Matt Mahan is the Mayor of San Jose and a candidate for Governor of California. He is one of the only prominent Democrats in the state willing to say out loud that California's failure to fix housing, homelessness, and energy costs has handed the MAGA movement its best ammunition. It isn't a partisan argument. It's a governance one.
In this conversation, Eric sits down with Matt to get into why California has spent $20 billion on high speed rail and delivered nothing, why the billionaire wealth tax will backfire, and how San Jose reduced homelessness by a third without raising taxes. They also get into his break with Gavin Newsom, the tech industry's growing political power, and what a competence first Democratic message actually looks like in practice.
They also talk about what's next — the jungle primary on June 2nd, what Matt thinks California needs from its next governor, and why he believes fixing the state is the most powerful counter to what's happening in Washington right now.
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Don't think we're going to out meme Donald Trump or that we're
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going to beat him on XI. Think it's going to be
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ultimately in the in the courts and in delivering better
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outcomes and getting people to actually vote with their feet
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and want to come back to blue states.
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You you sort of tweaked Gavin Newsom, the governor, for being
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almost like Trump obsessed. Like shouldn't we be?
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I understand what he's doing. He's holding a mirror up to
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Donald Trump, who is a threat to our democracy, and I disagree
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with many of his policies. I also firmly believe that our
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failure to solve our biggest problems has given the MAGA
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movement a tremendous amount of ammunition.
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It's a big part of what's giving oxygen to this movement, and the
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best resistance is delivering results.
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So we are now paying more to import dirtier fuel from farther
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away, and we've lost all the jobs and tax base from that
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industry in the meantime. I tend to think that there's a
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there's a difference by an order of magnitude or two between the
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between waste and fraud and abuse.
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Fraud and abuse happen and they're very noteworthy and they
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should never happen and we should always punish them and
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root them out and try to prevent them.
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But it's waste and inefficiency that is the the bigger issue.
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Matt Mahan, mayor of San Jose, and I go back a long time.
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I think I was at an election party he threw when Trump was
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first selected, and it was a very sad affair.
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He's raised money now to run for governor of California from some
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people I know well, Gary Tan of Y Combinator, Joe Lonsdale, the
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Palantir Co founder. Mahan and I share a lot of
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sympathies. We somewhat believe in tech,
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somewhat believe in what's going on in AII guess both make a lot
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of our money from the tech set. But on the other hand, our
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principled Democrats with our own independent ideas.
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And so he and I had an honest conversation.
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I think I pushed him on a lot of things.
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He's competing for governor in a unique primary environment.
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It's the so-called jungle primary.
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So he can try and pick up some Republican voters.
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Obviously that's difficult in a in a world where you have to
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pick a team man as a a tall hill to climb to win this race.
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I think he's definitely behind, but a fascinating candidate that
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says a lot about what's happening in tech and American
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politics today. I'm Eric newcomer.
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This is the newcomer podcast. That man, mayor of San Jose,
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candidate for governor of California.
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We've known each. It's been, it's been a while,
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but we met back in your brigade days before your mayor.
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Not surprised to see you're running for governor, I believe
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back then, even though it's like that's you saw.
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Yeah, I was like, believable. So thank you.
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Thank you for coming on the Newcomer Podcast.
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Yeah, I'm thrilled to be here. It's good to see you again after
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all these years. Yeah, so just start with the
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mission statement of the campaign.
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It's what? It's a jungle primary.
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It's gonna be sort of a brawl to get to be one of the top 2
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candidates. What what is your message for
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people? Yeah, and I.
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Jumped in just a few weeks ago. I think it's a a wide open race
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still. And my, my core argument is that
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we need to fix California. We need to fix it for the 40
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million people who live there. Also nationally, what happens in
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California matters. And frankly, I think that our
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inability to address housing costs, energy costs,
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homelessness, crime, addiction issues have given Trump and the
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MAGA movement the best ammunition imaginable.
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And so I really, I want to fix our problems for my family, my
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neighbors, all of our fellow Californians.
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I also think there's a bigger context here.
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I'm worried about this rising populism on the right and now on
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the left. And you, you sort of see folks
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turning to really easy answers, you know, more authoritarianism
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or more socialistic socialist policies that ultimately I just
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don't think we're going to work and practice or really be what
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America's all about and what actually makes us great.
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And so I just, I'm worried, you know?
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Yeah. I mean, how much do you
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subscribe to the like abundance message?
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Because there's clearly echoes of that you're saying in a
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little. Bit yeah, yeah.
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And I don't think it's a holistic worldview that solves
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everything. I've spent a lot of time working
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on homelessness, crime, addiction, untreated mental
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illness. And is there an abundance
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message there? Maybe there's also just like,
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accountability. Sometimes you have to intervene.
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And there's a whole interesting conversation about civil
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liberties that's sort of independent of the abundance
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conversation. But the basic notion that we
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have made government too slow, too bureaucratic, we create a
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lot of cost around the things we most want like housing and clean
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energy, I think is absolutely true.
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High speed rail being the sort of poster child for everything
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that's wrong with the progressive governance model
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today. That's why has California high
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speed rail failed? Like it's almost, it's so hard
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to imagine. It's, it's like, let's just
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throw more money at it and someday it will work.
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I, you know, I think we're both of the world where we
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desperately want it to work. We want these beautiful, you
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know, Japan style trains running around, But why can't America
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deliver on it? Yeah, it's it's pretty stark
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when you look at during the 20 years where we've spent $20
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billion and not delivered a train China's build over 10.
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They may now be at 20 miles of high speed rail connecting
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their entire country. I mean, it's, and that's not an
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entirely fair comparison. But at the end of the day,
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people care about outcomes. And I think that's part of why
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we're seeing this more authoritarian impulse of this
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turn to a strong man is the people just want stuff to
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happen. It's it's the, you know,
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Governor Shapiro, get shit done mind right that we really need.
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So why? You know, I think it largely
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comes down to the fact that this project was caught up in years
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of environmental review and clearance.
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Years of litigation has taken forever to assemble all of the
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pieces legally, environmentally, just all of the regulatory
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compliance takes years. California has made it that.
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I think the country already suffers from the litigiousness
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around environmental review, NEPA as well as our California
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version of that sequa. But we're especially bad in
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California. You can have housing projects
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that make so much sense. You have the general plan where
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the public's already weighed in. You've said this surface parking
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lot in a downtown next to transit obviously should be high
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rise residential. And you can still take 18 to 24
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months to get through the environmental review process and
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you can still get sued for it. It's crazy.
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It's. It's amazing, you know, as a
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millennial to realize that being a progressive in sort of the
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previous generation was some of this sort of Sierra Club.
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Like we want green in that we want like a nice park with a
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sort of limited scope neighborhood.
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And it's like that. It doesn't match with what I
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guess progressivism means to my generation.
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I think that's absolutely right. I think we go through cycles and
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we have to keep updating the operating system, if you will.
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I think we went from early progressivism 100 years ago
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where there was actually a trust in big institutions to solve
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society's biggest problems. And you ultimately saw the
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height of that in the New Deal rose like we've we need
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government to be extremely active and robust.
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And coming out of that in World War Two, there was a lot of
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trust in government and expertise and big bureaucracies.
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And then I think much of kind of leading toward when around the
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time we were born and, and up till today was the
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disintegration of that model. And progressives taking a very
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different approach, largely the environmental movement, but just
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sort of the rights based, very litigious approach to protecting
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individuals from big government and big business.
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But we've we've unintentionally I think hobbled government and
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we are no longer able to move quickly and efficiently and do
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big things. And now there's, and I mean,
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obviously it's being covered by a lot of folks like Ezra Klein
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and Derek Thompson and others. But I think we're now sort of
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grappling with what is the next version, what's the next
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operating system need to look like?
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Can you achieve, if you're governor of California, will be
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you be able to achieve great things through government?
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Or is it about clearing the way for businesses and others to
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achieve great things? Like is there a way to get the
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actual humans working for government?
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I don't know to build things, deliver things more effectively
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or it's just like government's not always best positioned to
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solve these big problems. It's a great question.
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I do think you have to take it case by case.
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I would not simply rely on the private sector to magically fix
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education or transportation systems or I mean, there's some
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big complicated systems that are largely what you might call
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public goods where government just needs to do better.
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We need to use technology to deliver better services.
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Small example of this is in San Jose.
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We've been using an AI powered tool.
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There's a startup called Light that has helped us to speed up
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all of our public bus routes. So buses across the city of San
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Jose in the last called 18 months have become 20% faster on
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average through just this very subtle synchronization of
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lights. And that's a.
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It's hard not to hear this without the direct sort of
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mumdani contrast, right? He's promising free buses.
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You're like, we can make buses 20% faster, which is probably
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more important in some ways better, right?
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Yeah. Yeah, people pay for this.
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But one thing goes viral and the other does.
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Not no. You're right, the kind of more
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technical competence based approach is not always the most,
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the most viral, It doesn't always make the headlines.
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But I, I do believe, you know, people pay for things that they
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value. And if you're going to pay
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$20.00 for an Uber ride, you should be willing to pay 2 or $3
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for a bus ride. But it can't take five times
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longer like we, we need to, we need to speed it up and provide
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a great, a great service. But back to your, your bigger
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question. I do think there are areas where
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the answer is to pull back some of the robustness of the public
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sector. I, I think on housing to some
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extent energy. I'll give you another example on
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energy that will probably not win me any friends in the
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environmental movement. And I consider myself a lifelong
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environmentalist, very big on open space, love being outdoors
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and hiking and camping and all that good stuff.
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We though, have been so single minded about our support for
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clean energy. And we have so aggressively
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regulated the oil and gas industry that we have pushed
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refineries, most of the refineries that are just
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regulated to be the cleanest, best run refineries in the
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world. We have pushed them out of
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California, but we're still using gas.
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So we are now paying more to import dirtier fuel from farther
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away. And we've lost all the jobs and
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tax base that industry in the meantime, but we're still using
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it, burning it. We've just kind of killed the
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economics of it. And it's actually producing more
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emissions. And it's just sort of like good
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intentions gone awry in an overly regulated state.
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I think it was, John Arnold, the philanthropist and billionaire
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said the other day. Like there are a set of states,
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you know, like Texas, where he lives.
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They feel like they're competing for people to come and set up
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businesses. And then there are states like
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California that feel like we don't need you like with, I
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mean, the the billionaire tax proposal, I guess being the most
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prominent. Now, that's obviously not like
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Gavin Newsom's idea necessarily. Or what is your sense of the
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political support for this billionaire tax?
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You've obviously been opposed to it.
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And what's your read on like the seriousness of it for
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California? Yeah, it's it's a very real
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risk. Governor Newsom's opposed to it
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as well, but most of the Democratic leadership in the
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state has either supported it or stayed pretty silent on it.
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I think the governor and I have been two of the only more
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prominent Democrats in the state to say this is a bad idea.
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And it's not because we are, you know, worried about protecting
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billionaires from taxation or don't believe in progressive
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taxation. I think the wealthiest amongst
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us should absolutely pay substantially into the public
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system to continue the the prosperity, the infrastructure,
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all the things that make that, you know, the platform on which
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their prosperity was was created.
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But this is going to backfire if it passes.
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And I think I think it is backfired.
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You're right, Google. Govounders are fleeing the
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state. That's right.
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We've seen over a trillion dollars of capital flight to
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your point we there, I just saw a projection the other day there
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was a debate at Stanford and out of that there there was this
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analysis that showed that we're likely to lose 25 billion per
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year. That's recurring revenue.
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This, remember this proposal supposedly is a one time tax
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that will generate 100 billion. At this point maybe it would
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generate 50 because we've already lost so much wealth and
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that would be one time. It may have cost us 25 billion
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per year in revenue. Nobody really knows yet.
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I think it will be defeated. A lot of damage has been done.
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As you I'm sure know and your listeners know, there are 12
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European countries that have tried wealth taxes at the
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national level, not the sub national level and they've
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mostly all rolled them back. They've seen tax their their tax
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base shrink. It's just not a smart.
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And of course, some of the reason the tech industry in
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particular is going ballistic is sort of the potential for
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unrealized gains being taxed. And startups are all about
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having these on paper, highly valued companies that, you know,
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it's like if you actually had to cash it out, I'll put the money.
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Right, it's just. Like someday it will maybe be
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worth that, but I don't have that money today.
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That's right. You know, on the flip side of
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this, like, oh, we don't need a larger tax base.
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You know, California already has so much money.
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I mean, a lot of that money is going to state health care,
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right? I think sometimes when I see
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sort of criticism about the size of government from the left, and
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you sort of saw this with doge on the federal level, where
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Elon's Cruz said, oh, we're gonna like save so much money by
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cutting federal workers, which I think, you know, they did cut a
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bunch of federal workers, but they didn't balance the budget
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because so much of the spending is still in healthcare and other
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things that people love about government.
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Right. You're absolutely right.
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And California, the two biggest areas of expenditure by far are
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healthcare and education. And I think the right approach
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is to get more value for the dollars we're spending.
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Now that may involve cutting certain programs or staffing
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within that larger bucket of healthcare provision or
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education. We may find that we need to
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dramatically reallocate how we're spending the dollars.
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But you're very unlikely to find the political support nor would
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it necessarily be good for society to reduce the spend with
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an education and healthcare. I, I think, you know, 50% of
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healthcare spends in the last five years of life and it's
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people choosing to want better end of life care.
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Now, can we do more prevention or reduce chronic illness and
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all that? Yes.
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But I think the real focus needs to be on how we get more value
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for per dollar spent. So it is saving in some of the
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health spending areas. I think it's saving, but it's
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really just optimizing the spend.
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I think in healthcare, for example, I would like to see
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less of the spend on managing chronic illness and more on
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upfront prevention. We also spend a lot of our
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healthcare dollars within a very expensive and inefficient
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hospital system versus providing more accessible clinics and
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leveraging the capacity of nurse practitioners who are capable of
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doing a whole lot more than they are often allowed to do per
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their for their license or local regulations.
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So there are ways to actually, we offer more care, higher
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quality care, more preventative care to more people in more
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places with the same amount of spending.
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So it's more about the inefficiency of the spending.
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When there's this discussion of waste, fraud and abuse, I tend
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to think that there's a, there's a difference by an order of
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magnitude or two between the between waste and fraud and
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abuse. Fraud and abuse happen and
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they're very noteworthy and they should never happen and we
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should always punish them and root them out and try to prevent
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them. But it's waste and inefficiency
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that is the the bigger issue. We spent a lot of money without
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knowing if it's actually performing, if it's delivering
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the outcome that we want. Do you, do you think Doge you
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have? Was there anything valuable that
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came out of that? Well, I think it started an
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important conversation about waste and government and how to
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do things better. I think where Dodge really went
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off the rails was in seemingly taking joy in firing public
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servants, many of whom you know had done, most of whom had done
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nothing wrong. And we're just very committed,
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genuinely committed to the mission of the agency where they
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worked. It seems like some of the best
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among us, like who developed special specialties over many
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years. I mean, I get yeah, I just
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especially sort of the, you know, foreign aid stuff, the the
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malice about people who are trying to help other people or.
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The the different roles in different science, you know,
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scientific fields, doing research, long term research
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that may be valuable. It just it, it seemed like it
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was attacking the people, not the problem of innovation
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spending. Let me try to make this more
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concrete. In San Jose we have, as with all
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governments, limited resources for different priorities.
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One of our priorities is ending homelessness.
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We spend somewhere between 50 and $100 million a year,
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depending on revenue. It's a volatile revenue source,
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but we spend 50 to $100 million a year on tackling homelessness
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and housing issues. When I came into the mayor's
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office a little over three years ago, we were spending most of
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that money building brand new apartments for people.
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And for those who got those apartments, it was a great
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solution. They remained off the streets
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and their outcomes were much better.
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The problem was the math just didn't show any path to
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scalability, $1 a door, six years to build this
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apartment, we've got thousands of people living outside.
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So I said we there's a much more optimal way of spending these
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limited dollars given the magnitude of the problem and the
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timeline that we have, which is which is like we need to solve
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this today because. People expect it like.
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Yeah, people are dying on the streets.
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A couple 100 people a year die on our streets.
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So we shifted the dollars toward buying and fixing up old motels,
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buying prefabricated modular units, and putting these
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sleeping cabins, if you will, on public land.
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We brought outreach in house. Reduce the number of people, but
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improve the quality and actually something to offer people
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because we had built shelter. We've put money into prevention
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and slowed the inflow into homelessness.
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Same amount of money, but we've reduced the number of human
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beings living outside in tent encampments by about 1/3 in just
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the last few years. And with the next count, we will
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for the first time have a majority of people who are
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homeless in San Jose living indoors, not outdoors, which is
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qualitatively a completely different type of homelessness
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than having people literally wallowing in misery in a tent
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encampment and dying of overdose and, you know, down in the
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Creek. I mean, it's it's a totally
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different situation and we didn't have to raise taxes to do
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it. We just had to think differently
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and be willing to reprogram our dollars.
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The tech industry is very enthusiastic about your
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campaign. I think from, you know, Gary Tan
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to Joe Lonsdale or back end like what?
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What do you what do you think is like getting them excited about
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your candidacy? More than anything, I think it's
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that being the mayor of the Capitol, Silicon Valley.
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You got to meet them, you know that?
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Yeah. I know, I know the tech world
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well. I've I spent a decade working in
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IT, in the civic tech space, as you know, with with causes on
00:19:43
Facebook and early philanthropy. I was saying, I think perhaps
00:19:46
the last time we ran into each other, though I might have been
00:19:49
somewhat intoxicated, was when Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
00:19:52
I think you guys had a party in San Francisco, 2016.
00:19:56
I was sort of like at a wandering day, you know, I wound
00:20:00
up at that party was like this saddest set of people that San
00:20:03
Francisco, It was a really cultural turning point where
00:20:08
you're telling me, I don't know if I can Fact Check this either.
00:20:11
You sort of think you saw the Trump thing coming from.
00:20:14
So we had a map on on Brigade's website and Brigade, just for
00:20:17
your listeners benefit was I would analogize it to a
00:20:21
LinkedIn, but for your civic or political identity.
00:20:24
We hooked into the voter file. We, we allowed you to claim your
00:20:27
voter record and then showed you all of your representatives who
00:20:31
else lived in your district or districts, depending on which
00:20:34
level of government and allowed you to basically organize with
00:20:37
other voters. You could, you could kind of put
00:20:38
your votes together around issues you cared about and
00:20:41
support candidates. And this was 10 years ago.
00:20:45
We had a map and it was much more red than other maps.
00:20:48
And I don't think our map was particularly accurate.
00:20:50
But what we did see was this crossover behavior of, you know,
00:20:57
older, middle-aged and older voters, white voters in the
00:21:01
Midwest, lower propensity voters who had voted registered
00:21:06
Democratic but told us they were going to vote for Trump or had
00:21:09
voted for Obama and told us they were going to vote for Trump.
00:21:12
And it was just so interesting to pick up on this trend of
00:21:16
people who were telling us that they were all for Trump.
00:21:18
But none of the previous data about their behavior or the
00:21:22
registration, their status as a voter would have led us to
00:21:25
predict that. And so we sort of saw that
00:21:28
coming. And on election night, I mean,
00:21:30
the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and others
00:21:34
literally had reporters call and be like, what did you guys see
00:21:36
in your data? Like, what should we did you?
00:21:38
What did you guys know that we didn't know?
00:21:40
Because we were kind of, you know, dismissed going into that
00:21:43
race. It's like, oh, there's that
00:21:44
weird app over there that seems to have been taken over by Trump
00:21:46
supporters. And we were like, no, not
00:21:48
really. Yeah.
00:21:49
It was really interesting. Do you from that experience like
00:21:54
any validity to election denial claims or what's what's your set
00:21:58
like this save act and everything?
00:22:00
We we did not get any indication of you're talking about like
00:22:04
voter fraud. But whether voter fraud is
00:22:06
something, you know, sort? Of well, our.
00:22:07
Middle of the road sort of person.
00:22:09
Our apartment. Didn't pick up you any of and
00:22:12
you don't think? There's like any I don't.
00:22:14
Think it is a is a rampant issue.
00:22:16
I I do think that building trust in the process is really
00:22:23
important. And whether it's whether the
00:22:25
claims are legitimate or not or the scale is significant enough
00:22:29
to matter. The notion that there should be
00:22:33
some identity verification, some sort of voter ID or or some
00:22:38
safeguards beyond what we have today, I think it's reasonable
00:22:42
because you now have half the country doubting if our
00:22:44
elections have the integrity that they need to have.
00:22:47
So for better or worse, we're kind of at a point where I do
00:22:50
think we need to address this issue.
00:22:52
The SAFE Act seems like if that pass, it would be give the
00:22:56
federal government under Trump a lot of control over the
00:22:58
election. Yeah, that makes me very
00:23:00
nervous. There's a conversation in
00:23:02
California right now about voter ID, which I think 70 to 80% of
00:23:07
people support. The notion that if you've got to
00:23:09
use ID to buy alcohol or to buy a car or a gun or any other
00:23:14
thing, and you've got to carry your ID with you as a driver and
00:23:17
to get into a bar or whatnot, there ought to be some form of
00:23:21
identity verification. It's still very, I mean you go
00:23:23
on. Everything else, you're like,
00:23:25
oh, we need need to be pragmatic and sort of tell people the
00:23:27
truth and like, yeah, I just think this voter ID thing,
00:23:30
there's just not that much fraud.
00:23:31
No, I agree there's not. Too hard to commit the fraud at
00:23:34
the level they want. Like you have to go.
00:23:36
You say your address like it's just like it's be a lot of but I
00:23:39
don't. Think that's the point really,
00:23:41
in the sense that you're right, I totally agree with you.
00:23:46
And yet the democracy is based on trust.
00:23:49
And if half the country is believing that our elections
00:23:53
aren't secure and don't have integrity and they shouldn't
00:23:55
trust the results if they don't like the outcome, that's a
00:23:58
problem for us as Democrats whether we like it or not.
00:24:02
And we can, we can do the very academic and classically
00:24:05
democratic thing and try to show them a bunch of data and
00:24:08
explain, Oh no, don't worry, it's a rounding error.
00:24:11
It almost never. It's probably never changed the
00:24:13
outcome of an election, although you'd be surprised how many down
00:24:15
ballot elections are decided by a few votes.
00:24:17
But you can try to explain to people that they're wrong or you
00:24:23
can take a common sense action that I mean, I, I just don't buy
00:24:27
that it is an impossibility for us to give people 3 or 4
00:24:31
different ways to to have an extra layer of protection where
00:24:34
they show up and show a driver's license or a passport or
00:24:37
something. So.
00:24:37
So you right now you represent San Jose, which is tech, you
00:24:43
know, Ground Zero, their hometown.
00:24:45
Like, what is your view of now that you're campaigning of the
00:24:48
average Californians view of like the tech industry right
00:24:52
now? Well, there's a lot of
00:24:53
skepticism, and I understand that there's the skepticism of
00:24:57
high housing costs that I don't think it's fair to completely
00:25:00
blame tech for. But the truth is we've created
00:25:03
jobs at a much faster rate than we've built housing.
00:25:05
I see that as a public policy failure first and foremost.
00:25:09
But a lot of people say, well, if it wasn't for all these tech
00:25:11
companies and all these high paying jobs, our housing prices
00:25:14
wouldn't be as high as they are are.
00:25:16
And there's, there's some truth in that.
00:25:17
I, I don't think the answer is to get rid of the industry.
00:25:19
I think it's to build housing, to be clear.
00:25:21
But there's also a lot of fear that AI is going to destroy jobs
00:25:28
and massively displace workers. Ironically, it may be those
00:25:33
higher paid white collar jobs that start getting automated
00:25:37
faster than than. Others double down on that.
00:25:39
I mean, it's mystifying right now.
00:25:40
You have, you know, Alex Carpet Palantir going around sort of
00:25:43
bragging that, you know, the blue collar worker is going to
00:25:47
benefit and it's sort of he literally said, you know, it's
00:25:50
like the white women who vote Democrat, they're the ones that
00:25:52
are going to get screwed. He.
00:25:55
He. Specifically said something
00:25:56
about women. I, I don't know who are the
00:25:58
democratic base, but anyway, we don't need to get in that carp
00:26:01
specifically, but there's definitely this sense from, I
00:26:04
think it's become sort of a right wing tech talking point
00:26:07
that, you know, white collar workers get screwed and the
00:26:09
plumber like nothing better to be a plumber.
00:26:11
But the, the flip side of that is like nothing better to be the
00:26:14
owner of an AI company. Like the person on the top top,
00:26:17
maybe, you know, all their coders running around are about
00:26:20
to get screwed, but this technology is still gonna be
00:26:22
controlled by white collar shape rotator or whatever, you know,
00:26:27
but like, not, not the plumber or yeah, I don't know totally.
00:26:30
What do you worry about? Sort of the tech industry having
00:26:33
more control over what our lives look like if if they have this
00:26:37
powerful technology outside of government.
00:26:39
So I mean, when I think about AII, think about all of the
00:26:42
capability first. I think about the capabilities
00:26:44
that we can leverage to make our lives better.
00:26:47
And I think about that primarily through the lens of public
00:26:50
sector services. We've speed up our buses, we've
00:26:53
improved language translation, we're saving it's it's.
00:26:56
Amazing language translation. That would have been an insane.
00:27:00
Like we would have been like mind boggled.
00:27:01
And then we're like, oh, great, yeah, I did that.
00:27:03
Actually it's like really easy. It's shocking.
00:27:05
We use that just. Just a couple of years ago, we
00:27:08
were paying people in our for the the largest languages
00:27:12
represented in our city. We're an incredibly diverse
00:27:14
city. San Jose is 40% foreign born.
00:27:16
Over 50% of people speak a language other than English at
00:27:19
home. And we would pay human beings
00:27:21
who would not always even show up because they're humans to, to
00:27:25
do translation in, in real time in, in Spanish, Vietnamese,
00:27:31
sometimes Mandarin. That was about all we could
00:27:34
afford and, or find. But people speak dozens of
00:27:37
languages in our community. Now with an app, you can scan
00:27:41
AQR code and in dozens of languages with really high
00:27:45
precision at a very low cost. At all public meetings, you can,
00:27:49
you can be on your phone and see true real time language
00:27:53
translation. It's incredible.
00:27:55
And you can come up and speak in your native language and we can
00:27:58
all see on our screens what you're saying in real time.
00:28:02
You're, you're ticking through things that sort of AI.
00:28:04
Yeah. So when it comes to AI, I mean,
00:28:05
you asked a pretty profound question about the the
00:28:08
concentration of power and wealth in tech.
00:28:10
And what does that mean? I was saying I, I really have
00:28:14
focused on how to apply it to public services to make them
00:28:18
better. We've also created an AI
00:28:20
upskilling course curriculum for our workforce.
00:28:24
And we're, our view is that these tools should not be
00:28:28
displacing city workers. They should be enhancing their
00:28:30
productivity, making their jobs more interesting and allowing
00:28:33
these jobs to evolve naturally. But we're not trying to get rid
00:28:36
of city workers. We're trying to help them have
00:28:38
more satisfying and impactful jobs.
00:28:40
And so we've we've taken that mission very seriously in San
00:28:43
Jose on, on the bigger, more existential issue.
00:28:47
Look, I think tech has to be regulated.
00:28:50
I think the big question is exactly how to do that.
00:28:53
It's such an evolving space. What is what is model
00:28:55
transparency? I mean, this is your world much
00:28:58
more than mine. But you know, what levels of
00:29:00
transparency? When do you need a human in the
00:29:03
loop? I mean, these are big questions
00:29:05
and I'm certainly trying to keep up to speed on them and weigh
00:29:08
the pros and cons. I don't want to prematurely
00:29:11
regulate and push an industry out of California so that others
00:29:15
get all of the job growth, high paying jobs, the economic impact
00:29:20
and then it happens to us. I'd rather keep tech in
00:29:23
California to the extent that we can, where we create the rules
00:29:26
of the road and shape it for societal good to the extent that
00:29:30
we can on the on the concentration of wealth.
00:29:35
It's not just wealth, it's it's sort of power, right?
00:29:37
I mean, you, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is, it's not just
00:29:40
that he's wealthy, it's that he controls Facebook, which you
00:29:43
obviously interacted with with your work.
00:29:45
I mean, yeah. And I, you know, sometimes
00:29:47
they're good stewards. You know, I've been a champion
00:29:50
of some, you know, like Anthropic.
00:29:52
I think we're, you know, I'm glad they're taking a principal
00:29:54
approach. And that requires a little bit
00:29:56
of centrality. So that's part of the American
00:29:58
experiment, that companies get to compete with each other and
00:30:01
build their sort of mini totalitarian regimes within
00:30:05
their company. But yeah, I don't know.
00:30:07
It's a tough, tough question. It is and I and I think it
00:30:11
depends, you know, where you want to go with this.
00:30:14
But if it's if it's there's the wealth piece that that has
00:30:17
become very front and center because of the wealth tax in
00:30:20
California. I think the answer there is to
00:30:22
close a half dozen other tax loopholes at the federal level
00:30:26
that are much more impactful, fairer and have fewer unintended
00:30:29
consequences on the regulatory environment.
00:30:32
We. Support like I feel like if
00:30:33
people can get loans based on their wealth, that's.
00:30:36
The lowest hanging fruit. It's just insane that's it
00:30:39
allows billionaires to be flush. They just get loans.
00:30:43
Against unrealized assets, which becomes a, a loophole way of not
00:30:46
paying on your capital gains. You're right.
00:30:49
There needs to be some sort of trigger where at a certain level
00:30:53
of borrowing or time duration, it it's counted as a realized
00:30:57
gain and you have to pay the tax on it.
00:30:58
And, and if you have to liquidate, so be it because
00:31:02
you're borrowing so much that you're effectively realizing the
00:31:04
gain. I know that's very well.
00:31:06
Federal federal reforms on some of the.
00:31:08
I think on the tax code you really need to go to the federal
00:31:10
level. California already has the, the
00:31:13
second highest overall tax burden, the most progressive tax
00:31:17
structure. In any given year, the top 1% of
00:31:21
our income earners in the state contribute 40 or 50% of the
00:31:24
revenue. So we can try to be a little
00:31:27
more progressive, but at some point you are going to kill the
00:31:29
golden goose. And I just, I think we're
00:31:31
getting close. We're seeing billionaires
00:31:32
literally move out of state. And I just, I, I don't think we
00:31:35
need to push that anymore. We've increased spending in
00:31:39
California at the state level by 75% percent, equivalent to $150
00:31:44
billion a year more over six years ago.
00:31:49
And if you ask Californians what's gotten better, they'd
00:31:53
have a hard time giving you much of a list.
00:31:55
And so, and that's not an indictment of anyone in
00:31:57
particular. I think it is a systemic
00:31:59
problem. I think that we are incredibly
00:32:02
bureaucratic and inefficient. We have a system that's hard to
00:32:05
reform because they're a highly organized interests, corporate
00:32:08
labor and otherwise in Sacramento that just will try to
00:32:13
block any meaningful change. And that's that's the
00:32:16
environment that has LED us to increase spending massively and
00:32:19
not really see much in the way of measurable improvement.
00:32:23
I, I know there's a difference between on this question, I'm
00:32:25
going to talk, we're going to talk about Trump for a second.
00:32:27
And I'm acknowledging that there's sort of a difference
00:32:30
between what you want thematically about your campaign
00:32:33
and sort of your level of upsetness.
00:32:36
And so I guess I want to ask about that, like you, you sort
00:32:39
of tweaked Gavin Newsom, the governor, the current governor
00:32:42
for, I don't know, being almost like Trump obsessed.
00:32:45
Like, shouldn't we be like, isn't it disturbing what he's
00:32:48
doing to the country? Like, if you're running for good
00:32:51
governance, like on the corporate side, he's picking
00:32:55
favourites, you know, helping some, some of your sort of
00:32:58
California companies, deciding which ones, you know, can own
00:33:02
studios and which ones can't. Like, aren't you sort of deep
00:33:05
troubled by some of the stuff he's doing?
00:33:07
I'm deeply troubled by a lot of the stuff he's doing, starting
00:33:11
with how he's treating our immigrant neighbors.
00:33:13
San Jose's incredibly diverse city, and we've got folks who
00:33:19
have been living and working and contributing in our city, our
00:33:23
community, for decades, who are living in fear, scared to leave
00:33:26
their homes. They have children who are U.S.
00:33:29
citizens. We are long past the time that
00:33:33
we should have come to some, the parties should have come to some
00:33:37
bargain here over, yes, a secure border and an orderly lawful
00:33:42
immigration, but with a pathway to at least some form of legal
00:33:48
status for folks who who are here and are otherwise trying to
00:33:52
contribute and play by the rules.
00:33:54
So immigration's kind of top of my list, general disregard for
00:33:59
rule of law, tariffs, I mean, the list goes on and on.
00:34:02
I'm deeply concerned. You know, my disagreements with
00:34:07
Governor Newsom over the last few years have have generally
00:34:11
been very focused on specific challenges we're facing at the
00:34:17
city level. Remember, I'm the mayor of a
00:34:19
city in a big state, and my argument has been we need our
00:34:23
governor leading the charge locally.
00:34:26
And I know he's got his eyes set elsewhere, which you know, is
00:34:30
his prerogative. But we need our governor driving
00:34:34
change at the local level because we cannot address
00:34:38
homelessness, crime, high cost of housing and energy alone at
00:34:41
the city level. We are downstream of so many
00:34:44
state policies and spending decisions on homelessness and
00:34:47
crime. We hold maybe half of the
00:34:49
answers, but if the governor and the state legislature don't hold
00:34:52
the counties accountable and California counties are
00:34:55
extremely powerful, lot of resources, lot of very broad
00:35:00
jurisdiction over the criminal justice system, behavioral
00:35:03
health, If we don't get our counties aligned around
00:35:06
solutions, we get blamed. I mean, like the mayors are
00:35:10
accountable. You I go to the grocery store
00:35:12
and it takes me two hours to get through the grocery store
00:35:14
because people are angry and they want to tell me about all
00:35:18
the problems. And you can't be like, well, the
00:35:20
county does. I'm like, oh, the counties
00:35:21
should do this and the state has this law and if only the
00:35:24
legislature would do that. So look, the governor and I have
00:35:27
disagreed on a few pretty high profile things.
00:35:31
Prop 36, which was a criminal justice reform issue, sober
00:35:34
living environments. And I've just, my argument has
00:35:39
been, yes, it's, it's I understand what he's doing.
00:35:42
He's holding a mirror up to Donald Trump, who is a threat to
00:35:46
our democracy, and I disagree with many of his policies.
00:35:50
I also firmly believe that our failure to solve our biggest
00:35:55
problems in the country's largest and most prominent state
00:35:59
has given the MAGA movement a tremendous amount of ammunition.
00:36:04
It's a big part of what's giving oxygen to this movement, and the
00:36:08
best resistance is delivering results on the issues that
00:36:11
matter to people. But.
00:36:12
There are norms like, do you say, you know, these CEOs giving
00:36:16
you money, like have more of a backbone?
00:36:19
You know, it's just, yeah, I just feel.
00:36:22
Like, I'm intolation, to be perfectly honest, I don't spend
00:36:25
a lot of time with tech CEOs, but I don't, I mean, I used to.
00:36:27
They mail you a check and say yeah, 10 our mayor.
00:36:30
Well, the, I mean, first of all, most people don't realize this.
00:36:34
San Jose is the home of the workforce of tech.
00:36:38
We don't have a lot of tech CEO's who live in San Jose.
00:36:40
They live up in, you know, the fancy, you know, Palo Alto and
00:36:43
Atherton and maybe up in San Francisco.
00:36:46
We're a working city. We're people.
00:36:48
We're the, you know, the engineers and the designers and
00:36:51
the marketing folks and whatnot. They live in San Jose.
00:36:55
Those are my neighbors and they're excited about my
00:36:59
campaign because they see how much progress we've made in San
00:37:02
Jose by bringing this very, to be fair, a, a cultural element
00:37:07
of tech. The, the thing that I've done
00:37:09
differently in City Hall over the last three plus years is
00:37:14
bring a performance management mindset into government.
00:37:17
I came in and was like we're, we're the, the failure motors.
00:37:20
We're trying to be everything to everyone and it's not working.
00:37:22
Let's pick no more than five things.
00:37:25
Let's be focused. Let's set actual goals.
00:37:28
Let's do the really uncomfortable thing of
00:37:29
publishing them on the city website.
00:37:32
Let's create some dashboards. Let's track the dollars we're
00:37:35
spending, the staff time we're allocating.
00:37:38
Let's measure performance. Let's publish our performance
00:37:41
every 90 days. Let's look at it and reflect on
00:37:44
it and let's start to create a feedback loop and be a little
00:37:47
more iterative so that every 90 days to one year, which is every
00:37:51
12 months, we do our budget cycle.
00:37:53
We can make adjustments and say, well, we're spending money here,
00:37:56
but it's not actually leading to any measurable improvement, so
00:37:59
maybe we need to change it. That's been the unlock for us.
00:38:02
And we've led the state in reducing homelessness, reducing
00:38:05
crime, reducing blight, speeding up permitting.
00:38:09
We've got thousands of new homes under construction.
00:38:11
It's been bringing focus and performance management to City
00:38:15
Hall, which is something that I get really excited about.
00:38:18
And maybe in San Jose you can, you know, get constituents
00:38:21
excited about. And I appreciate that.
00:38:23
And I think that is sort of, you've enumerated a lot of the
00:38:27
virtues of the tech industry and how they do business.
00:38:30
How do you, but how do we get some of the corruption out of
00:38:33
government? I mean, it's funny, I feel like
00:38:35
it's been the right who's been railing about corruption in
00:38:39
government. So I feel right wing saying it.
00:38:41
But you know, like some of the crypto stuff, the Trump
00:38:43
administration is doing how they want executives to treat them.
00:38:47
I mean, it is the biggest public graft of like all time.
00:38:50
If we weren't dragged into 500 different issues everyday, this
00:38:54
would be a huge 1. And it matters, you know, as a
00:38:57
business writer, because I'm trying to hold people, you know,
00:39:01
there's, there are norms of business and it's like there are
00:39:03
expectations of what you're supposed to do.
00:39:05
And if we descend as America into a culture where it's like,
00:39:09
I've got to get mine and like, you're a sucker if you don't do
00:39:12
XYZ, like that's going to be like the death of America.
00:39:15
And so I don't know. Do you have any ideas on what we
00:39:17
can do to regain a culture of honest dealing in in business,
00:39:22
even as the president sort of begs people to to be dishonest?
00:39:26
Yeah, I I think one of the big challenges really flows from the
00:39:32
Citizens United notion that your political spending is simply
00:39:38
speech and should be unlimited. And the disclosure, the piece
00:39:43
is, is important, it's valuable, but it's sort of insufficient,
00:39:48
the dynamic. And I'm much more familiar with
00:39:50
what happens within California because I've been serving at the
00:39:52
city level and thinking about counties and how we interface
00:39:55
with our state government. But.
00:39:57
These are Californian businesses that I'm worried about.
00:39:59
Yeah, that's, that's fair. I'm just saying I, I can give
00:40:02
you the, the, I imagine it's the same at the federal level.
00:40:05
I'm just not, I don't spend, I don't spend time in Washington,
00:40:08
But I mean, I've been maybe twice since I got elected mayor,
00:40:12
but I. I can tell you mechanistically
00:40:16
that the failure mode and the, the form of corruption, if you
00:40:21
will, is not as straightforward as you might think, but it's,
00:40:24
it's effectively there's a policy status quo that's in
00:40:28
place or, or maybe there's been a recent change.
00:40:32
But if it's not optimal for society and someone wants to
00:40:35
change it, you have a, an idealistic legislator who wants
00:40:38
to change something. I ran into this couple years
00:40:40
ago, getting a legislator, A legislator to carry a bill for
00:40:43
me. I can give you the example later
00:40:45
if you're interested. And we just ran into a buzz saw,
00:40:47
special interest power and basically the groups, these
00:40:52
outside groups spend so much both lobbying off cycle.
00:40:57
They've got a full Time Team up there writing legislation,
00:41:00
taking people out to lunch, hanging out, just kind of
00:41:03
monitoring and spending a lot of time and meshed within the
00:41:06
legislative world. And I mean, they spend so much
00:41:10
money around elections that it does.
00:41:12
I, I think for many of these legislators, it just becomes a
00:41:15
calculus of like, why would I take on changing the status quo
00:41:19
if it means that somebody's going to dump $1 in
00:41:21
negative ads against me and I'm going to lose my seat in two
00:41:24
years anyway. And that becomes the calculus.
00:41:27
And it's not clear enough to the voters why change doesn't
00:41:31
happen. And I really believe that's the
00:41:33
primary mechanism. There may be other things that
00:41:35
happened that I'm not aware of. But I tried to change this
00:41:38
construction defect law because it's it's having an impact on
00:41:42
our ability to get condos built. And that matters because condos
00:41:45
are the most accessible form of home ownership.
00:41:48
And basically Sacramento didn't want to touch it because it was
00:41:51
kind of like, well, the, you know, the travellers are really
00:41:54
powerful and they've sort of already come to an understanding
00:41:58
with the building community. And there's just kind of like
00:42:00
everybody's happy, Like don't, don't touch it.
00:42:02
Yeah. I mean, I'm sympathetic.
00:42:03
I mean, what you're saying California's complicated because
00:42:06
it's like there are all sorts of unions that have become
00:42:09
extremely powerful in a way, sometimes more powerful than
00:42:12
through the big business. World by spending the most, but
00:42:15
yeah. I mean, I guess I'm, I'm more
00:42:19
incensed on the sort of like I'm going to cozy up to Trump
00:42:22
specifically and then he's going to use the antitrust authority
00:42:25
or whatever. Yeah, let me.
00:42:27
Well, OK, so let's talk about that.
00:42:28
I mean, I, I think what is really, yeah, I think it's
00:42:32
incredibly concerning. I think unfortunately tech
00:42:36
didn't engage in politics for so long and which was probably a
00:42:40
good thing. And I think the culture for a
00:42:42
long time was avoidance. Tech was like, hey, I'm we're
00:42:45
out here in California, let us do our thing, leave us alone.
00:42:48
There was this very libertarian undercurrent that still I think
00:42:52
largely exists in Silicon Valley.
00:42:55
And but then as tech became more powerful and government started
00:43:00
to engage, suddenly I think they realized how to play the game.
00:43:03
And now they've figured it out at a scale and in a way that is
00:43:07
that is more powerful than almost any other industry.
00:43:11
And it's, it's really, it is concerning.
00:43:15
I think the, the question, well, one, I don't think tech's
00:43:19
monolithic. I think we have to take it sub
00:43:21
industry by sub industry. So like crypto, you make a
00:43:24
great, you make a great point, right?
00:43:26
There are other elements of technology like, I don't know,
00:43:31
solar and batteries, like that's tech, but it's a different kind
00:43:35
of tech that I'm less, I'm less worried about.
00:43:37
And the startup economy generally, like, I believe in
00:43:39
that philosophy. I think that is, yeah, it's
00:43:43
great. It's like create new businesses.
00:43:44
Now, sometimes they're worried about regulation on stuff like
00:43:47
AI because, you know, regulations can protect the big
00:43:50
businesses and hurt the small ones.
00:43:52
But generally, I think, you know, the startup agenda is good
00:43:55
for America by and large. Yeah, I think so.
00:43:58
I think our our entrepreneurship is a real strength and all that
00:44:01
creativity and dynamism and we we want to be at the fore.
00:44:04
What do you make, You know, Congressman Ro Khanna has
00:44:07
clearly made the calculation that tech is not is very
00:44:10
unpopular. Like, yeah, yeah, you're running
00:44:13
for governor, you know, not so friendly.
00:44:16
Like, I've learned a lot from tech.
00:44:17
And I don't know what do you make of his political calculus
00:44:20
here, or this is just true belief, or what do you make of
00:44:23
his sort of turn against the hometown industry?
00:44:28
Yeah, it's so noteworthy. I I try not to spend a lot of
00:44:30
time serving this work. With people as political.
00:44:33
Pundit, I mean, I I've openly and publicly disagreed with the
00:44:37
Congress member on the on his position on the wealth tax and I
00:44:40
already gave you my my main reasons why I really just the
00:44:43
unintended consequences of it. I don't know.
00:44:46
Just wealth tax, it's like everything.
00:44:48
He feels like he's looking for a fight.
00:44:50
Yeah, I don't know what else what else lately.
00:44:52
I don't know, I'm not following. Up to it.
00:44:56
Well, one of the big discussions, and I don't know so
00:44:58
that he's weighed in on this, but here's another one where I
00:45:02
have concerns. There's this question of when
00:45:04
does a human need to be in the loop?
00:45:06
And at the at the high level, the idea that a human should be
00:45:09
able to review decisions that involve safety, certainly life
00:45:14
and death decisions sounds really good.
00:45:16
It makes a lot of sense. But the details really matter.
00:45:19
There's a push right now to say, well, the the logical extension
00:45:24
of that principle is that we should have a human in every
00:45:27
autonomous vehicle because you never know, there could be a
00:45:29
case where the human needs to override what the vehicle does.
00:45:32
Now, the data is already pretty clear from way MO, for example,
00:45:37
that the autonomous vehicles on autonomous vehicles on average
00:45:41
are much safer than human drivers.
00:45:42
And so there's this big tug of war going on where, you know,
00:45:46
largely, you know, labour unions who don't want to see job
00:45:49
displacement. And they're right to worry about
00:45:51
it. I'm worried about job
00:45:52
displacement. It's a very legitimate concern,
00:45:55
but may lead to a sort of ossification of society, pushing
00:46:00
innovation out and say, well, we've got to have a human in
00:46:03
every vehicle, which completely defeats the point.
00:46:05
Yeah. I'm a radical on this issue for
00:46:07
sure. It's like, what are we fighting
00:46:09
for? Horse drawn carriages.
00:46:10
Still, that's kind of my point. You.
00:46:11
Spend time in a way MO it's like this.
00:46:13
Is it works? So much better and and as
00:46:15
progressives should love them in that like cars kill people and
00:46:19
like. Yeah, you can, yeah.
00:46:20
They could be central, You could control them more from the
00:46:22
government. You could also go here.
00:46:23
You can't go this fast. You can't like I'm.
00:46:26
The least popular guy on the board of our transit agency,
00:46:29
Because I keep talking about autonomy as part of the future
00:46:32
of transit because it frankly will allow us to offer a better
00:46:37
service to more people more quickly and more efficiently.
00:46:40
And we need to plan for it. And if you think of the.
00:46:42
Elderly who can't drive, you know, there's so many
00:46:44
progressive the disabled. Sorry, I know I'm preaching to
00:46:47
the converted here, but. So that's the optimistic side of
00:46:50
tech. I mean, I think with tech it's
00:46:52
always OK. You get new capabilities that
00:46:55
can make life better and you want to maximize the deployment
00:46:58
of new tools that make people's lives better while minimizing
00:47:02
the whether it's privacy risk or the the loss of agency or the
00:47:08
political corruption. To your point, and it's yeah, I
00:47:12
just, I don't think there's an easy answer though, to how to
00:47:15
how to. I mean, regulation is really the
00:47:17
primary answer to curbing the excesses, Do you?
00:47:20
Think. But we have to get it right
00:47:23
because we could also just push it to other, not just other.
00:47:26
States, but other country, I mean at once it's like you're
00:47:29
saying I don't know California is one of the top 10.
00:47:34
If, if it was, you know, it's own country, it'd be.
00:47:35
What number 4 or? 5 Right, exactly.
00:47:38
By GDP. By GDP, yeah.
00:47:40
So by that argument it's like take some responsibility,
00:47:43
regulate, you know, come up with your own regulations.
00:47:46
This is a big place with a lot of people.
00:47:48
We have our own views and obviously there have been what I
00:47:51
think auto regulations, right, with fuel economy.
00:47:54
There have been areas where California is, yeah,
00:47:55
particularly. On environmental policy, we've
00:47:58
often been out in front. So how much do you think
00:48:01
California should embrace that when it comes to the tech
00:48:04
industry versus taking a posture of these need to be federal
00:48:08
because you're going to scare out industry from our state?
00:48:10
Yeah, again, this is going to be an unsatisfying answer.
00:48:13
I I think it depends on the type of regulation.
00:48:15
I I do, I am generally a believer in the notion of
00:48:19
decentralization. And you know, we're not France
00:48:21
where everything emanates from Paris.
00:48:23
We are, we have 50 states. Those states are laboratories I
00:48:27
have pushed back against. There was a bill somebody
00:48:30
proposed that would have allowed every city in California to
00:48:32
regulate autonomous vehicles. And I was very much against that
00:48:35
for obvious reasons. But when it comes to this
00:48:40
evolving policy landscape, given how close we are to what's
00:48:44
changing in California in this area, I think it makes sense for
00:48:48
us to be able to regulate. I mean, we, we need to figure
00:48:51
out how to protect our children. I think we've, we've made a lot
00:48:54
of progress. Now you're seeing cell phones
00:48:55
being banned in schools, which I think is a good thing.
00:48:58
It's crazy. Isn't a new parent just the
00:49:01
idea? It's just like everybody in tech
00:49:04
knows about the danger of phones.
00:49:05
That's the other irony. It's like, I feel like people in
00:49:07
the industry are like, I don't know, don't let my kids on the
00:49:09
phone. I think that's right.
00:49:10
I think people in tech are less likely to have their kids using
00:49:13
devices all day or if at all, right.
00:49:15
I mean, we're, we're pretty anti screen in, in our home and
00:49:18
really very cognizant of the risks.
00:49:21
So I think protecting our children's a no brainer.
00:49:23
I would not want to wait for the federal government to figure
00:49:26
something out. If a state wants to experiment
00:49:28
with basic, you know, privacy safety.
00:49:31
We just passed a bunch of changes policies in San Jose
00:49:36
that really limit how we use our license plate readers.
00:49:39
So on the one hand, automated license plate readers are very
00:49:42
powerful law enforcement tool. On the other hand, I, I, you
00:49:45
know, we don't want to create a, we don't do facial recognition.
00:49:50
We don't want to create a surveillance state, some sort of
00:49:52
Big Brother where we've stored all of your movements for all
00:49:56
time. And now we can go back and I
00:49:59
think it'd be really creepy to kind of know everything about
00:50:01
where you've ever gone. So we delete all the data every
00:50:03
30 days. So it's really useful in the
00:50:05
short run if there's a crime to be able to say, well, we need to
00:50:07
respond and figure out who did this and apprehend the person
00:50:10
and, and have enough evidence. But on the other hand, we're
00:50:14
really limiting what we collect, how we collect it.
00:50:17
We're very transparent. We tell people what what we
00:50:20
collect and why. And we have very strict data
00:50:23
retention policies, meaning we delete the data regularly.
00:50:25
So we're, we're regulating tech at the local level, which is it
00:50:30
depends on the right, right. Right.
00:50:32
And I mean, that's the answer that makes sense that it depends
00:50:34
on the issue and you don't want to like give away the total
00:50:36
authority, but you know, you sort of have to take a balanced
00:50:38
approach and and on AI specifically, like are you using
00:50:44
language models? Like how, I mean, you said you
00:50:46
were enthusiasts about about autonomous, but the sort of
00:50:49
other pieces of what's happening in AI.
00:50:50
Are you a big user? And like, what's your view of, I
00:50:54
don't know, the rate of progress and how much this is going to be
00:50:56
a concern for government, for the next governor?
00:50:59
Yeah, I do use models. I, I don't, I wouldn't say I'm a
00:51:03
power user, but I, I certainly find that there's a, there's a
00:51:07
different and and very meaningful use case over and
00:51:10
above search. Obviously, we've created a
00:51:14
custom GPT around our budget process where we've uploaded
00:51:18
past budget documents and then generated insights in a way that
00:51:23
would have taken a lot of manual work.
00:51:25
I'm especially excited though, about how city workers are using
00:51:28
these tools. We have city employees who have
00:51:30
gone through our AI upskilling course, built a custom GPT for
00:51:35
whatever their job function is. A couple that come to mind are
00:51:38
one woman in our Department of Transportation was applying for
00:51:42
a grant, put various documents into a GPT and refined her
00:51:48
application. And then when that grant, it was
00:51:51
a federal grant that the Trump administration then basically
00:51:54
invalidated she because she had this tool and it ingested all of
00:51:59
this information. She was able to quickly pivot
00:52:02
and apply for a different grant at the state level and she
00:52:04
secured dollars, but she never would have made the deadline had
00:52:07
she needed to basically like manually start from scratch
00:52:10
again. And then we've got a, we've got
00:52:12
somebody in our, I think it's in our IT department who took our
00:52:15
311 data. And as people are calling in
00:52:18
for, you know, potholes and graffiti and, and different
00:52:21
service calls, there's our one of the biggest categories, of
00:52:24
course, is other where it's not, it's not well classified.
00:52:28
He basically built a classifier that saves 500 hours a year of,
00:52:33
of what was previously a lot of manual classification.
00:52:35
So I think there are a lot of interesting applications of
00:52:39
these tools. I generally think, though, that
00:52:41
if we invest in people and their training and education and
00:52:44
expose them to these tools, particularly at a young age, and
00:52:47
give them some guardrails and the confidence to experiment,
00:52:51
they'll figure out how to adapt the tools.
00:52:53
And you may see tasks automated. But most of the jobs we do
00:52:57
inside City Hall at least are complex enough that I don't
00:53:02
think they're going to be eliminated.
00:53:03
I think they'll be enhanced by. A.
00:53:05
Do you think there are any circumstances where, you know,
00:53:10
states should embrace what the New Jersey like gasoline
00:53:14
attendant model, where it's like we need to protect jobs in this
00:53:18
industry because things are being disrupted too fast?
00:53:21
Like, are jobs alone a reason to slow the pace of AI development
00:53:26
or to sort of make make rules? I'm hesitant because I don't
00:53:31
know at that point, as you create that constituency around
00:53:36
jobs that otherwise wouldn't exist, how you make the
00:53:39
decision, if ever, to eliminate them.
00:53:42
And so I think that in the long run, it is better to allow
00:53:49
innovation, though we do have to buffer.
00:53:52
So, So really the question is we have to buffer people from the
00:53:55
impacts of technological change. Technological change generally
00:53:59
leads us to a place where there are a number of benefits, but
00:54:01
the transition is really hard. So the question is just how to
00:54:05
best buffer people. One is you try to freeze things
00:54:09
in place and say these jobs have to exist, even if they're no
00:54:12
longer necessary or very productive.
00:54:13
We're just going to create the jobs because we want people to
00:54:15
be working. I feel like that kind of
00:54:17
devalues those workers in that work and eventually it may kind
00:54:21
of seem like a farce and they may feel like why am I doing
00:54:23
this thing that I don't need to do?
00:54:26
So I'm a little skeptical of that approach.
00:54:29
I think another approach, of course, is a Ubi, although that
00:54:32
also doesn't, there's no work involved with that, right?
00:54:35
So that's another way of sort of protecting people, but it
00:54:38
doesn't particularly value work. And then there's my preference,
00:54:41
and I would hope that this would manage most of the transition,
00:54:44
even if you need some of the other two categories, is to
00:54:47
invest early and often in the training, the skills, the access
00:54:51
to tools, and allow people themselves to create new jobs,
00:54:56
new companies, evolve their existing jobs and become more
00:54:58
productive. Now that's idealistic, but I do
00:55:01
see evidence of that happening. We're doing that City Hall.
00:55:02
We have 1000 workers going through our AI upskilling course
00:55:06
and they're changing in their jobs by applying these tools in
00:55:09
new ways. And that that's actually what
00:55:10
happened with past information technology people.
00:55:14
We started using smartphones before that PCs, you know, the
00:55:19
word, the office suite. I mean it's, you know, so you
00:55:23
know, we started using Excel spreadsheets.
00:55:25
Most of those did not dramatically destroy jobs so
00:55:29
much as change the way the jobs were done.
00:55:32
Right. I mean, I feel like one of my
00:55:34
more AI pilled concerns is just, yeah, I mean, you hear like Sam
00:55:39
Altman talk about it and just this access to AI and sort of
00:55:42
intelligence is going to be another sort of dividing line in
00:55:46
who has sort of. So I'll make a point on that,
00:55:50
which it's only a starting point and we have a, we have a lot of
00:55:53
work to do here. But last year we launched AI for
00:55:56
all and San Jose became the first city in the world to get 3
00:56:00
of the leading AI companies. So Google Anthropic and Open AI
00:56:05
to collaborate. And that we created a portal
00:56:08
through our websites with this this Lander on our website at
00:56:12
the through our library where anyone with a library cards,
00:56:14
that's 700 people in San Jose get access to the tools
00:56:20
training, including self-guided tutorials.
00:56:22
We're doing some in person trainings and then there are
00:56:26
some licenses for unique courses that in some cases would be
00:56:31
paid. And so we're trying to get these
00:56:32
companies to start opening up more of the tools and training
00:56:36
for anyone through our library system.
00:56:39
I'm, I'm going back to the Trump thing because honestly, I feel
00:56:43
like I agree with you and sort of tonally on a lot of it, but
00:56:48
the one I'm concerned about is just if we become more anti
00:56:53
democratic on the federal level, like are you what do?
00:56:56
You mean more well? It's just like if like we don't
00:56:58
have a free, we don't have free election or like not not anti
00:57:02
democratic like the Democratic. Party does more like succeed
00:57:04
but. We become more authoritarian
00:57:06
like California in particular has an important role to play in
00:57:11
like standing up for the American like Democratic
00:57:14
project. And what makes you feel like
00:57:16
you're prepared to take on that mantle?
00:57:19
Well, even as mayor, we've sued the Trump administration.
00:57:22
I mean, we've, we've joined a number of lawsuits and we've
00:57:25
passed local regulations much more limited than what I think
00:57:28
we can do at the state level. But there's no doubt California
00:57:32
has a critical role to play in offering a a counterpoint, in
00:57:36
fact, showing that our values work and practice and are are
00:57:39
distinct from and better than what Trump is offering.
00:57:43
But also using the power of our legal team.
00:57:46
Our attorney general has been, has done a great job of, you
00:57:51
know, really prosecuting the case against Trump's overreach
00:57:56
and abuse of power, from withholding funds to the
00:58:00
birthright citizenship issue to reproductive rights and so
00:58:04
forth. And so I, I think continuing to
00:58:06
use the law, the bully pulpit and the power of a, a better
00:58:12
example, I suppose you could say are, are some of the tools in
00:58:16
our, in our toolkit. But I just, I think there are
00:58:19
limits to the rhetorical game. It's as important as it is, I
00:58:26
don't think we're going to out meme Donald Trump or that we're
00:58:29
going to beat him on XI. Think it's going to be
00:58:32
ultimately in the in the courts and in delivering better
00:58:36
outcomes and getting people to actually vote with their feet
00:58:38
and want to come back to blue states.
00:58:40
What is your path to being governor like?
00:58:43
What can people watching this podcast do to support the
00:58:46
campaign? So I'm at Mahan for
00:58:49
california.com is the website. You can find me all over, all
00:58:53
over social media, as you would expect, I mean.
00:58:57
Mom, Donnie, I feel like he won on TikTok or like, have you
00:59:00
figured out and you're a guy, you know, like the social media
00:59:03
stuff? Yeah.
00:59:04
What do you do? You feel like you've found your
00:59:06
platform. I think mom Donnie would say
00:59:08
that he that he won in a lot of different ways.
00:59:11
I think social media was part of it.
00:59:12
He he really highlighted the door knocking.
00:59:14
I know they do. Not like the video I mean.
00:59:15
I think the videos were powerful.
00:59:17
Those were good. Don't underestimate.
00:59:18
He also spent more on television than Cuomo, so it wasn't just a
00:59:21
single all. All campaigns are multi channel
00:59:24
and they try to reach people from every angle.
00:59:26
And that's not to take anything away from what he did.
00:59:28
I mean, I, I think the way that they used short form video is,
00:59:35
you know, pretty inspired. I think it's very powerful and
00:59:37
we're, we're doing our best to kind of adapt, you know, to
00:59:41
those mediums and, and find our own footing there.
00:59:44
It won't, you know, my policies are not the same.
00:59:46
Obviously I'm much more centrist And so, but we're, we're the,
00:59:50
the medium itself, the media are, are quite powerful.
00:59:54
So yeah, people can find me on Instagram and TikTok.
00:59:58
The election the the primary is June 2nd and in California we
01:00:01
thankfully we have. An open top two primary, meaning
01:00:05
whether you're a Democrat, independent or Republican, you
01:00:08
can still vote for me. If you want to see common sense
01:00:12
leadership that actually is focused on solving our biggest
01:00:15
problems in California and providing that that very real
01:00:18
counterpoint to the Trump administration.
01:00:20
That's what I'm all about. And we've.
01:00:23
Yeah, we've had a great start. I only jumped in a few weeks
01:00:25
ago. I'm starting with low name ID.
01:00:29
So I was late. Yeah.
01:00:30
Yeah. Well, I mean late I guess is
01:00:33
it's very subjective, but I jumped in later than I was the
01:00:35
last major candidate. Were you still sort of deciding
01:00:38
or? You know, to be perfectly
01:00:39
honest, I wasn't planning to do it at least last year.
01:00:42
I I've love being mayor. I've got a great job and my wife
01:00:46
loves her day job. We have two little kids.
01:00:47
They're happy in their schools and on their soccer teams.
01:00:50
Our plan, if you will, was not to try to go move to Sacramento
01:00:54
and take on this task. But I was watching the race last
01:00:58
year, which is when all the other candidates got in.
01:01:01
And as we got to the beginning of of this year, there just felt
01:01:06
to me to be a huge void in the race.
01:01:08
I actually got home early January from a transit board
01:01:11
meeting and my wife looked, it was probably about 10:30 at
01:01:13
night and she just looked at me and said, I think you need to
01:01:15
get in this race, which was my jaw hit the floor because she,
01:01:19
you know, we both know what that means.
01:01:21
I mean, I've, I've been on the road almost non-stop.
01:01:23
It's a big state here. I am with you out of New York.
01:01:26
Here in New York City all over. The place and we have little
01:01:30
kids, so it's been hard on our family.
01:01:32
But you know, Sylvia, my wife, like me, is concerned.
01:01:36
We're worried about this rising populism on the right, the
01:01:40
reaction on the left, and this sort of people looking for easy
01:01:46
answers rather than a real clarity around the the
01:01:50
limitations we face, the real tradeoffs we face, what's
01:01:53
realistic, what we should expect from our government.
01:01:56
We need to rebuild trust in government and I don't think we
01:01:59
do that by being the loudest, the most sensational, the most
01:02:04
gratuitous in our politics. We've increased trust in City
01:02:08
Hall in San Jose and my time as mayor by 40% by delivering
01:02:14
results for people, by speeding up the buses, filling the
01:02:17
potholes, reducing homelessness, reducing crime, cleaning up the
01:02:21
streets, speeding up permitting. You get government start working
01:02:24
again and you take that oxygen away from anti Democratic again,
01:02:30
lowercase D Democrat impulses on the right and the left.
01:02:35
And so that's that's what motivated me to jump in.
01:02:37
And frankly, if you look at the rest of the field in California
01:02:40
right now, the two leading Republicans are going as hard
01:02:42
right as they can, catering to Trump and trying to be the
01:02:44
standard bearer of the modern movement.
01:02:46
I don't know. Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco are
01:02:48
like, you know. Hilton's like ATV sort.
01:02:50
Of he was a Fox News, Yeah. Not the main one even like yeah,
01:02:54
but. Yeah, sorry.
01:02:55
And then and then the other leading Dems, at least up to
01:02:59
this point, have been basically just trying to be the most anti
01:03:03
Trump possible, which I understand.
01:03:05
I mean, I agree with them philosophically and say many of
01:03:09
the same things. But if that's your whole message
01:03:12
and you just know what you're against or you I think
01:03:15
incorrectly try to pretend that Trump is the reason that
01:03:19
California is struggling, which is just not.
01:03:23
It's not. It's not Trump and it's, you
01:03:25
know, frankly, it's not even, I don't even think you can blame
01:03:28
tech for our problems. I'm not saying that tech has
01:03:31
been perfect or shouldn't do more.
01:03:32
Believe me, tech should. And it should be regulated.
01:03:34
And all those things are true. And Trump is awful and that's
01:03:37
true. But none of that's like the
01:03:39
reason that our public schools are underperforming for low
01:03:42
income students or we've increased spending by 75% and
01:03:47
homelessness hasn't gone down or that crime is what it like.
01:03:51
These are just not connected. And it's so much easier to just
01:03:55
say, oh, it's Trump or it's the billionaires or for the guys on
01:03:58
the right to say it's these failed Democrats.
01:04:00
We need to start getting more specific about what are the
01:04:03
actual policies that are in the way or that need to be changed
01:04:06
to make our lives better. Mayor Mahan, thank you so much
01:04:09
for coming on the show. Thanks for having fun, it's good
01:04:11
to see you. That's the newcomer podcast.
01:04:14
Thanks so much to Matt Mahan for coming out to New York and
01:04:16
recording with me. I think he might have been in
01:04:18
town for The Daily Show, but happy to have him on the
01:04:21
newcomer podcast. While he was here.
01:04:23
I had a lot of fun, like comment, subscribe.
01:04:26
As you know, this is a growing YouTube channel.
01:04:28
I also have another podcast called this Ruble Valley Show
01:04:30
with Max Child and James Wilsterman.
01:04:32
I think it's pretty funny. It's a very different vibe.
01:04:34
It's, you know, a host show for doing power rankings.
01:04:37
You know we want to be the ringer if TBPN is Sports Center
01:04:41
for tech, we want to be the ringer for tech.
01:04:43
So you know this this is hard hitting interviews.
01:04:47
That's fun chat show together. You can have you know your
01:04:49
vegetables and your your cake yeah Anyway, you can find me on
01:04:54
slep stack at newcomer.co and we'll see you with some great
01:04:56
episodes coming up. I'm excited at the pipeline and
01:04:58
guests we have coming and please comment suggest people we should
01:05:01
have on the show. I'm just getting sassed.
01:05:03
People are sassing me more in the beginning.
01:05:04
I haven't improved that much. So give me your feedback and
01:05:08
thanks. Thanks for following this
01:05:09
growing channel.