Gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan is framing California’s affordability crisis not as an unavoidable condition, but as a failure of governance. An issue he says he has already begun to reverse as mayor of San Jose, one of the state’s largest and most diverse cities.

In a media briefing on May 7, hosted by American Community Media,  Matt Mahan laid out a platform centered on housing affordability, immigration reform, healthcare access, artificial intelligence and workforce readiness.

At the heart of his campaign is a governing argument: California can still work, but only if it unwinds years of policy choices that have made housing, healthcare and basic opportunity harder to access.

San Jose, with a population near one million, is the largest city in Northern California including the Bay Area, and the 12th-largest city in the nation. It is also among the most diverse cities in the country, with roughly 42% of residents foreign-born — nearly triple the national average.

Housing and the Cost of Staying in California

Mahan, the only millennial democratic candidate, pointed to California’s population decline — including the state’s loss of a congressional seat for the first time — as evidence that affordability has reached a breaking point.

The cause, in his view, is straightforward: “we’re not building enough housing,” he said. “My sisters both moved out of state, so many of my friends have left.”

He argued that California’s housing shortage is the result of decades of accumulated regulations and legal risks, particularly construction liability lawsuits that have crippled the condo market. California’s construction defect standards, he said, make it easier than in any other state to sue a developer even a decade after a project is completed, making new condo developments nearly impossible to finance.

“It’s one of the main reasons California has one of the country’s lowest rates of home ownership, 10% less than the national average,” he said. “These are solvable problems because they’re policy breakdowns.”

Mahan said San Jose has moved aggressively on housing under his leadership, reducing homelessness by a third, streamlining permitting and design approval, breaking ground on more than 2,000 housing units in 2025 alone and cutting development fees — including affordable housing, traffic impact and park fees — that he said were suppressing supply.

He described his housing platform as the most comprehensive plan put forward in the governor’s race and said he wants to take the same approach to Sacramento.

“If it costs a million dollars to build a home, it’s by definition not very affordable,” he said. “We’re going to have to acknowledge that decades of layering more rules, more process, more requirements, more reporting requirements, more legal risk, have led us to have less of the things we need — housing, energy, health care.”

Immigration, Enforcement and Legal Status

On immigration, Mahan called for a pathway to legal status for undocumented immigrants already living in the United States, while also supporting a stronger legal immigration system and a secured border.

He did not endorse abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a position at least two California gubernatorial candidates have taken, but said the agency needs major reform.

“I think what people really mean by that is somewhat of a symbolic statement,” he said, “because we will obviously have some level of enforcement of basic immigration rules. But where I share the sentiment — and it needs deep reform, if not a complete restart, which is what people are asking for — is starting with an acknowledgement of the humanity of all of the people within our country.”

Mahan said he supports a pathway to “permanent legal status, ideally citizenship,” for people already in the country.

He framed the issue as a bipartisan failure that has developed over decades.

“Both parties were complicit and wanted low cost labor, and we had a very porous border, and people came back and forth regularly. That was certainly true in my hometown … and now it’s become this political target, and we see people politicizing status and … country of origin as a way of scoring points.”

Mahan described growing up in Watsonville, a small farming town on the Central Coast “where about a third of my neighbors were undocumented” — “the hardest-working people I’ve ever known,” he said. That experience, he added, shapes how he views current federal immigration policy: “It’s put vulnerable people in an impossible position.”

As mayor, Mahan said, San Jose has sued the Trump administration 12 times, multiplied the city’s legal defense fund for immigrant residents by 20 and barred ICE agents from using city property to operate or wearing masks while operating within city limits.

Asked whether he would prosecute ICE agents who violate California law, Mahan was direct: “No one’s above the law. If you break the law, including as an ICE agent, you should be prosecuted.”

Healthcare Gaps and Local Stopgaps

Mahan also addressed healthcare, acknowledging that federal cuts under the budget reconciliation package known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” would exceed what California can fully replace with state and local dollars.

He said San Jose has worked with Santa Clara County on a five-year sales tax measure to help offset some of those losses locally, but called the measure “a bridge.”

“Where possible, we have to use our state and local budgets to fill the gap. The magnitude of the gap, the magnitude of the Trump cuts are so great that we won’t be able to fully do that, so that’s where we’re going to have to evolve and get more creative.”

Mahan said administrative overhead, which accounts for up to 30% of healthcare costs in California, should be an immediate target for reform. He also called for allowing out-of-state telehealth providers to practice in California, allowing nurses to work at the full scope of their licenses, expanding rural clinics staffed by nurse practitioners and using loan forgiveness to bring medical workers into underserved communities.

AI, Silicon Valley and Workers at Risk

On artificial intelligence, Mahan sought to balance regulation, taxation and economic competitiveness. He said he supports taxing tech companies, but cautioned against regulations so costly that they drive the industry — and its tax base — to other states.

He placed AI in the broader history of technological disruption.

“When the tractor came along, 90% of the jobs in farming disappeared”; later, he said, factory automation transformed manufacturing in similar ways. “The service economy, particularly health care and education, is going to continue to grow. The building trades will continue to grow, but we have to prepare people,” Mahan explained.

To prepare for those transitions, he proposed a statewide “shared prosperity fund,” using all or “a portion of” tax revenue from data centers and other tech infrastructure to support “workforce development, apprenticeships and reskilling.”

“If we end up with 10% or 20% unemployment, we’re going to need to experiment with new tools like a universal basic income,” he said, “because we have to protect people through these transitions.”

Mahan said San Jose has already built a government AI coalition now used by more than 900 cities and counties nationally and internationally.

“It’s our policy and regulatory framework around the ethical and responsible use of AI. We’re using AI on the one hand to speed up city buses and improve language translation, identify potholes faster,” he explained. “On the other hand, we’ve created upskilling curricula so that our workforce doesn’t get left behind.”

He also said he supports banning cell phones in schools, requiring parental consent for minors on social media and mandating human oversight for AI-assisted decisions involving healthcare, criminal justice and employment.

Responding to Silicon Valley criticism

Mahan pushed back against criticism from opponents who say he is too closely tied to Silicon Valley money.

“I have one of the most aggressive AI regulation platforms of any candidate in the race,” he said, noting that “San Jose is not Palo Alto or Menlo Park. We’re not where the tech billionaires are. We’re a working-class, very diverse city.”

While San Jose’s median household income was $148,226 in 2024 — roughly one-and-a-half times the state median — it was still nearly 10% lower than Santa Clara County’s median household income of $164,281.

Some tech leaders have supported his campaign, Mahan said, “because they’ve seen the incredible results we’ve delivered … on building housing, reducing crime, reducing homelessness.”

But he rejected the idea that such support would translate into special treatment.

“That doesn’t mean that I am interested in giving them any special privileges,” he added. “I am not an ideologically rigid person. I’m worried about rising populism on the right and the left. I want government to work. I believe the best resistance to authoritarianism is results, is making government work for people.”

 

Photo courtesy of American Community Media