Walking In WeHo With Matt Mahan, the Man Who Would Be Governor

WEHOonline caught up with Matt Mahan Saturday afternoon as he was walking Santa Monica Boulevard in the Rainbow District.

The San Jose mayor and Democratic candidate for governor was in West Hollywood to shake hands and meet voters. 

He’d already picked up at least one confirmed vote.

“I voted for you in the mail yesterday,” said Tom DeMille, a West Hollywood resident and longtime community member who spotted Mahan on the boulevard. Mahan stopped and chatted with him, thanking him for his commitment and community service.

The mayor is running on his record in San Jose — homelessness down, housing up, crime numbers his campaign says make it the safest big city in America.

He’s raised more than $25 million, largely from Silicon Valley donors — Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale among them. The same donors are funding the campaign against November’s proposed billionaire tax, a ballot measure that would impose a one-time five percent tax on California’s wealthiest residents to fund healthcare, food assistance, and public education.

Mahan opposes it. He’s said it would drive entrepreneurs and jobs out of the state. “We need a rising economic tide to lift all boats,” he wrote in January, “not a political plan that will sink California’s innovation economy.”

He says he’s his own man on tech. He supports banning cellphones in K-12 schools, requiring parental consent for kids under 16 on social media, and wants data center builders to fully cover energy costs — positions that put him sideways with some of his own donors.

“I’m not interested in trading one special interest for another,” he said. “I’m running against the whole corrupt feedback loop that we have in Sacramento right now.”

I asked him about the labels — pragmatist, moderate, centrist Democrat — the ones that can land like slurs in progressive circles. Trust me, I know. I’ve heard them all.

“I really dislike those labels,” Mahan said. “I think that they confuse and divide more than they elucidate.”

He said a voter can support reproductive freedom and still want drug use off the sidewalks. Those positions aren’t contradictions.

“I think very reasonable people can hold both views,” he said.

Mayor to Governor

I asked Mahan how being a mayor helps to prepare him for Sacramento. He said both roles are executive roles.

“When you’re in an executive role, you have the opportunity to bring diverse stakeholders together, talk about the future, and inspire people to believe that if they all contribute, if they lean in, there are new possibilities we can achieve,” Mahan told WEHOonline.

He said he’s gotten more than 5,000 San Jose residents to show up for Saturday morning community cleanups. He said it started his first week in office and has kept going every weekend since.

“It’s not just about the thing we’re doing, like picking up litter or planting a tree,” Mahan said. “It’s about building community, because when we connect with one another authentically and decide that we want to work together, we can do amazing things.”

He said politics at its best is a vehicle for collective action.

Authentic. Yeah, I know. It’s the most overused word in politics. But it’s the one that keeps coming to mind when you talk to the mayor. There’s a level of authenticity when you talk to him and watch him interact with others that rings sincere. Some of the best have that quality about them. I’ve met a lot of politicians and you can spot — and feel — the ick a mile away. Mahan is more riz than ick. You can’t help but walk away feeling like this guy is the real deal.

Tasha Dean has worked alongside Mahan for five years. She served as his chief communications officer in the San Jose mayor’s office before taking the same role on his governor’s campaign.

“Yes, he is the real deal,” Dean said. “He’s authentic.”

“He’s just a dad,” Dean said. “He’s a normal guy who sees problems and wants to fix them.”

She said what sets him apart isn’t the record alone. It’s what drives it.

“On the campaign trail, we’ve heard so many people just say how refreshing it is to meet somebody who just is all about fixing problems,” Dean said.

So I gave him some. West Hollywood has no shortage.

A Third Off the Streets

West Hollywood’s official homeless count came in at 101 people in 2025. Residents who walk Santa Monica Boulevard every day found that number hard to square with what they actually see. I asked Mahan what he’d do differently. What he described isn’t far from what West Hollywood has already been trying — just a bit bigger, faster, and if elected, backed by the full weight of the state.

San Jose built more than 1,000 new temporary shelter spaces last year under his direction. The number of people sleeping outside dropped by nearly a third. He shifted city spending away from permanent housing units costing close to a million dollars per door toward faster, cheaper interim shelter — a model West Hollywood has been trying to replicate on a smaller scale with its own Holloway Interim Housing Program, the City’s first facility of its kind. Critics said it wasn’t a long-term fix. He said the urgency required it. In a city where the official count and the sidewalk reality don’t match, nobody needs convincing.

On Prop 36 — which increased penalties for some drug and theft crimes — Mahan backed it. Newsom opposed it. So did a lot of progressives. Voters approved it anyway, by a wide margin. He has since called Newsom out publicly for not putting up the money to make it work.

“Progressive and pragmatic shouldn’t have to be intentional,” Mahan told WEHOonline. “They should be able to go together. We can have very progressive goals, but if you don’t have pragmatic means to getting there, then they’re just nice ideas.”

The Safest Big City

In a city still rattled by a random midday shooting on Norton Avenue and a woman shot on her own balcony on Vista Street — both cases still unsolved — crime is an issue Mahan doesn’t shy away from. His campaign says he pushed the San Jose City Council to fund 15 additional police hires, then pushed to double the hiring rate to more than 30 officers per year. He said community policing moved the crime numbers. His campaign says San Jose is now the safest big city in America.

He said as governor he’d apply the same approach statewide. He supports pairing officer hiring with real-time intelligence centers and license plate reader technology to multiply what existing officers can do. He said Prop 36 is the tool to address what he called the revolving door of repeat offenders. He said Newsom’s refusal to fund the law is the obstacle.

Keeping the Cameras

San Jose has nearly 500 Flock Safety license plate reader cameras operating under Mahan’s administration. Three nearby cities, Santa Clara County, Mountain View, and Los Altos Hills, have terminated their Flock contracts over data sharing concerns. Two civil liberties lawsuits are now pending against San Jose over the program.

West Hollywood voted 3-2 in March to keep its own Flock cameras after discovering 14 outside agencies had accessed the data, including in connection with an undisclosed federal pilot program. The cameras stayed.

Mahan said San Jose added restrictions after public concerns mounted, cutting default data retention from one year to 30 days, adding new documentation requirements for agencies seeking access, and barring direct data sharing with outside agencies.

“I personally believe, from everything I have read, seen, studied, and discussed with folks in the city and outside the city, that we’ve struck the right balance here,” Mahan said.

A Message for the Queer Community

I asked him directly about California’s queer community: as governor, would he fight to make California the state that pushes back.

“As governor, I will fight hard and I will use every tool in the toolbox to protect the LGBTQ+ community,” Mahan said.

He grew up in a small farming town and earned a scholarship to an all-boys Catholic prep school. He said it was a homophobic environment. He said he found himself advocating for friends who weren’t conforming to what he called “the simple binaries that so many people cling to.”

He talked about his time at Harvard and how he led the push for gender neutral bathrooms, a first for the university. He also shared the powerful moment when he walked to Cambridge City Hall with fellow students to witness the first legal same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.

“We wanted to witness history and we were excited,” Mahan said.

As mayor, he’s required San Jose police cadets to spend some time at the city’s LGBTQ+ Community Center. “One of the more innovative things we’ve done that I’m really proud of is we have our police department cadets spend a day at the Billy DeFrank Center and actually hear from community members their experiences with law enforcement,” Mahan said. “That’s important firsthand insight.”

SB 79 — Not One Size Fits All

West Hollywood City Council takes up SB 79 Monday night. WEHOonline asked Mahan where he stands.

He said he believes in smart growth. He said cities should have flexibility to meet housing goals the way they see fit. He said the state has a role when cities refuse to act entirely.

“Cities should be given every opportunity to meet housing goals the way that they see fit,” Mahan told WEHOonline.

He cited Huntington Beach.

“When you have cities like Huntington Beach that say we won’t issue any more permits, then I think it’s right for the state to intervene and hold them accountable,” he said.

Mahan’s record on SB 79 offers some context. When the bill was being drafted in Sacramento, he pushed to get exemptions built in for San Jose. He said publicly the state needed a more surgical approach. He’s drawn a clear line between cities that refuse to build and cities that are trying to do it on their own terms. West Hollywood, in his framing, is the latter.

The Bus Ride

I asked Mahan about the four-hour daily commute he made as a kid — and whether that same kid could have ever imagined any of this.

He said no. But he said there was something about that bus ride.

“My parents really believed in me and wanted my sisters and me to get a high quality education,” Mahan said. “They believed, rightly, that getting that education and broadening our horizons would give us the ability to achieve our full potential.”

He said he went on to teach public school for a couple of years. He called it probably the most rewarding work he’s ever done.

“I got to see the impact on my students every single day,” he said.

“I did know growing up in a small farming town that I wanted to go see the world and try to have a positive impact,” Mahan said. “This has turned out to be the way I’ve found to do that.”

The Guy Who Knew Him When

Camilo Becdach has known Mahan for more than 20 years. They met as freshmen at Harvard — two kids from California, a long way from home. WEHOonline caught up with Becdach while Mahan was getting a tour of The Abbey from Todd Barnes, the venue’s longtime General Manager.

He said Mahan keeps his friendships. He said the group has stayed close through the years, camping trips and phone calls spanning more than two decades.

“He’s just a really good person,” Becdach said. “An honest person who is genuine.”

He said Mahan reminds him of another Harvard friend people used to underestimate. Mahan served as Harvard’s student body president before becoming a mayor and using that record to run for higher office. So did former South Bend Mayor and former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg — a student leader at the same school who followed the same arc. The parallel isn’t lost on the people who knew them both back then.

The Handshake That Sealed the Deal

William Schneider was at The Abbey when I found him Saturday. He said he’d been a committed Eric Swalwell supporter. He said Swalwell’s exit left him adrift in a way he hadn’t felt in two decades.

“I hate that we live in a world where it’s like the lesser of two evil situations,” Schneider said. “There are just a lot of people that I don’t want to vote for.”

He said he did the work. He went through the field. He looked at records and policies. He said what kept pulling him back to Mahan was the mayoral record.

“I spent my time looking into individual’s policies,” Schneider said. “I appreciate the fact that he was a mayor, he is a mayor.”

He said he walked into The Abbey that afternoon still not knowing. Twenty years of showing up to vote with a candidate already locked in — and this time, nothing.

“This is my first election in 20 years where I did not know until just now,” he said.

Then he shook Mahan’s hand.

“I literally did not know until I shook his hand that this was the guy I was going to vote for,” Schneider said. “That singular moment of personal connection is what sealed the deal.”

Mahan left West Hollywood the same way he arrived, no fancy entourage, earning votes one conversation at a time. He leaves you feeling like here’s a guy you’d actually enjoy having the proverbial beer with. And vote for. Kinda bummed we never had one. We were at the freaking Abbey, of all places to miss a round. He promised he’d be back. I’m gonna hold him to it.

The California primary is June 2. Every active LA County registered voter should have already received a ballot in the mail. They started going out April 30. Drop boxes are open now across Los Angeles County. Vote centers open for early in-person voting May 23. If you haven’t voted yet, you can also drop your ballot at any official drop box by 8 p.m. on June 2, or vote in person at a vote center that day from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.