Matt Mahan

Why Thrive LA endorses Matt

Matt Mahan is the Democratic Mayor of San Jose, a former tech entrepreneur, and the most fiscally serious candidate running for Governor of California. He grew up in a working-class family in Watsonville, graduated from Harvard, served in Teach for America, and built two technology companies before entering public life. He ran for San Jose City Council in 2020 because, in his own words, he 'believed the answer to every problem should not always be another tax, another measure or another regulation.' That instinct has defined his tenure as mayor and now defines his campaign for governor. Mahan's record in San Jose is not theoretical. It is measurable. He reduced the city council's sprawling list of 40 top priorities down to four, forcing government to do fewer things well instead of everything poorly. He launched real-time public dashboards so residents could track spending and performance. He shifted San Jose's homelessness strategy away from million-dollar-per-door permanent housing units toward cost-effective interim shelter, achieving the largest shelter expansion on the West Coast and reducing unsheltered homelessness by nearly one-third. And he did it while making San Jose the safest big city in America, with a 100% homicide clearance rate. On housing, Mahan understands the fundamental problem: regulation and fees have made it impossible for new projects to pencil out. As mayor, he cut development fees, which directly led to over 2,000 housing construction starts after the city recorded zero market-rate starts in 2024. His gubernatorial platform calls for capping local fees on new housing, mandating 30-day permit approvals, overhauling CEQA, promoting factory-built housing, unlocking surplus government land, and implementing a two-year tax holiday for new construction. This is not a wish list. It is a deregulation agenda grounded in the simple economic reality that you cannot tax and regulate your way to affordability. Mahan was one of the leading Democratic voices behind Proposition 36 in 2024, which corrected the failures of Proposition 47 by restoring meaningful penalties for repeat theft and drug offenses. Prop 36 passed with nearly 70% of the vote, proving that Californians across the political spectrum reject the 'care-first, enforcement-never' approach that has hollowed out public safety in our cities. As governor, Mahan would expand force-multiplying police technology, appoint tough-on-crime judges, and disrupt fentanyl trafficking networks through state-federal cooperation. His fiscal philosophy is exactly what California needs. He explicitly opposes new tax increases, including the proposed wealth tax on billionaires. He has identified billions in state waste, including $1 billion spent annually on 15,000 empty prison beds. His plan to commission an independent 'Progress Audit' of every state department, implement performance-based budgeting with automatic 'kill switches' for failing programs, and publicly track return on investment per dollar spent would bring a level of accountability that Sacramento has never seen. Matt Mahan is the governor California's taxpayers, housing providers, small business owners, and working families have been waiting for.