I caught up with Democratic gubernatorial candidate and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan this week over Zoom to discuss his campaign. Mahan entered the race about a month ago, has already raised millions of dollars and is benefiting from multimillion dollar spending, mostly from tech and business executives who spent about $4.8 million on ads in support of his campaign.
Mahan is positioning himself as a moderate Democrat focused on fixing the most pressing problems facing California by making more effective use of our resources. “I’m only interested in whether or not our policies are making neighborhoods safer, improving our public schools, reducing the cost of housing and energy, and making people’s lives better. And I think that we need a politics of pragmatism that is accountable for making people’s lives better,” he told me.
On his track record as the mayor of San Jose, Mahan stated that during his tenure, San Jose reduced crime by over 20%, reduced unsheltered homelessness by a third, and increased housing construction. However, San Jose is not keeping pace to meet state-mandated housing construction targets, permitting only 9% of the 62,200 homes the city is required to build by 2031. Since he mentioned his track record on housing, I asked why that is the case.
“San Jose is a better actor than most. When you look at the last RHNA cycle, we hit our goals for all of the market-rate housing. We did not on affordable, but nobody did, and we did better than most cities. … We eliminated our affordable housing fees. We cut our park fees in half and we eliminated our construction taxes. … You can actually go get a loan from a bank to build when it costs you 10 to 20% less to build. The market can actually support that.”
It is true that most cities are struggling to meet even a fraction of their housing targets, and it is encouraging that Mahan has acted on reducing barriers to construction. California’s next governor should build on successes like this.
On homelessness, Mahan has spoken about his support for forcing the homeless to undergo treatment for drug addiction and mental health disorders. I asked him to clarify his plan given the many ethical questions surrounding such a move.
“There’s a small subset of people who are so deep in the throes of addiction or some other form of mental illness that they are unable or unwilling to accept even safe, private, low-barrier interim housing,” he said, explaining that his plan offers two pathways for people in such circumstances.
“One pathway is the Prop. 36 pathway, which is, if you are committing crime and harming the broader community, then the criminal justice system can create an incentive for you to engage in treatment as an alternative to going to jail,” he said. “The other pathway, though, is when folks are truly just so deep in an addiction or mental illness that they are unable to make a rational decision. And that’s where conservatorship comes in. … We’re not exactly doing the humane and compassionate thing by leaving people suffering from severe addiction and mental illness out on our streets. We have to be willing to intervene.”
Mahan clarified that severely treatment-resistant homeless people would receive help in a medical setting. While it’s far from clear that our medical and psychiatric systems are currently capable of enabling such a strategy, Mahan’s appreciation for the distinction between degrees of agency and when paternalism may be acceptable is more than I’ve gotten from most politicians I’ve spoken to. We moved on to the budget deficit, and here, Mahan’s plan was less heartening. Mahan recognized that state spending in California has increased by 75% over the last six years but was hesitant to commit to budget reductions. Instead, his plan consisted of rooting out fraud, reprioritizing funding, and growing the economy.
“I would prioritize public safety, removing barriers to home building, bringing down energy costs, improving the quality of public schools, and investing in infrastructure. We need to grow the economy,” he answered.
I criticized ex-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for a similar non-plan. Rectifying the deficit is going to take more than simply hoping that the economy grows enough to fund an extravagant budget. Mahan’s go-to line is: “We have seen our spending in the state go up 75% in the last six years. And I’m not aware of anything that’s gotten 75% better.”
True enough, and that’s because lawmakers have insisted on throwing money at problems by burdening Californians with some of the highest taxes in the country. All of that spending hasn’t made our education system any better or made anything more affordable, so perhaps allowing people to keep more of their paychecks may help them improve their own lives while lawmakers figure out effective and affordable reforms.
As with every candidate, I asked Mahan for his thoughts on the corrupting political influence of special interest groups like unions and whether he would be able to prioritize the greater good despite union opposition. “The sort of thing that I’m thinking about is recent opposition to automated call centers, port automation, and resistance to education reform,” I asked.
Mahan chose to straddle the line.
“I think I bring a balanced and pragmatic view to this tension. And it is a tension, undeniably,” he said. “We don’t want to see vulnerable people lose their jobs, lose their homes, end up devastated by technological change. But we also don’t want to put our head in the sand and pretend that that change isn’t coming and actually push it elsewhere.”
He stressed that AI should not replace labor, saying, “We’re helping our workers upskill and get ahead of technological change because AI should not be a labor replacement so much as a labor enhancement.”
In many instances, innovation and automation are job replacers, not enhancers. Automated call centers and ports will replace workers to the benefit of the public. I pressed Mahan about whether he would resist such innovation to preserve the employment of a few.
“Jobs are being created and destroyed all the time,” he answered. “Technology accelerates that, which is why our job in government should be to accelerate our efforts to reform our education system and expand vocational pathways and reskilling programs.”
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I understand politicians have to be very cautious about how they word their positions, particularly when it may anger certain interest groups, but we shouldn’t have to work to interpret their statements. Here’s my generous translation of Mahan’s response: Yes, we need to embrace innovation, and some union jobs will be lost, but we won’t just abandon people; we will attempt to mitigate that with retraining.
All this said, Mahan came off better than many other candidates I’ve interviewed. Even though speaking to politicians feels like pulling teeth sometimes, Mahan compares favorably to many of our other candidates in the style and substance of his answers.
No candidate is perfect, but he’s not going to pursue foolhardy policies like raising property or wealth taxes or expanding rent controls. He has experience cutting regulations, and his responses indicate that his decision-making is sensitive to both practical and ethical implications. For these reasons, he’s worth taking seriously as a candidate for governor.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. He is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.