Gus Mattammal
- Office: Congress, District 15
- Election Date: June 7, 2022
- Candidate: Gus Mattammal
- Due Date: Monday, April 11, 2022
- Printable Version
Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the June 7, 2022 primary election! GrowSF believes in a growing, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous San Francisco via common sense solutions and effective government.
The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco and have the expertise to enact meaningful policy changes.
We ask that you please complete this questionnaire by Monday, April 11, 2022 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.
Table of Contents
Vision
GrowSF believes in a growing, beautiful, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous San Francisco. We work to propose and pass laws that align incentives of private businesses and individuals to promote shared prosperity for every San Franciscan.
As a candidate for federal office, your day-to-day responsibilities in office will affect not just San Francisco, but California and the United States as a whole. As a representative of the people of California and of San Francisco, the policies you bring to Washington should reflect the best of what we have to offer.
This section of our questionnaire seeks to help us gain an understanding of your alignment with our vision for San Francisco. Note that some of the questions may be outside the scope of the office you're running for.
Short-form questions
Please mark the box that best aligns with your position. You may explain any position if you so desire, but this section is designed to be a quick overview of your governing philosophy and view of the problems of the city, state, and/or country.
If you are not familiar with San Francisco in particular, feel free to skip the questions about it. But please do answer the questions about state and federal policy.
Small Business
| In San Francisco, in general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open a new businesses | X | ||
| Run a business | X | ||
| Hire staff at a living wage | X | ||
| Obtain various licenses (liquor, entertainment, etc) |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
I expanded my business into SF in 2009, and eventually one day got a notice in the mail saying I owed the city income taxes, and that I was being assessed penalties because I hadn't paid them. Upon doing research, I discovered that SF has its own income tax, and I had never heard of such a thing: a *city* having income taxes. Between that and the million different licenses and notices I have to have posted about stuff, I have to say that operating a business within the borders of SF is a gigantic pain, and if I didn't have so many families that I work with who lived there, I would close it down just to avoid the hassle of dealing with the city.
Since I don't live in the city, it's harder for me to comment on a lot of the other SF-specific questions, but my general feel of the place, from driving in it and visiting friends who live in the city, pretty much everything is way more complicated than it needs to be. I certainly have that feeling about operating a business there.
On the livable wage issue, I've paid everyone who ever worked for me a minimum of $25/hr, and these days the minimum anyone makes working for me is $28/hour. I believe in taking care of my people, but I don't need a local, state, or federal government to tell me how to do that.
| Should the state or federal government have more say, the same say, less say, or the same amount but of a different variety on… | More say | Same amount | Less say | Same, but different |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small business creation | X | |||
| Rules & permitting fees enacted by cities and states | X | |||
| Corporate tax policy | ||||
| Tax incentives for high tech, green tech, or other desirable industries |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Housing
| In San Francisco, in general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expand your home (adding new stories, rooms, decks, etc) | |||
| Demolish your home and redevelop it into multifamily housing | |||
| Redevelop things like parking lots and single-story commercial into multifamily housing | |||
| Build subsidized Affordable housing | |||
| Build market-rate housing | |||
| Build homeless shelters (including navigation centers and "tiny homes") |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
| Should the state or federal government have more say, the same say, less say, or the same amount but of a different variety on… | More say | Same amount | Less say | Same, but different |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zoning | X | |||
| Taxes and fees on homebuilders | X | |||
| Oversight of cities' housing policies | X | |||
| Building subsidized Affordable housing | X | |||
| Building market-rate housing | X | |||
| Building homeless shelters | X |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
In general I think these issues are best decided locally, by the people in the affected jurisdictions. Housing is something that state and federal governments can be involved in in a support role, but they shouldn't be the primary driver unless there is some really extenuating circumstance.
Public Safety
| In San Francisco, in general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| File a police report | |||
| Recover a stolen item like a bike or laptop computer | |||
| Arrest & prosecute criminals | X | ||
| File a domestic violence or rape report | |||
| Charge & prosecute domestic violence or rape |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
My approach to public safety is "compassion, with consequences". For example, rather than make stealing utterly without consequence below $950, instead impose something like 2 hours of house arrest for every dollar of stuff you stole. Then we balance the compassion side of the equation (not incarcerating people) with consequences (you do a non-trivial time under house arrest). Balance in policy is what San Francisco, and California broadly, is lacking because the political scene here has become so one-sided.
| Should the state or federal government have more say, the same say, less say, or the same amount but of a different variety on… | More say | Same amount | Less say | Same, but different |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Criminal justice administration at the state or city level | X | |||
| Police funding | X | |||
| Rehabilitation of prisoners | X |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Similar to the previous question, I'm open to discussions of rehabilitation, so long as that is done practically. For example, I'm open to greater use of home arrest and community service for nonviolent crimes, but what I'm not open to is letting people do things without consequence. With regard to police funding, I think it should be increased, and that's something that seems to be happening at the federal level correctly, but not at the local level in places like SF where once again, the politics have become too one-sided.
Education
| In San Francisco, in general, is it too hard, just right, or too easy to… | Too hard | Just right | Too easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attend a school of your choosing | X | ||
| Transport children to school | |||
| Hire teachers | |||
| Fire teachers | |||
| Set public education curriculum |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
I support a thoughtful, well-executed policy of school choice. I grew up in a neighborhood where everyone had no choice but to attend a failing public school, and I got lucky that my parents could divide our house in half and rent half to another family, and then use that rent to send me and my siblings to a private school. In other words, if you have money you already have school choice. Only poor people, who are often minority background, are prevented from having school choice. That is fundamentally unfair.
| Should the state or federal government have more say, the same say, less say, or the same amount but of a different variety on… | More say | Same amount | Less say | Same, but different |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standardized education curricula | ||||
| Public School funding | ||||
| Private Schools | ||||
| Religious Schools | ||||
| Staffing levels | ||||
| Advanced, remedial, or special needs education |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Budget
| Do you think San Francisco spends too little, too much, or just enough on… | Too little | Just enough | Enough, but badly | Too much |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Police and public safety | X | |||
| Street cleanliness | X | |||
| Homeless services | X | |||
| Affordable housing | ||||
| Parks | ||||
| Roads | ||||
| Bus, bike, train, and other public transit infrastructure | ||||
| Schools | ||||
| Medical facilities | ||||
| Drug prevention and treatment | ||||
| Arts |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
I just read that in LA they spend $800,000 per homeless person, which would be enough to buy each homeless person a mansion in Iowa. There are a lot of great organizations out there that do good work on this issue (for example, HIP in San Mateo). Why isn't the money going to organizations that have demonstrated real success on this issue? I think local politicians should take a much harder look at that, and then the money spent would be far more effective.
| Do you think the state or federal governments spend too little, too much, or just enough on… | Too little | Just enough | Enough, but badly | Too much |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Police and public safety | X | |||
| Street cleanliness | X | |||
| Homeless services | X | |||
| Affordable housing | ||||
| Parks | ||||
| Roads | ||||
| Bus, bike, train, and other public transit infrastructure | ||||
| Schools | ||||
| Medical facilities | ||||
| Drug prevention and treatment | ||||
| Arts |
If you want to explain any positions above, please feel free:
Same answer as for SF
What are the top three issues facing San Francisco, California, or the Nation and what would you like to see change?
The top 3 facing SF/California are probably education, public safety, and inflation/economic issues. The top 3 nationally are immigration, climate change, and economic growth. I'm running on a platform of having conservative policies that will provide universal healthcare (in a conservative way, based on health savings accounts, *not* medicare for all or single payer), meaningfully address climate change (through investments in things like carbon capture, fusion power, and nanomaterials) in a way that creates jobs and wealth for our country and doesn't involve demonizing entire industries, and that secures the border while providing a tough-but-fair pathway to citizenship.
Tell us one thing you think needs to change in San Francisco, California, or the Nation that the average voter wouldn't know about.
Our immigration system is entirely reactive; we only decide if we want people when they turn up on the doorstep. I want to institute a proactive immigration policy that runs alongside the reactive process; this process would use existing private scientific organizations to identify and recruit the world's top minds across a wide range of scientific fields, and bring them to the U.S. We can definitely absorb a few thousand of the world's most brilliant minds. That's a national security play-imagine what the world will look like if China gets to Artificial Intelligence or fusion power first, or pulls ahead of us in advanced medicine. The U.S. cannot afford to let its technological edge slip away, and I will work hard to make sure that doesn't happen.
Policy
Now that we know where you align and differ from our vision for San Francisco, we'd like to get some details about how you intend to use your elected office to achieve your goals.
Why are you running for Congress?
I believe there's an opportunity to show that conservative policy ideas can achieve our process goals as conservatives (less overall spending, more personal choice and freedom, and ultimately a smaller administrative state), while achieving some of the end goals of liberals (universal healthcare, bold action on climate change). If we can do that, then there's a path out of the wilderness for our party in this state, and California can become more politically balanced.
What is your #1 policy goal?
I'd probably start with the climate change angle because (to answer the next question) doing so should allow for a bipartisan approach. With some trust built from that process, we can tackle some of the other things I'd like to tackle, like instituting a conservative universal healthcare policy utilizing health savings accounts. Then that will create some space for education savings accounts, which can be the basis of a phased-in approach to school choice.
How will you build the coalition and political capital to enact your #1 goal?
See previous answer
Will the power of the office of Congressmember be enough to achieve this goal?
If it's used properly, to reach out to and help motivate everyday Americans, then yes.
What are your #2 and #3 policy goals?
See above
Will the power of the office of Congressmember be enough to achieve these goals?
If it's used properly, to reach out to and help motivate everyday Americans, then yes.
What is an existing policy you would like to reform?
See previous answer about immigration reform/border security.
What is an "out there" change that you would make to state/local government policy, if you could? (For example: changing how elections work, creating a Bay Area regional government, etc.)
Removing all barriers to any redevelopment of existing commercial or residential structures, PROVIDED the plans were approved in advance by a vote of the residents within the local jurisdiction.
Personal
Tell us a bit about yourself!
How long have you lived in California? What brought you here and what keeps you here?
I lived in CA from 1990-1998, 2000-2001, and 2007-present. The first time I came for college, the second time I came after graduating from grad school, and the third time I came to open up my company's business here in the Bay Area. The third time was the charm; I love it here and do not want to ever leave.
What do you love most about California and/or your hometown?
Taking my border collie for runs on the beach in El Granada, where we live.
What do you dislike the most about California and/or your hometown?
How it's gotten so out of balance that the Republican party is completely irrelevant to what goes on in Sacramento, and in a lot of the bigger cities within the state.
Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.)
My company, Advantage Testing, has worked with the Mission Graduates organization for a decade, providing a pro bono ACT class for its students every spring. Our work helps the kids become more competitive in the college application process, which improves their odds of getting accepted while also increasing the amount of financial aid they receive. We also work with families, mostly through the Peninsula Bridge program, on a pay-what-you-want basis. My family could not afford outside help for me or my siblings, so I make our services more accessible to underserved communities to the extent our overall capacity allows it.
Thank you
Thank you for giving us your time and answering our questionnaire. We look forward to reading your answers and considering your candidacy!
Thanks so much for the opportunity!
If you see any errors on this page, please let us know at contact@growsf.org.