Matt Mahan

My mom was a teacher.

My dad was a mailman.

And just from a young age, I came to this belief that politics and government is the area where we work out the big questions, solve the big problems.

And it's kind of the only game in town for really tackling the big things that create opportunity for people, which is what I'm really interested in.

So I ended up being a public school teacher for a while, worked in tech for a while, but ultimately found myself drawn back to the place where I was living and raising a family, San Jose, where it just felt like we kept asking people to raise their taxes, but the outcomes weren't getting any better.

And I thought, I'm going to jump in and see if I can do this a little differently.

Yeah, I was watching the race closely, was not planning to run, sort of watched it all of last year.

And then early this year, realized there was a big void in the conversation, particularly in the more moderate problem solver lane to try to bring people together.

And it just...

I guess a few things felt missing.

One, I'm the only current mayor and executive with both public and private sector executive experience in the race.

I think we are in a moment where the next governor of California has to be very execution focused.

We don't have a revenue problem.

We have an execution and accountability problem, which I'm sure we'll talk more about.

Number two, I'm worried about the partisan divide in this country and rising populism on the right and the left and people sort of just giving easy answers.

And so in my party on the left right now, in California at least, it's in vogue to say, well, all of our problems in California are just because of Donald Trump.

or just because of the tech billionaires.

And look, I've got plenty of critiques of both, but the truth is we've got a lot of resources, a lot of assets.

We've increased spending in the state of California by 75% or $150 billion in just the last six years.

And I'm the only Democrat in this race saying we need to demand that our state government do better before we ask people to pay more.