Matt Mahan

June 2, 2026 Primary Election

• Office: Governor
• Election Date: June 2, 2026
• Candidate: Matt Mahan
• Due Date: March 4, 2026
• Printable Version

Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the June 2, 2026 primary election! GrowSF believes in a growing, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city via common sense solutions and effective government.

As a candidate for state office, your day-to-day responsibilities in office will affect not just San Francisco, but California as a whole. As a representative of the people of California and of San Francisco, the policies you bring to Sacramento should reflect the best of what we have to offer.

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 March 4, 2026 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.

• Your Policy Goals
• Your Leadership
• The Issues
• Personal

Your Policy Goals

1. What policies do you hope to change or preserve by running for Governor? Please be specific, and list them in order of priority.

• Housing Affordability: Cap excessive local fees on new housing, mandate 30-day permit approvals on conforming projects, pull costs out of our overly complicated Building Code, overhaul CEQA more comprehensively to provide greater simplicity and certainty (vs. the current complicated set of exemptions), and use the State’s tax credit and direct subsidies for affordable housing to incentivize factory-built housing that lowers cost without compromising quality or basic labor standards.

• Homelessness & Behavioral Health: Shift the state's primary metric of success to "Functional Zero Unsheltered" by massively scaling cost-effective interim housing, holding counties accountable for expanding in-patient and residential treatment capacity, and funding to enforce Proposition 36 so we can mandate treatment when serious addiction and mental illness leads to criminal behaviors. Expand eligibility and simplify implementation of CARE Court and SB43 to ensure that treatment and conservatorship reforms actually work in practice. Hold counties and cities accountable for using Prop 1 dollars quickly and effectively to expand treatment capacity.

• Improve Public Education: Implement science of reading and other evidence-based curricular and pedagogical practices. Fund high-dosage tutoring programs that train college students to tutor elementary school children who fall behind in reading and math with an emphasis on 3rd grade reading levels. Reward teachers whose students outperform peer cohorts and mandate coaching/training for teachers whose students consistently underperform peer cohorts.

• Crime & Public Safety: Modernize policing with force-multiplying technology (like Real-Time Intelligence Centers and ALPRs), use Prop 36 and greater scrutiny of DA’s and judges’ decisions to address the revolving door phenomenon, and invest upstream of crime in better schools, high-dosage tutoring for students who fall behind, and youth jobs/vocational pathways.

• Budget, Spending & Business Climate:. Measure the performance of spending, and publish outcome goals and program-level performance via public-facing dashboards. Require that state agencies and other subjects of State Audits provide reporting on their efforts to implement recommendations and withhold funding from entities that refuse to implement audit recommendations. Set a standard of demanding state government do better before we ask people or businesses to pay more; veto regulatory changes that stack costs without offering sufficient benefit (the volume of new bills that add to the State’s already nation’s longest and most complex body of codes is driving up costs and creating unnecessary burdens on job creators, investors, builders, etc.); in that spirit, simplify CEQA to reduce litigation risk and move away from “swiss cheese” exemptions to more comprehensive overhaul that increases predictability. Pursue stronger PAGA reform.

2. Why those policies?

California simply costs too much, and we need to get back to basics to make our state work again. We have a state government all too willing to fund failure, ignore waste and fraud, and confuse political rhetoric with actual results. I think it is time for fundamental change in Sacramento, the same type of change my team and allies have been bringing to San Jose. By focusing on the basics and holding ourselves accountable for measurable improvement, we made San Jose the safest big city in the nation, dramatically lowered the number of people living on our streets, and unlocked thousands of new homes now under construction. We need the same common-sense approach in Sacramento.

3. Explain why your #1 goal is your #1 goal.

The high cost of housing is the root cause of California’s affordability crisis and the primary driver of homelessness. It is forcing families, teachers, and high-wage jobs out of our state. Government’s most important job is to get the basics right. If people cannot afford to live, work, and raise a family here, our other bold initiatives—from climate action to healthcare access—simply won't matter. It’s also solvable and when we bring down the cost of building housing, we will unlock immense opportunity for the people of California.

4. How will you build the coalition and political capital to enact your #1 goal? What obstacles will you face, and how will you overcome them? Will the power of the office of Governor be enough to achieve this goal?

Sacramento might not want bold change, but the people of California certainly do. That’s why we are taking our case directly to the voters. One of the great strengths of our campaign is that we are not beholden to the interest groups in Sacramento. We can do what’s right, not just what they prefer.

In San Jose we brought people and groups together to drive results. And I will take the same approach as Governor.

Our campaign has released a comprehensive plan on building affordable housing that includes getting at the root causes of the challenge – high fees, long delays, frivolous lawsuits, and antiquated construction methods.

We are now building support for this plan so we will have the political capital we need to implement it. That’s what I did when I ran for mayor. I offered concrete proposals to get back to basics and built the political coalition we need to implement them.

The governor has enormous power, more than enough to be the architect of real change. I will use the power of the bully pulpit, the power of appointing the very best people, the power of the veto - and more.

I will stay focused on implementation — which I think is foundational to any reform effort. It is easy to announce a bold plan. It is much harder to implement it. I will stay laser focused on implementation.

5. Will the power of the office of Governor be enough to achieve the other goals?

For many of the goals I’ve listed above, yes, because the Governor sets the metrics for success and can demand performance. I will tie state funding directly to outcomes—like reductions in unsheltered homelessness—and pull funding from programs and localities that fail to deliver. But I will also treat local governments as partners, providing the technical assistance and resources they need to implement solutions like mass treatment under Prop 36.

As Governor, I will also invest substantial time in shifting the composition of the State Legislature via elections and public pressure to create a more pragmatic, moderate coalition of lawmakers who are aligned with the culture we need in our government.

6. What is an "out there" change that you would make to state or local government policy, if you could?

I would completely overhaul California's procurement systems to address wasteful spending. We treat areas like technology in government as a one-time "project" rather than an ongoing digital service, leading to billion-dollar disasters like FI$Cal and the EDD fraud crisis. I would scrap the rigid, multi-year "waterfall" contracts that favor massive corporations, and shift to flexible, competency-based funding to bring more agility into state government.

Your Leadership

7. Why are you running for Governor?

I'm running because California costs too much, and the political establishment is failing to deliver on the basics. Growing up in Watsonville as the son of a union mail carrier and a public school teacher, I saw firsthand the sacrifices my parents needed to make to pay the mortgage, pay unexpected bills like when our cars broke down (which they always did), and make sure my sisters and I got a decent education. People make tough choices - our state should be able to do the same. That’s why I will not ask Californians to pay more until our state government does better, will focus on cutting out the waste and fraud that starves vital programs of the support they need, and hold everyone, starting with myself, accountable for results.

8. In your own words, what are the core constitutional and statutory responsibilities of the Governor?

The Constitution is clear — it is the Governor’s job to faithfully execute our laws, manage state agencies to deliver high-quality and cost-effective services, appoint highly qualified leaders, and negotiate a responsible, balanced state budget that respects the taxpayers' money. But beyond that, it is the Governor’s job to lead — not with press releases, tweets, statements or slogans - but with actual, measurable results that create high wage jobs, keep businesses in California, improve our schools, build the housing we need, and bring everyone indoors. California has a history of great governors who didn’t just talk big - they acted big. I want to stay focused on the basic improvements we need to get California back on track.

9. What makes you uniquely qualified for this position?

I have already discussed that I am beholden to no Sacramento interest group, which I think is foundational. Beyond that I am an executive, first in business and now in government. I know how to read a P&L, balance a budget, hire the best people, and manage them. And perhaps most importantly, I know how to bring focus to government. In San José, I cut our City Council’s top priorities from 40 down to 4. I led the Council to dramatically reduce housing fees over external objections, deployed AI to cut permitting times, reduced street homelessness faster than any other city in the state, and made San José the safest big city in America. I don't just give speeches; I build teams that are committed to focusing, innovating and delivering.

10. What three measurable outcomes should Californians use to evaluate your success after your first two years in office?

• Double-digit percentage increase in the number of housing units permitted and under construction, at a lower projected cost per square foot.

• Double-digit percentage reduction in unsheltered homelessness and street encampments statewide.

• Meaningful reduction in state administrative waste through our "Progress Audit," with billions redirected from failing programs into effective ones.

The Issues

11. California housing production remains far below need. What are the three most important levers a Governor can use to increase housing production at all price levels? For each, specify a measurable target you would aim to reach by 2030.

• Untax New Housing: Implement a two-year tax holiday for new construction and strictly cap local fees on infill housing to jumpstart development. Target: Reduce the regulatory "soft costs" of building a home in California by 20% by 2030.

• Industrialize Housing Production: I would create statewide standards for the manufacture, permitting and inspection of factory built housing, to avoid a patchwork of inconsistent local processes and regulations. Target: Deliver 20% of all new state-funded affordable housing via factory construction by 2030, cutting build times by 30% and project costs by 20%.

• Slash Bureaucracy: Mandate all local governments to process housing permits in under 30 days. Target: 100% of California cities utilizing digital, AI-assisted permitting with <30 day turnarounds by 2030.

12. State laws require cities to plan for housing, but enforcement has been inconsistent. How would you ensure cities — including politically resistant ones — comply with state housing law?

I will implement a public dashboard tracking every city's permit timelines and compliance. If a local government repeatedly fails to meet the 30-day permit deadline, builders will be authorized to use certified third-party planners and inspectors to bypass the bottleneck, as they’ve done in several other states.

13. Disrupting fentanyl trafficking requires cooperation between state law enforcement, the Attorney General, local prosecutors, and federal authorities. How would you use the Governor’s authority to disrupt fentanyl trafficking networks? What metrics will you publicly track to evaluate progress?

I will deploy force-multiplying technology like Real-Time Intelligence Centers (RTIC) and Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) statewide to apprehend and prosecute international drug trafficking rings. We will publicly track metrics including trafficking network disruptions, wholesale fentanyl seizures, and repeat-offender prosecutions to ensure we are crippling the supply chain. Simultaneously, we will aggressively utilize Prop 36 to mandate treatment for users who fall victim to fentanyl use. I will appoint judges who understand that drug dealing is a serious crime that harms our entire community, that addicts often need real consequences to choose a different life path, and who are willing to aggressively use the law as a tool for punishing drug dealing and requiring drug treatment. I will also encourage federal, state and local collaboration, including information sharing and joint operations, to stop the flow of fentanyl into our communities.

14. California’s mental-health treatment system is strained... What is your plan to expand California’s state and county mental-health treatment capacity?

We must remove the red tape required to quickly and cost effectively rebuild our treatment infrastructure to support the rigorous enforcement of Prop 36. We need to add at least 10,000 treatment beds by 2030. We can reduce costs by streamlining the layers of licensing, permitting, and other requirements which results in too few beds at too high a cost. I will fund this by auditing our budget and reallocating the billions currently wasted on ineffective homelessness programs and administrative bloat. I will hold counties accountable by establishing a public "Progress Scorecard" that tracks wait times for treatment and successful placements, explicitly tying state behavioral health funding to these outcomes.

15. California’s transit systems face structural deficits, declining ridership, safety concerns, and fragmented governance. What is your plan to ensure that California’s major metro transit systems become financially stable, safe, and reliable by 2029?

• Funding Reform: Shift from blank checks to performance-based budgeting; tie state transit subsidies directly to ridership growth and per passenger trip costs/farebox recovery.

• Safety Reform: Require transit agencies receiving state funding to deploy security personnel and implement turnstile hardening to eliminate fare evasion and open drug use on transit. Success will be measured by rider satisfaction surveys and crime incident reports.

• Innovation: While the impact of this work will mostly land beyond 2029, transit agencies must be required to incorporate autonomy into their service plans and fleet procurement, and they should be strongly incentivized to partner with private actors to supplement existing service, especially to solve for the “last mile.” Like San Jose, all transit agencies should be able to increase transit speeds by 20% or more through AI-powered signal prioritization.

• Governance Reform: Force the consolidation of fragmented regional agencies to reduce overhead (including some of the Bay Area's 27 different transit agencies), and require agencies to meet specific metrics from ridership growth, schedule integration, on time service, and customer satisfaction. We must set goals, measure progress, and survey our customers to improve the public transit model.

16. California faces intense competition for jobs, investment, and talent. What three reforms — regulatory, tax, or permitting — will you prioritize to improve California’s business climate?

• Tax Reform: I will stop the bleeding of small businesses by addressing the massive Unemployment Insurance (UI) debt penalty that acts as a hidden federal tax increase on employers, and will focus on tax incentives such as research and development tax credits that grow the economy and keep California competitive.

• Permitting Reform: In the same spirit as homebuilding reforms we must create ministerial approval processes for job creation. This will make it attractive for capital to invest in jobs here in California by reducing the time and increasing predictability to permit job creating uses from advanced manufacturing to opening a restaurant. This will help attract companies to locate and grow in California.

• Regulatory Reform: Launch a true "One-Stop Business Portal" that consolidates state and local licensing, filings, and health permits. Success metric: A 30% reduction in the average time it takes to open a new storefront by 2029.

17. California faces recurring structural deficits and heavy reliance on capital-gains revenues. How would you address the structural deficit without undermining long-term investments?

Before asking taxpayers to cover our ~$35 billion annual structural deficit, I will commission an independent "Progress Audit" of all state departments to root out wasteful spending—like the $1 billion currently spent to operate 15,000 empty prison beds. We will transition to performance-based budgeting, requiring every major program to have pre-agreed "kill switches" if they fail to meet their outcomes. We will track the state’s return on investment per dollar spent to ensure we are protecting our core social safety nets while trimming administrative fat. In a state with the nation’s 2nd highest overall tax burden and most progressive tax structure, we must focus on getting more value from our current revenues before we even consider new revenues. I’m confident that if we get the basics right, we will see economic growth that translates into healthy revenue growth over time. Finally, we will need to keep a close eye on unfunded pension liabilities and their impact on the State’s General Fund. Significant growth in this burden may be an opportunity to initiate more fundamental reform, similar to the pension reform compromise struck in San Jose in 2016.

18. You appoint key UC, CSU, and Community College board members. What would be your priorities for your higher-education appointments, and what outcomes would you expect those boards to deliver?

I would appoint higher education board members who are focused solely on delivering measurable results for students and families. California’s education system — from K-12 to higher education — is not optimizing for outcomes. A Black child in Mississippi is two and a half times more likely to read at grade level than a peer in California — even though Mississippi spends dramatically less per pupil, for example. UC, CSU, and our Community Colleges are some of the greatest engines of upward mobility we have, but they need to be held accountable for outcomes, like all educational institutions in California. I would expect appointees to these boards to deliver on the basics: increase graduation rates, shorten time to degree, expand successful transfers from Community Colleges to CSU and UC, and improve career placement and earnings outcomes. I would also prioritize funding for basic research in areas that can enable the State’s future economic growth, from life sciences and biotech to emerging energy solutions.

19. California must triple its grid capacity by 2045 for electrification goals. What is your strategy for accelerating renewable generation, storage, and transmission?

We must treat clean energy infrastructure with the same urgency as housing. The primary bottleneck is transmission permitting and the CAISO interconnection queue. I will impose firm, mandatory timelines for CEQA review to cut the procedural delays and "junk lawsuits" blocking critical grid and storage projects. I will also embrace virtual power plants and local investments in generation and storage to optimize the use of our existing grid. The State should implement stronger financial incentives for investment in storage, including by paying EV owners to charge in the middle of the day when power is cheap and then plug in and power the grid in the evening through V2G technology. We have been too slow to design incentives to make our home batteries and EVs an on-demand power source for the wider grid at scale. Finally, we should incentivize large-load customers to subsidize residents’ purchase of energy efficient home appliances, storage, and efficiency upgrades to create instant capacity for their new projects.

20. California has spent billions on homelessness, but results vary widely by region, and nearly 200,000 people remain homeless. What, specifically, has California done wrong to cause this crisis, and what has it done wrong in attempting to solve it?

California made building housing impossibly expensive, and then spent $37 billion waiting for slow, million-dollar permanent housing units while people died on the streets. We also failed by treating street homelessness as a choice. In San José, we pioneered a "Responsibility to Shelter" model: we quickly build cost-effective interim housing (lockable cabins), offer services, and require people to come indoors. If they refuse, we use law enforcement to petition to place people in a behavioral health court. We’ve also missed the mark when it comes to owning the problem on a local level, beyond large cities that provide services. We’ve seen evidence that smaller cities “reduce homelessness” by effectively banning homelessness and sending people to larger cities like San Jose and San Francisco, because they lack their own local services. We must leverage Prop 1, CARE Court, and Prop 36 to empower all cities to provide shelter, treatment and other services, not by concentrating the problems and solutions in a few scape-goated cities like SF. As Governor, I would implement a statewide fair-share framework to ensure that every city builds or contributes to its fair share of shelter, every county builds or contributes to its fair share of treatment capacity, and when these beds are available, require that individuals come indoors.

21. How will you tie state homelessness funding to measurable outcomes—especially in high-need cities like San Francisco?

I will officially shift the state's metric of success to "Functional Zero Unsheltered." I will require cities and counties to track and report: 1) Shelter and treatment bed capacity and utilization rates, 2) Reduction in unsheltered point-in-time counts, 3) Number of encampments cleared, 4) Time-to-placement from street to shelter/treatment, and 5) Outcome measures for individuals entering shelter/treatment. Cities and counties that perform will secure greater funding to address their needs, but failing cities and counties will not be let off the hook either. The State will likely need to step in and use the funding the localities otherwise would have received to pursue solutions in their geographies without local control.

22. What is your plan to scale up vegetation management, hardening, and utility oversight to reduce wildfire risk? What metrics will you use to track progress?

Instead of just treating the symptoms of the insurance crisis, we must physically reduce risk. I will create a dedicated state office to execute a statewide structure-loss reduction plan. We will fund highly cost-effective home and community retrofit programs (like installing mesh over attic vents). We will publicly track the number of homes/neighborhoods hardened and acres of high-risk vegetation treated, and I will use this data to hold insurers accountable for returning to the market and offering affordable coverage. We will also hold utilities accountable for undergrounding high-risk lines at lower cost per mile.

23. California faces slow permitting, outdated IT systems, and high project-delivery costs. What is one major modernization initiative you would lead, and what measurable improvement would you aim for by 2028?

I will launch an agile "State Tech Overhaul Initiative." California wastes hundreds of millions if not billions on failed "waterfall" IT projects like the abandoned NG-911 upgrade and the 20-year delayed FI$Cal disaster. I will end rigid, multi-year mega-contracts and shift to flexible, competency-based technology funding. I would mandate fully digital, AI-assisted permitting systems across all state and local agencies, with the measurable target of cutting processing times by 50% or more by 2030.

Personal

24. How long have you lived in California? What brought you here and what keeps you here?

California is my home. It’s where my parents found each other and their version of the American Dream. It’s where I was born and raised, and where Silvia and I are raising our kids so they can create a better future for themselves. California at its best is a place where anyone, no matter where they came from or what their background is, can find opportunity, community and hope for a better future. The weather helps, too.

25. What do you love most about California and/or your hometown?

Watsonville is a place that embodies so much of what California is. It’s a farming town and immigrant community where people work hard, often starting at the crack of dawn, and are grateful for everything they have. My family, like many in Watsonville and across California, struggled to make ends meet. But we chose California. Again and again. Even when it would be easier to give up on it.

What I love about California is our unmatched diversity, openness and innovation, which surely go together. To say “I am from California” encompasses so many backgrounds—from the agricultural lands I grew up on to the tech sector in Silicon Valley and SF where I built my first career. Across these and so many other geographies and industries (Hollywood, wine country, manufacturing, etc.), we are united as Californians by the belief that we can think differently and thereby create a better future here.

26. What do you dislike the most about California and/or your hometown?

California has become more focused on rhetoric than results. Ideas are too often judged by who proposed them rather than whether they actually work. This attitude has led to the bureaucratic waste and unchecked spending that is currently failing working families.

27. Tell us about your current involvement in the community.

As Mayor of San José, I spend every day on the ground working with neighbors, small business owners, city and county workers, nonprofit and academic partners, and many others to tackle the problems directly affecting our communities. My daily focus is entirely on delivering the basic services and economic opportunities that allow all of our residents to thrive.