San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan wants to be the optimistic candidate for California governor

Matt Mahan isn’t really a fan of the “moderate” label.

The San Jose mayor and Democratic candidate for governor, in fact, said, “I don’t know what moderate means,” when asked about his reputation during a recent trip to Los Angeles to talk housing and homelessness and tour Skid Row.

Instead, it’s optimism that Mahan said more accurately defines his campaign style, his would-be approach as California’s potential next governor, his persona.

“I try to be a pragmatic problem-solver more than anything,” Mahan said in an interview outside the Midnight Mission, a homeless shelter that provides wraparound services, on Friday afternoon, Feb. 13.

“I think we should want great things for everyone, but I worry that our state often embraces policies that are idealistic, that sound good, are performative and aren’t working in practice,” Mahan said. “And that’s why I consider myself a pragmatist more than anything.”

Mahan’s late entrance in the California gubernatorial race — he launched his campaign in late January after meeting with several of the candidates — was noticeable in what has otherwise been a crowded yet lackluster contest.

That’s because while Mahan, 43, has supported many progressive policies, he has also clashed with his own party and earned a reputation as a critic of the very man he’s vying to replace as the state’s chief executive, Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“We have to be willing,” Mahan said, “to embrace good ideas and change what we’re currently doing, irrespective of who had the idea. We can’t have pride of authorship or partisan rigidity.”

“When (policies) aren’t working, we experiment, we try new things,” he continued. “We don’t get so locked in our partisan silos because of who had the idea.”

Mahan’s age and relative “newcomer” status in the political world could prove to be advantageous for him in the race for governor, said Matt Lesenyie, an expert in political philosophy who teaches at Cal State Long Beach.

And a focus on pragmatism — and even some disagreements with Newsom — could help him in places like the Central Valley, where some counties boast more registered Republican voters than Democrats. But the approach doesn’t come without some concerns, said Lesenyie.

“Politically, that could be an advantageous strategy, but against a Republican candidate, it might be hard to tell the difference between them,” he said.

“I think the next governor is still going to have to build the state party and fight against the federal government,” Lesenyie said. “You have to wonder if a Gov. Mahan would have spurred the redistricting process in 2025 — something Californians overwhelmingly backed.”

But Mahan was in L.A. on Friday to talk homelessness and tout his city of San Jose’s approach to the unhoused, a major focus during his tenure as its mayor.

Mahan is a fan of tiny homes and other approaches to interim housing. He supports mandatory drug, alcohol and mental health treatments for conditions “that lead to repeated arrests and trap people on the streets,” his campaign website described. And he has proposed enforcing trespassing laws when shelter is offered and available but someone repeatedly refuses, as he wrote in a blog post last year.

On Friday, amid a cacophony of chirps from birds and shouts from people congregating on 6th Street in downtown L.A., Mahan said the Skid Row area represents “a multi-decade public policy failure.”

“We have made it too difficult to build housing,” Mahan said. “We have failed to intervene in cycles of addiction and mental illness, and we are not doing enough statewide to coordinate our state agencies and our cities and counties to expand the shelter and treatment capacity that we need, and then create accountability for coming indoors and taking advantage of those services.”

In San Jose — where there has been a 10% drop in the number of people who sleep outside in San Jose since January 2023, when Mahan became mayor, according to KQED — a “back to basics” approach has worked, Mahan said.

“When we get back to basics, and we build safe, dignified, interim housing and shelter, and then improve the quality of our outreach and enforce our code of conduct in our no-emcampment zone out on our streets, we can move people indoors and help them turn their lives around,” Mahan said.

At this point in the gubernatorial race, less than four months until the primary, what’s clear about Mahan is that he’s passionate about tackling homelessness around the state and he’s willing to, at least at times, buck his own party.

But he’s also still introducing himself to voters, particularly those at opposite ends of the state from San Jose.

To that end, Mahan said he’s a family guy who enjoys playing board games or embarking on hikes with his wife and two children. He’s big on spending time outdoors, too — whether that’s hiking or biking or gardening — and he can make a mean sandwich, his “signature dish” should he ever find himself competing against Bobby Flay in a cooking competition.

He grew up in Watsonville, a strawberry farming community, and attended a high school with a college prep program. He is a Harvard alumnus who taught middle school English and history in San Jose before entering the tech world, co-founding Brigade, a civic engagement platform, in 2014.

Mahan is the mayor of one of California’s biggest cities, which he noted is technically a nonpartisan office.

“That doesn’t mean we don’t have partisan issues, or I don’t have values I’m willing to fight for,” Mahan said. “But the job of a mayor is to deliver results. I think the state must have a governor who will fight for our values and fix our problems. I want to be a governor who can balance both of those things.”

And then there is that self-described “eternal optimist” characterization, something he credits his father, a former letter carrier, for instilling.

“I know we can do better,” Mahan said, although it wasn’t clear if he meant California, the country or the world at large.

“When we look at the long arc of history, we have come so far as a country, as humanity,” Mahan said. “We have big challenges, but we have an even greater capacity to overcome them.”