those goals aren’t oppositional; they depend on each other, and that's the thinking behind every measure we're backing,” the spokesperson said.
布林凭一己之力确保了财富税支持者在资金上处于绝对劣势。他还给了对手每个竞选团队都梦寐以求的东西：一个反派形象。
Brin has singlehandedly ensured that supporters of the wealth tax are overwhelmingly outspent. He’s also given them something every campaign covets: a villain.
在旧金山一个闷热的周六晚上，众议员罗·卡纳在“40 号提案”集会上为现场造势，指责反对该税的知名民主党人（如纽森）与“特朗普盟友彼得·蒂尔和谢尔盖·布林”站在了一起。随后卡纳将舞台让给了参议员伯尼·桑德斯——这位观众翘首以盼的主角，桑德斯将这场竞选定性为检验民主党人究竟站在哪一边的终极考验，他确保所有人都知道布林站在哪一边。
On a steamy Saturday night in San Francisco, Rep. Ro Khanna warmed up the crowd at a Prop 40 rally, accusing prominent Democrats opposing the tax, like Newsom, of aligning themselves with “Trump allies like Peter Thiel and Sergey Brin.”Then Khanna yielded the stage to Sen. Bernie Sanders, the man the audience had come to see — and Sanders, who has framed the campaign as the ultimate test of whose side Democrats are on, made sure everyone knew where Brin stood.
“布林先生是谁？”桑德斯反问观众，随后列举了一些关于他的事实。桑德斯告诉人群，自特朗普成为总统以来，这位世界第四大富豪又积累了数十亿美元财富，引来一阵更大的嘘声。
“Who is Mr. Brin?”Sanders rhetorically asked the audience before rattling off some facts about him. The world’s fourth-richest man has accumulated billions more since Trump became president, Sanders told the crowd to a fresh round of boos.
桑德斯接着说，想保护自己的资产是一回事。“真正让我感到恶心的是，”他说，布林等人威胁要因这项税收离开加州，这种“勒索”行径“可悲”且“不道德”。
Trying to protect your assets is one thing, Sanders continued. “What really disgusts me,” he said, was the “extortion” Brin and others were engaging in by threatening to leave California over the tax, calling it “pathetic” and “immoral.”
桑德斯说：“亿万富翁阶层之所以如此愤怒，是因为他们知道，如果你们能在加州推行这项政策，我们将在全国各地推行。”“人们已经厌倦了这些亿万富翁的贪婪。” 更正：本文已更新，以提供关于谢尔盖·布林向共和党全国委员会捐款的更精确估算。
“The reason the billionaire class is so upset is they know if you can pull this off here in California, we’re going to do this all over the country,” Sanders said. “People are sick and tired of the greed of these billionaires.”CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to provide a more precise estimate of Sergey Brin's giving to the Republican National Committee.