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<\/p>\nDonald Trump has never come close to winning an election in California. But California has helped Donald Trump win two national elections.<\/p>\n
Not because of our values. Because of our failures.<\/p>\n
Wildfires that swallow up entire communities and recovery that takes too long. Massive tent encampments and open-air drug markets hollowing out once-thriving urban corridors. Unchecked suffering on our streets.<\/p>\n
Two decades of broken promises to build more homes. The nation\u2019s highest gas and energy prices. Public schools that now lag Mississippi and Louisiana in getting kids on grade level for literacy and math proficiency by the 4th grade. And a government that reflexively asks for more tax revenue before figuring out how to do better with existing resources.<\/p>\n
Most of these problems are visible. All of them are visceral. They are the kind of things that get easily caricatured on cable news, made into effective campaign ads and turned into viral social media moments. \u201cDon\u2019t let this happen to your state,\u201d the voice-over says. Next thing you know, a convicted felon is back in the White House.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
We are a state with Democratic supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature, Democrats in every statewide office for 15 consecutive years, and Democrats occupying more than 80 percent of the seats in the nation\u2019s largest congressional delegation.<\/p>\n
So while many of my fellow Democrats may argue\u2014and argue rightly\u2014that critiques of California lack context or nuance, the reality is that Americans aren\u2019t listening to such excuses, nor are Californians. There is a pervasive belief\u00a0that in California we\u2019ve failed to make things better in our communities, despite controlling every lever of power. And that failure gave Trump license to exact more harm and more retribution.<\/p>\n
In order to win the fight against masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents terrorizing our communities, unlawful tariffs harming consumers and defunding of our research institutions, California needs to be a place that demonstrates to the nation that our values work in practice.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a proud Democrat. I grew up in a union family in working-class Watsonville, surrounded by neighbors who picked strawberries, plowed fields and built things for a living.<\/p>\n
I still remember what it\u2019s like to hear my parents\u2019 voices get quiet when they sat at the kitchen table and talked about how to pay the mortgage or an unexpected bill, like when our old cars broke down, which they often did. That memory keeps me focused on results Californians can feel in their communities and in their wallets.<\/p>\n
Because that\u2019s where Trump and Trumpism are weakest.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what we\u2019ve done in San Jose, the largest city in Northern California. Deploying a common-sense approach, we\u2019ve reduced unsheltered homelessness by nearly a third. We made building housing faster and less expensive, resulting in thousands of new homes. We\u2019ve reduced crime and become the safest big city in America. We\u2019ve taken on our local utility, PG&E, and won grid upgrades and faster service responses. We don\u2019t try to be everything to everyone. We focus on the basics. We make the hard choices. And we measure everything publicly, so we can identify what works, eliminate what doesn\u2019t and earn the taxpayers\u2019 trust in the process.<\/p>\n
It hasn\u2019t always been easy. It\u2019s meant telling hard truths to close friends and longtime allies.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s meant occasionally challenging a governor I voted for twice. It has meant leading efforts to address the crisis of street homelessness, addiction and retail theft by passing\u00a0Proposition 36\u2014increasing penalties for repeat offenders and expanding treatment options\u2014which we did over the objection of many party leaders. It\u2019s also why I differ with many in my party on new proposed tax hikes, because you can\u2019t argue for making things more affordable in one breath if you turn around and advocate to make California more expensive with the next.<\/p>\n
At the end of the day, the crowded Democratic field for California governor isn\u2019t a contest over core values; it is a contest between those who will prioritize practical solutions over performative politics.<\/p>\n
Because of the outsized role our state plays in national politics, it is a contest not just for the future of California, but for the soul of the Democratic Party. What happens here in June can demonstrate that Democrats are ready to unite behind solving basic problems in ways that people can see in their communities and feel in their wallets. It\u2019s about winning the fight between those in our party who confuse cable news appearances and clicks with real progress, and those who, like me, believe the best resistance is results.<\/p>\n
California’s choice will have a lot to say about America’s future.<\/p>\n
Matt Mahan is the Democratic mayor of San Jose and is running for California governor. Before becoming mayor he was a teacher through Teach for America.<\/p>\n
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has never come close to winning an election in California. But California has helped Donald Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[9470,7,1525,4934,88,90,89],"class_list":{"0":"post-249876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose","8":"tag-american-politics","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-democratic-party","11":"tag-midterms","12":"tag-san-jose","13":"tag-san-jose-headlines","14":"tag-san-jose-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}