San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan is a relative newcomer to the governor’s race, announcing his candidacy a few months ago.
But in that time, he has gained strong backing from Silicon Valley tech giants. However, as the youngest candidate in a crowded field, his polling remains in the single digits.
Mahan sat down with Vicki Gonzalez on Insight to discuss his candidacy.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
Your career in politics started about 5 years ago. Before that, you spent time as a teacher and in the business world starting your own company in 2014. What drew you to politics?
I grew up in a small farming town. My mom was a teacher, my dad was a mailman, and we talked about all the things at the dinner table you're not supposed to talk about, namely politics and religion. My parents thought it was really important to be civically engaged. We were paycheck to paycheck, but they always subscribed to the local newspaper and made sure my sisters and I were informed and thinking about the issues of the day. I grew up with a very optimistic belief that government is the vehicle through which we can create better outcomes for people, better opportunity, and that really mattered to me starting from a young age.
Of all the Democrats running, you arguably have been the most critical of Governor Gavin Newsom. Overall, what do you make of his two terms in office?
The governor and I have agreed on a lot of things. I share his values. I appreciate that he stood up to Donald Trump and this authoritarian impulse that we're seeing from the right. I stood with him on care court and Prop. 1. He's been a major proponent of the interim housing that we've built in San Jose; that's helped us lead the state in reducing homelessness. But I just think we should expect more from our elected leaders.
We should be very open to the idea that two leaders of the same party who share values can disagree over policy. The governor and I have had a disagreement over Prop 36, which is about getting repeat offenders into treatment and bringing some accountability back to our drug courts. We had a difference of opinion over sober living environments, which the state does not allow any state dollars to go toward.
Those are honest differences of opinion, but I think sometimes the coverage of those disagreements is more interested in the bloodsport of politics than really elucidating the policy disagreements. But I promise that, from my perspective at least, it's never been personal or about politics even. It's really just been about, I'm going to fight for the political policy solutions that I think are best, and I don't care if somebody's a member of my party or not. If I disagree with the decisions they're making, I'm going to speak up.
One of the overarching themes of this race has been affordability. One of your key proposals is to suspend the state's gas tax on day one if you're elected but the gas tax brought in close to $8 billion last year in infrastructure funding. So how would you propose to fill that gap?
I believe when gas is rising as quickly as it has, we have a responsibility to provide some relief to working people, which is why I've argued that we should temporarily suspend the gas tax. But I agree with you that we need revenue for infrastructure.
And what I've said is we need to reform the gas tax and overhaul the way we fund infrastructure. The reality today is that the gas tax has become the most regressive tax in California. Gas-powered car owners who are disproportionately low income and disproportionately from rural communities, are paying three and a half times more to maintain our roads than higher income residents, urban residents, and EV owners, in particular. And I believe that we should equalize that and have a flat fee for every vehicle with registration. That's a fair, more reasonable way to do it.
And I would also just add this, we have a state budget that has grown 75% in the last six years. It's a $350 billion budget. In fact, every other state maintains its roads, in many cases, better than we do in California without gas taxes as high as California's. And I know that for a fact because we have the highest gas tax in the country of any state. So I think we need to rebalance. It's not about totally eliminating it necessarily, but we shouldn't be maintaining our roads on the backs of our lowest income residents. I think it's wrong.
Your campaign has received a lot of contributions from billionaires, Silicon Valley tech figures and venture capitalists. So for voters who are wary of corporate interests and their influence in the governor's race and politics in general, how do you respond to those concerns and appeal to them given this big money support?
I would point out all of the candidates have big donors who have contributed to their campaign just to be fair. And we do have an actual billionaire in the campaign who has already spent $150 million. But look, it's a fair criticism and I'll answer it directly. I am the mayor of the largest city in Silicon Valley and people who live and work in tech have seen the progress we've made.
And I think that the primary reason that there are tech employers and tech workers who have invested in this campaign is that they've seen how I've led San Jose to become the safest big city in the country, to lead the state in reducing unsheltered homelessness, and to get thousands of homes under construction, and they like the level of of competence and the outcomes that we're getting.
That being said, I share the concern about the power of technology and I actually think it's an asset that I understand this industry because I know how to leverage these tools to make life better. We're using technology in San Jose to speed up our buses and improve language translation, but I also know the risks. And I'm concerned about privacy and surveillance and job loss. So what I'm bringing you is a very balanced perspective. I think we absolutely need to regulate tech and even more, we need to use the tax revenue from these growing tech companies to invest in our people, our workforce.
So it will be an asset for our next governor to understand the positive side, but also the risks and understand how to effectively regulate the industry without simply pushing it to other states or other countries because there is a balance that we need to strike. But I'll be really clear I've always stood up against the establishment and the special interests and that includes the tech industry.
