This story is second in a series on California’s gubernatorial candidates. See our first story on Tony Thurmond here.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, one of six Democrats competing along with two Republicans for the California governorship, has promised to make the state more affordable by building more homes, reducing rules and regulations and “focusing on reforming policies to deliver better outcomes.”
Mahan told reporters at a May 7 American Community Media (ACoM) briefing that, in addition to streamlining the permitting process to boost home construction, he has improved the lives of San Jose residents by reducing homelessness by a third and cutting crime. Those accomplishments can be replicated statewide, he said.
Mahan was asked by a reporter about the exodus of young people unable to afford California living.
“As the only millennial in this race, I’ve decided to jump in because I’m tired of my friends moving away,” the 43-year-old candidate said. “We’ve lost a congressional seat for the first time. This is really paralyzing the state and harming our ability to create opportunities for people.”
Touting San Jose’s residential growth, he said, “We’ve led the way on ADUs [accessory dwelling units], on townhomes, on affordable-by-design solutions. We’ve reduced cost of building by speeding up our permitting and taking it out of the political process.”
While labeling housing the number one affordability issue, Mahan blamed decades of creating layers of regulations on the overall high cost of living in California.
“It’s our regulatory environment that has led us to have less of the things we need: Housing, energy, healthcare,” Mahan said.
There is one area – technology – where Mahan said San Jose has stepped up regulation.
“We have done more than any other city to regulate technology. We have created the govAI coalition that is now used by more than 900 cities and counties across the country,” he said.
According to the govAI site, the coalition is committed to using AI for “social good” and to “responsible AI governance.”
Mahan said proper use of technology can “augment workers, not replace them.”
Known as a moderate Democrat, Mahan said, “I am not an ideologically rigid person. I’m worried about rising populism on the right and on the left. I want government to work. The best resistance to authoritarianism is results. I am relentless about outcomes, equitable outcomes.”
While the two top candidates of both the Democratic and Republican parties competitively poll in double-digit figures, Mahan and candidate Katie Porter closely tied for fifth place with about 9 % of the vote, according to a New York Times poll survey that was updated today. Mahan’s website shows a list of elected and public officials who have endorsed him, including Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen.
Supports immigrants
Mahan blamed both Democrats and Republicans for a failed immigration system because both parties want low-cost labor. While he favors “doubling down on a legal system and having a secure border,” he also said he wants to protect families who are here, noting they contribute to society.
“I’m saddened and frankly angry by how this Trump Administration has waged war against our immigrant neighbors,” Mahan said. “In San Jose, under my leadership we have sued the Trump administration a dozen times; we’ve passed strict prohibitions on ICE agents using city property to operate in our city; we have 20xd the legal resources for immigrant neighbors who are targeted by ICE.”
He said that although he agrees with “the sentiment” behind the call to abolish ICE, the demand is “somewhat of a symbolic statement” and that immigration enforcement is necessary considering threats like that of terrorism. He called for a more humanitarian system with a path to citizenship.
Mahan said he has observed how hard working immigrants are and how much they contribute to the community both in the Watsonville-area farming community he grew up in, as well as in San Jose, the state’s third-largest city where immigrants make up 40% of the population and half the residents speak a language other than English at home.
During the briefing, he attributed his understanding of the state’s immigrant population to having grown up amongst immigrant workers and his experience as mayor of a city with both professional and working-class immigrants.
Health care issues in rural areas
The candidate also spelled out his solution to California’s healthcare crisis, which he said is particularly acute in rural areas.
He advocated allowing out-of-state telehelp, staffing rural clinics with skilled nurse practitioners working at the top level they trained for, and providing medical school graduates with tuition forgiveness and other incentives if they work in high-need areas.
Economic benefits for all
Mahan said the magnitude of revenue cuts caused by the Trump administration will be difficult to overcome.
Part of the answer, he said, is to tax data centers and tech investments that generate a lot of tax revenue – money that could be used for technical education, apprenticeship, upscaling and rescaling, workforce development, enabling more entrepreneurship and small business growth. He said such taxes should find “a middle ground, to not just push them all to other states because then we lose all the jobs, the tax base and innovation, but not let them do whatever they want.”
He proposed creation of “a prosperity fund” that could be used for job training and business support and even a universal basic income.
Asked how he felt about being labeled the “Silicon Valley billionaires’ candidate,” Mahan countered that “it is a very convenient attack by my opponents. San Jose is not where the billionaires live. We’re a diverse, working class city. The reason some tech people have invested in the campaign is that they’ve seen the incredible results we’ve had.”
He also fielded a question about reparations for African Americans which he labeled legally and politically challenging.
Instead, he listed other ways to lift communities – both Black and Native American that have been marginalized “far too long” – without focusing on race and ethnicity. He said said government can improve lives “by focusing our resources on the household, the census tracts, and the school systems where we have inequitable outcomes.”
“When I became a City Council member,” he said, “my first budget action was asking for an equity analyst at the city to help us understand these disparate outcomes so [we could provide] more resources to the individuals who were getting the worst outcomes and being the most left behind by government.”
Mahan was elected to the San Jose City Council in 2021. Voters elected him mayor in 2022 and 2024. Previously he spent two years as a middle school teacher under the Teach for America program, was an executive in Causes, an early Facebook application, and co-founded and led Brigade Media, a tech company focused on civic engagement.
Lindajoy Fenley is a ChicoSol editor and oversees our Spanish section. This series is published with support from American Community Media.