Matt Mahan

As mayor.

So I served two years as a city council member.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't love being a council member, but I decided when the mayor's seat opened up that it was kind of up or out for me.

I was going to try to take on the way that the city was working structurally or maybe try to find another way to create change.

Ran for mayor about five years ago.

At the same time, the voters elected to realign our mayor's race around the presidential cycle.

So I got elected and had to immediately turn around and run again.

But in those first two years, we really changed our approach.

We went from over 40 priorities down to just four priorities and started to...

really increase accountability for delivering outcomes people cared most about, reducing homelessness, reducing crime, cleaning up our streets, very visible things that people see in their daily lives.

And we made real progress.

And I was reelected with 87% of the vote.

And now I'm in my second term.

I think you really have to focus to create change.

I think there's a temptation in our politics, at least rhetorically, to try to please everyone and pretend that government can solve every problem.

And so what I've seen is a failure of our progressive

governance culture in California is this performativeness where we start programs or we do studies or we have these initiatives because we want to cover all of our bases and show that we're being responsive to every need.

And I think it comes from a really good place.

I think we're

We're empathetic.