March 22 2026
(from notebookLM)
- Intro
- Matt Mahan is the current Mayor of San Jose and is running for Governor of California.
- He grew up in a working-class family in Watsonville, went to college on a work-study scholarship, and spent a decade in the tech sector building civic tools like Causes and Brigade.
- He decided to run for local office after knocking on 10,000 doors and hearing voters complain about paying high property taxes without seeing basic services delivered.
- State Spending, Dysfunction, and Accountability
- California has increased state government spending by 75% ($150 billion) over six years, but outcomes have remained flat or worsened.
- Mahan points to the state's high-speed rail project as a prime example of a lack of accountability, noting that $14 billion has been spent over 20 years on consultants, lawyers, and environmental reviews without delivering a product.
- While there is outright fraud—such as $30 billion in fraudulent pandemic unemployment claims—the much larger problem is systemic waste and an incentive structure that funds processes rather than measurable outcomes.
- In San Jose, Mahan achieved better results without raising taxes by cutting red tape, reducing crime, and shrinking unsheltered homelessness by a third.
- The Legislature and Special Interests
- The California state legislature passes hundreds of bills a year that largely just add more bureaucracy, cost, and process.
- Mahan strongly disagrees with opponents like Eric Swalwell whose primary solution to state problems is "revenue, revenue, revenue," arguing that less government often solves problems better than more government.
- He blames the state's dysfunction on spineless politicians who cave to highly organized special interests, including public sector unions, trade associations, and trial lawyers.
- Mississippi and Louisiana are getting better outcomes in early childhood education than much better resourced CA
- These special interests disproportionately fund elections to defend the status quo, leaving the system unresponsive to the actual needs of working families.
- CA is #1 in poverty, #1 in homelessness
- Over the last decade 50,000 people have died on the streets of CA due to overdose and suicide
- Homelessness and the Housing Crisis
- California accounts for nearly half of the nation's unsheltered homeless population, driven by a broken housing market and a progressive ideology that protects "civil liberties" to the point of letting people die on the streets from addiction.
- To address homelessness in San Jose, Mahan shifted away from building $1 million apartments and instead built 2,000 basic sleeping cabins at a cost of $85,000 each.
- The broader housing affordability issue is a supply problem severely bottlenecked by a "regulation crisis".
- Cumbersome building codes, high fees, and the threat of construction defect lawsuits from trial lawyers make it nearly impossible to build affordable housing, particularly condos.
- Mahan plans to use public dashboards to track state goals, aiming to drastically increase housing production and drop the per-square-foot cost of building by at least a third.
- Using Executive Power
- As governor, Mahan plans to drive change by using the budget process, the veto pen, the bully pulpit, and by appointing 3,000 outcome-driven individuals to run state commissions and bureaucracies.
- Drug Policy and Mental Health
- He believes in involuntary holds for individuals who repeatedly commit public offenses due to severe addiction or mental illness.
- Mahan supported Prop 36, which requires individuals to choose between treatment and incarceration upon their third public drug offense.
- Energy Costs and the Gas Tax
- California's regulatory environment has chased refineries out of the state, forcing Californians to pay $5.50 for gas while the state imports dirtier oil from thousands of miles away.
- Chevron has been chased out of the state to Houston
- Texas is providing cleaner energy for cheaper
- So this has reduced the tax base and is not achieving climate change outcome and making it worse
- Mahan wants to temporarily suspend the 70-cent gas tax to provide immediate relief to working families who commute long distances, and eventually shift toward a basic user-fee model for road maintenance.
- The Homeowners Insurance Crisis
- The state is losing private home insurers because state regulators refuse to let them appropriately price risk.
- Mahan argues the market must dictate insurance rates, while the state must heavily invest in vegetation management (currently underfunded at a 1-to-8 ratio compared to fire response) to actually reduce catastrophic wildfire risk.
- Pensions and the State Budget
- California faces massive unfunded pension liabilities that threaten to bankrupt the state; in San Jose, 19% of the general fund is currently eaten up by these obligations.
- Mahan helped implement pension reforms in San Jose that instituted a new tier for new employees with shared risk, and put legacy debt on a 20-year path to being paid off.
- With the state budget having bloated to roughly $350 billion and state headcount rising over 20%, Mahan wants to implement zero-based budgeting rather than blindly approving baseline increases every year.
- Healthcare and Taxes
- Mahan does not support the push for a state-run, free single-payer healthcare system, advocating instead for price transparency, competition, and expanding the role of preventative care via nurse practitioners.
- He is the only Democratic candidate actively opposing the proposed wealth/billionaire tax, warning it will cause massive capital flight and ultimately hurt the middle class.
- Instead of a wealth tax, he prefers closing tax loopholes, such as eliminating the step-up in basis upon death for massive estates.
- AI and Education
- Unlike those who fear AI will destroy jobs, Mahan is highly optimistic that AI will create new economic mobility, and his city is already providing AI upskilling courses.
- He warns that the public education system must stop focusing on rote facts and start teaching critical thinking so kids can effectively leverage AI.
- Donald Trump, Gavin Newsom, and Political Nuance
- Mahan is highly critical of Donald Trump's divisive rhetoric, fearmongering on immigration, and foreign policy, warning that Trump poses a threat to the health of the democracy.
- However, he blames the rise of extreme populism on the failure of mainstream politicians to deliver results for working people.
- He commends Governor Newsom for vetoing bad legislation but criticizes Newsom for focusing too much on trolling Trump to boost his presidential ambitions, which has delayed critical federal aid to California (which could have helped the Palisades reconstruction for example)
- Immigration Strategy
- He believes violent undocumented felons should be deported, but promises to protect law-abiding undocumented immigrants who have lived and worked in California for decades.
- Mahan proposes a grand compromise: heavily secure the border to stop illegal crossings, while granting a pathway to legal status (such as a green card, potentially without voting rights) to those already settled in the U.S..
- Campaign Conclusion
- Mahan separates himself from opponents like Swalwell, Steyer, and Porter, framing them as "more of the same" politicians who blindly push for more taxes and revenue.
- He frames his campaign as an offer of a pragmatic "Third Way" focused on getting back to basics, demanding measurable results, and restoring functional government for working Californians.
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