Matt Mahan isn’t actually a fan of the “reasonable” label.
The San Jose mayor and Democratic candidate for governor, the truth is, mentioned, “I don’t know what reasonable means,” when requested about his popularity throughout a current journey to Los Angeles to speak housing and homelessness and tour Skid Row.
As a substitute, it’s optimism that Mahan mentioned extra precisely defines his marketing campaign fashion, his would-be strategy as California’s potential subsequent governor, his persona.
“I attempt to be a realistic problem-solver greater than something,” Mahan mentioned in an interview outdoors the Midnight Mission, a homeless shelter that gives wraparound providers, on Friday afternoon, Feb. 13.
Sergio Mareno, enterprise proprietor, left, and Matt Mahan, San Jose mayor and Democratic contender for California governor, proper, excursions skid row in Los Angeles on Friday, February 13, 2026. (Picture by David Crane, Los Angeles Day by day Information/SCNG)
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Sergio Mareno, enterprise proprietor, left, and Matt Mahan, San Jose mayor and Democratic contender for California governor, proper, excursions skid row in Los Angeles on Friday, February 13, 2026. (Picture by David Crane, Los Angeles Day by day Information/SCNG)
“I believe we should always need nice issues for everybody, however I fear that our state usually embraces insurance policies which might be idealistic, that sound good, are performative and aren’t working in apply,” Mahan mentioned. “And that’s why I think about myself a pragmatist greater than something.”
Mahan’s late entrance within the California gubernatorial race — he launched his marketing campaign in late January after assembly with a number of of the candidates — was noticeable in what has in any other case been a crowded but lackluster contest.
That’s as a result of whereas Mahan, 43, has supported many progressive insurance policies, he has additionally clashed along with his personal occasion and earned a popularity as a critic of the very man he’s vying to exchange because the state’s chief govt, Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“We now have to be keen,” Mahan mentioned, “to embrace good concepts and alter what we’re presently doing, regardless of who had the concept. We will’t have delight of authorship or partisan rigidity.”
“When (insurance policies) aren’t working, we experiment, we attempt new issues,” he continued. “We don’t get so locked in our partisan silos due to who had the concept.”
Mahan’s age and relative “newcomer” standing within the political world might show to be advantageous for him within the race for governor, mentioned Matt Lesenyie, an skilled in political philosophy who teaches at Cal State Lengthy Seashore.
And a give attention to pragmatism — and even some disagreements with Newsom — might assist him in locations just like the Central Valley, the place some counties boast extra registered Republican voters than Democrats. However the strategy doesn’t come with out some issues, mentioned Lesenyie.
“Politically, that may very well be an advantageous technique, however in opposition to a Republican candidate, it is likely to be onerous to inform the distinction between them,” he mentioned.
“I believe the subsequent governor remains to be going to need to construct the state occasion and battle in opposition to the federal authorities,” Lesenyie mentioned. “You need to marvel if a Gov. Mahan would have spurred the redistricting course of in 2025 — one thing Californians overwhelmingly backed.”
However Mahan was in L.A. on Friday to speak homelessness and tout his metropolis of San Jose’s strategy to the unhoused, a serious focus throughout his tenure as its mayor.
Mahan is a fan of tiny properties and different approaches to interim housing. He helps obligatory drug, alcohol and psychological well being remedies for situations “that result in repeated arrests and lure folks on the streets,” his marketing campaign web site described. And he has proposed implementing trespassing legal guidelines when shelter is obtainable and accessible however somebody repeatedly refuses, as he wrote in a weblog publish final yr.
On Friday, amid a cacophony of chirps from birds and shouts from folks congregating on sixth Road in downtown L.A., Mahan mentioned the Skid Row space represents “a multi-decade public coverage failure.”
“We now have made it too troublesome to construct housing,” Mahan mentioned. “We now have didn’t intervene in cycles of habit and psychological sickness, and we aren’t doing sufficient statewide to coordinate our state businesses and our cities and counties to develop the shelter and remedy capability that we’d like, after which create accountability for coming indoors and benefiting from these providers.”
In San Jose — the place there was a ten% drop within the quantity of people that sleep outdoors in San Jose since January 2023, when Mahan turned mayor, in line with KQED — a “again to fundamentals” strategy has labored, Mahan mentioned.
“After we get again to fundamentals, and we construct secure, dignified, interim housing and shelter, after which enhance the standard of our outreach and implement our code of conduct in our no-emcampment zone out on our streets, we will transfer folks indoors and assist them flip their lives round,” Mahan mentioned.
At this level within the gubernatorial race, lower than 4 months till the first, what’s clear about Mahan is that he’s captivated with tackling homelessness across the state and he’s keen to, a minimum of at instances, buck his personal occasion.
However he’s additionally nonetheless introducing himself to voters, significantly these at reverse ends of the state from San Jose.
To that finish, Mahan mentioned he’s a household man who enjoys enjoying board video games or embarking on hikes along with his spouse and two kids. He’s large on spending time outside, too — whether or not that’s mountain climbing or biking or gardening — and he could make a imply sandwich, his “signature dish” ought to he ever discover himself competing in opposition to Bobby Flay in a cooking competitors.
He grew up in Watsonville, a strawberry farming group, and attended a highschool with a school prep program. He’s a Harvard alumnus who taught center faculty English and historical past in San Jose earlier than getting into the tech world, co-founding Brigade, a civic engagement platform, in 2014.
Mahan is the mayor of one in all California’s greatest cities, which he famous is technically a nonpartisan workplace.
“That doesn’t imply we don’t have partisan points, or I don’t have values I’m keen to battle for,” Mahan mentioned. “However the job of a mayor is to ship outcomes. I believe the state will need to have a governor who will battle for our values and repair our issues. I wish to be a governor who can stability each of these issues.”
After which there may be that self-described “everlasting optimist” characterization, one thing he credit his father, a former letter service, for instilling.
“I do know we will do higher,” Mahan mentioned, though it wasn’t clear if he meant California, the nation or the world at massive.
“After we have a look at the lengthy arc of historical past, we’ve got come as far as a rustic, as humanity,” Mahan mentioned. “We now have large challenges, however we’ve got a good larger capability to beat them.”
