In 2020, there was a campaign (prop 15) to legalize increases on the property tax rate in California that only applied to commercial and industrial properties. Intuitively, the constituency for prop 15 should be very similar to a wealth tax on $0.5M+, since the set of people owning commercial/industrial real estate in California are mostly a subset of people with $0.5M+ wealth. What actually happened is there was heavy opposition and prop 15 was narrowly rejected by the voters. Organizations opposing the proposition included the American Legion, the NAACP, and California Beer and Beverage Distributors.

Arguably, there’s a disconnect where the people who lead civic organizations don’t have a great deal in common with the median member. They might be wealthier and generally more plugged in to power structures. They might not support policies that are in the best interest of members they represent, especially people who have a hard time representing themselves.

Anyway, if your goal is to get a policy enacted, it’s not enough for your policy to be theoretically good for the median voter. You need a winning political coalition.