SAN JOSE\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Matt Mahan didn\u2019t set out to be a scold and pain in Gavin Newsom\u2019s backside.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t mean to sound like a wrathful Republican when he criticizes one-party rule in Sacramento. Or a disgruntled independent when he assails a Democratic establishment that\u2019s become, as he sees it, \u201ca club of insiders who take care of each other\u201d and mostly go along to get along.<\/p>\n
Maybe because that\u2019s \u201cmy diagnosis of it,\u201d said the 42-year-old San Jos\u00e9 mayor, \u201cI have tried very consciously to not fall into that trap of just wanting to be liked.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is, Mahan insists, a Democrat to his core, his roots sunk deep in the loamy soil of working-class Watsonville, <\/a>where, over the mountains and light years from Silicon Valley, he grew up the son of a mail carrier and a high school teacher.<\/p>\n That makes his candor all the more bracing, and refreshing, at a time when Democrats are struggling nationally to regain their footing<\/a> and find a meaningful way forward<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have become so caught up in our own rhetoric of helping the little guy that we\u2019ve stopped actually checking to make sure that we are doing that,\u201d Mahan said over lunch at a cantina downtown.<\/p>\n Results, he said, are what matter. Not good intentions.<\/p>\n And certainly not the performative pugilism that some, including the hyper-online Newsom, pass off as leadership. \u201cA sugar high,\u201d Mahan called it.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of Democrats are frustrated and feel powerless, and so that rhetoric has this cathartic effect,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I don\u2019t know that it actually, over time, moves us toward success, and I mean not just success in society, but even political success, because ultimately, if you\u2019re not offering solutions, I think you can have a hard time getting to a majority position.\u201d<\/p>\n Mahan comes by his outsider status naturally.<\/p>\n In high school, he rode the bus four hours a day \u2014 from Watsonville to San Jos\u00e9 and back again \u2014 to attend a college prep academy on a work-study scholarship. (\u201cMy golden ticket,\u201d he called it.) He worked on the grounds crew to help pay his way, and continued on to Harvard, where his dorm mates included Mark Zuckerberg<\/a>. (The two hung out in college and still talk occasionally.)<\/p>\n After a year in Bolivia, helping family farmers, and a stint teaching middle school, Mahan co-founded a social media company that focused on civic engagement and raising money for nonprofits. He was elected to the San Jos\u00e9 City Council in 2020. Even before his first term was completed, Mahan launched an upstart bid for mayor.<\/p>\n The front-runner was a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, a former San Jos\u00e9 vice mayor and longtime civic leader. Waging a nothing-to-lose campaign \u2014 \u201cwe had no endorsements, we had much less money\u201d \u2014 Mahan knocked on thousands of doors. He asked voters what they had on their minds.<\/p>\n It turned out to be rudimentary stuff. Potholes. Public safety<\/a>. A sense they were paying a whole lot of taxes and getting very little in return.<\/p>\n The experience impressed two things upon Mahan: a need for accountability and the importance of voters\u2019 lived experience, as opposed to vague promises, abstract notions and politically fashionable statements. <\/p>\n \u201cI think ultimately political success and policy success comes from offering better ideas and demonstrating impact,\u201d Mahan said, sounding very much like the technocrat he calls himself.<\/p>\n Mahan won the mayor\u2019s race \u2014 narrowly, in a major upset \u2014 and was reelected two years later in a November 2024 landslide. (The year Mahan was elected, San Jos\u00e9 voted to shift its mayoral contest to correspond with presidential balloting, which cut his first term in half.)<\/p>\n Soon enough, Mahan found himself at odds with some major Democratic constituencies, including powerful labor unions, which pushed back over wages and a return-to-office policy, and homeless advocates who bristled at Mahan\u2019s focus on short-term housing and threat to arrest homeless people <\/a> who refused multiple offers of shelter.<\/p>\n \u201cHomelessness can\u2019t be a choice,\u201d Mahan said at a spring news conference announcing the move<\/a>.<\/p>\n His heresies don\u2019t end there.<\/p>\n Mahan broke with many Democrats by vigorously supporting Proposition 36<\/a>, the 2024 anti-crime measure that stiffened penalties for repeated theft and crimes involving fentanyl. Despite opposition from Newsom <\/a>and most of the state\u2019s Democratic leadership, it passed with nearly 70% support<\/a>; Mahan has since criticized Newsom and the Democratic-run Legislature for stinting on funds needed<\/a> for implementation.<\/p>\n But his most conspicuous breach involves the governor\u2019s Trumpy transformation into a social media troll<\/a>.<\/p>\n While the mockery and memes may feel good as snickering payback and certainly stoke the Democratic base \u2014 boosting Newsom\u2019s presidential hopes <\/a>\u2014 Mahan suggested they are ultimately counterproductive. <\/p>\n \u201cIf we don\u2019t have a politics of solutions and making people\u2019s lives better, I just don\u2019t know where we end up,\u201d he said, as his enchiladas sat cooling before him. \u201cIt\u2019s politics practiced in bad faith, where we just … tell people things that test well because they sound nice, and then we just blame the other side for being evil, incompetent, corrupt. … It\u2019s just a race to the bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n He took particular issue with Newsom\u2019s taunting reaction after Bed Bath & Beyond recently announced<\/a> it won\u2019t open or operate new stores in California. <\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t \u201ca reasoned argument,\u201d Mahan wrote in a scathing opinion piece<\/a> in the San Francisco Standard. The tart headline: \u201cHow about less time breaking the internet and more time fixing California?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Breaking the internet\u2019 doesn\u2019t solve real-world problems \u2014 quite the opposite,\u201d Mahan wrote. \u201cMore often than not, it\u2019s just political theater that serves to excuse inaction and ineffective policies.\u201d<\/p>\n He elaborated over lunch.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have an employer who\u2019s pointing out real issues that everybody else who\u2019s watching thinks are real issues. Talking about business climate, cost of doing business, public safety issues, retail theft, untreated addiction and mental illness,\u201d Mahan said. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen we start turning on constituents because we don\u2019t agree with their ideology, or attacking Trump is more important than actually solving problems or listening to the criticism … I think we\u2019re heading down a dangerous road.\u201d<\/p>\n Inevitably, there\u2019s the question: To what end all this poking of thumbs in his fellow Democrats\u2019 eyes?<\/p>\n Mahan has drawn wide notice, in particular from the more pragmatic wing of the party. His back-to-basics approach has yielded some measurable success. A recent study called San Jos\u00e9 the safest major city in the country <\/a>and, while the overall homeless population grew slightly, there\u2019s been progress moving people off the streets into city shelters.<\/p>\n