Tech-backed Matt Mahan seeks California governor seat with AI, housing agenda

Summary

Matt Mahan, San Jose’s mayor and a former tech executive, has become a central focus of California’s governor’s race as tech-aligned donors and political groups back his bid ahead of the state’s June 2 primary, while critics question whether his ties to the industry will weaken his willingness to regulate it.

Mahan, 43, jumped into the crowded contest in January, presenting himself as a pragmatic problem-solver and positioning his campaign against Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature’s responses to homelessness and crime. In the AP account, his centrist message has resonated with tech leaders who want a business-friendly governor to succeed Newsom, whose term is ending, and who see Mahan as the most aligned option among the Democratic field.

During a Tuesday night debate on CNN, Mahan criticized his rivals as “career politicians” while casting himself as the candidate with practical solutions to California’s challenges. He also referenced President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, saying, “We don’t need MAGA values, but we also don’t need more of the same,” a line aimed at rivals Chad Bianco and Steve Hilton, whom Trump has endorsed.

The AP reported that Mahan’s campaign has also benefited from a rapid rise in fundraising over a short period. In just three months, he raised more than any of his rivals, and AP noted that Tom Steyer has largely self-funded his campaign; the reporting also said Mahan raised more than $13 million in 11 weeks and launched television ads with that money. Political committees backing Mahan raised more than $25 million, including donations from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, venture capitalist Michael Moritz and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, according to the story.

Beyond the money, the race is now drawing attention to what tech donors expect and what labor unions and some Democratic voters fear. Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, president of the California Labor Federation, said supporters of Mahan are tied to the kind of technology-dominated politics she said workers and voters are trying to avoid; the AP story reported she endorsed Steyer, former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and said Mahan is “a puppet of these big tech billionaires, of these AI billionaires — and that’s who he has always been.”

Mahan disputes that framing, and the AP reported he points to his experience with the “behemoth industry” to argue he understands how to deal with it. He said his track record includes building a coalition in San Jose involving more than 900 public agencies working to explore responsible ways to implement artificial intelligence in government, and he told The Associated Press that “Voters can see past the kind of, you know, shallow connection that because I’m the mayor of the largest city in Silicon Valley, that might mean that I’m not willing to regulate tech,” adding, “It’s actually been quite the opposite.”

The story also described the broader political context around tech influence as public skepticism about platforms and AI rises. AP reported that independent groups backed by tech companies and billionaires have already committed at least $40 million to influence California legislative races, and it said some donors are hedging by contributing to other candidates as well—for example, Brin and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale have also given to Hilton, the former Fox News host.

Mahan’s background, as described by AP, blends Ivy League training with a technology career and early political work online. The AP account said he is a Harvard graduate who was classmates with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and that Zuckerberg encouraged him to go into tech instead of law school. It also said Mahan helped build an early Facebook app called Causes and then co-founded Brigade, a nonpartisan online voter network, before focusing his governor campaign more on his experience in public office and on issues he says Californians face day to day.

As the Democratic primary approaches, the AP story described contrasts in how voters are responding to candidates—particularly with respect to grassroots enthusiasm and the ability of the campaigns to cut through. It reported that as of last month, only about 730 donations to Mahan’s campaign were less than $250, suggesting limited grassroots support, while almost all of Porter’s 46,000 donations were under that threshold and about 5,600 donations to Xavier Becerra were similarly small-dollar. Still, Mahan told AP that support for other Democratic candidates is “very soft,” and said “Even if people are leaning a certain way, they’re still persuadable.”

In the final moments of the AP account, Mahan’s campaign messaging also shows where he expects to hold leverage with both donors and voters. The AP reported that tech moguls’ support for him and his plans to regulate them were popular topics during a recent “Ask Me Anything” session Mahan hosted on Reddit, where users can ask anonymously, and that when some people asked when he would drop out to avoid a scenario in which two Republicans could advance to the November election, he responded, “I plan to win!”