Matt Mahan

Now, I've had a family member who spent time on the streets with addiction, so I maybe just have a different perspective on the level of intervention that's needed to save someone's life.

But look, I just I think he's had a lot of the right directionally, a lot of the right ideas.

My focus, though.

It will be on following through and making sure people actually use care court, actually implement Prop 36, build those beds.

And when our execution is bad, when we're too slow and too expensive to execute a good idea, we have to be willing to do something I haven't seen anyone in Sacramento do enough of in recent years, which is –

take on the interest groups, the highly organized interests from trial lawyers to public sector unions to corporate interests who have a veto.

Right now in Sacramento, and this is kind of becoming the case in our democracy everywhere, highly organized interests have a veto over change because they're so organized and they don't want anything to change.

They want to protect a status quo that protects them.

So it's the veto-ocracy that I'm worried about.

And I just haven't seen anybody want to challenge that because it's painful.

Well, it doesn't help, but look, I'm, as my own person, everybody's different.

I would be more active in putting legislators on the spot and demanding results and getting behind candidates

for the legislature who reflected a common sense problem-solving mentality.

I think we need...

We need a significant change in the political culture of California, one that is really centered on accountability for outcomes.

I say this because this has been my experience as mayor of San Jose, where I have had to

overcome the objections of highly organized interests who liked the city budget being spent the way that it was spent.

I've had to overcome the opposition of colleagues on my city council who also were wedded to the same old way of doing things.

And if you want to create change, it should always be rooted in

solid core values and a clear sense of where you're trying to go, but you have to be willing to take on the big fights.