Matt Mahan’s – Matt Mahan enters California’s 2026 governor race with a tech résumé that once powered startups, but now risks becoming a political liability. From major Silicon Valley-backed funding to labor criticism and polling that hasn’t matched early momentum, the quest
When Matt Mahan stepped onto The Daily Show set, he didn’t even get a full minute before Jon Stewart started turning his business past into a political test. Stewart asked about Mahan’s startup days. Mahan pivoted—slowly and with the careful smile of a candidate trying not to step on a landmine.
“I was in the startup world,” Mahan said. “Before that though I was a public school teacher.” The crowd applauded, and Mahan answered the trap with a stiff, practiced laugh: “Teaching? 2008.” Stewart pressed, “To do what?” Mahan said, “To get into the tech world.”
Stewart’s follow-up came sharp: “You son of a bitch.”
In the March 2026 interview. Mahan later told me that the problem wasn’t that he was wrong about his history—it was that he could get pinned into a single label. He described backstage conversations with Stewart as a reason he became wary of being “pigeonhol[ed]” as “Oh. you Silicon Valley guys.” He said he wanted Stewart’s audience to understand “those stereotypes are huge oversimplifications.”.
But the very facts of Mahan’s career have become fuel for a counter-story. At 43, he’s running for California’s highest office with billionaire-backed support and a record shaped by tech sensibilities. And in a state where anti-tech sentiment has surged. that combination has made it hard to outrun the reputation he’s trying to shed.
Mahan’s campaign burst onto the scene in January. drawing maximum donations from figures including Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Trump supporter and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. By February. a slate of venture capitalists and CEOs backing Mahan’s independent expenditure committee ran a 30-second ad on his behalf during the Super Bowl.
Mahan defends the donor profile as geography, not policy. “It’s not shocking that as the mayor of the capital of Silicon Valley, my early donors would disproportionately come from Silicon Valley,” he told me. “It doesn’t mean that, in any way, I’m catering to the interests of the industry.”
For critics, the optics are not so easily separated from the substance. Mahan’s business-friendly positions—centered on a no new taxes pledge and firm opposition to a California billionaire tax—have fed the “Silicon Valley guy” narrative. Tom Steyer, a fellow candidate and an actual billionaire himself, pushed that framing after Mahan’s first campaign finance report. “Californians deserve a governor who will stand up to corporate power. not bend the knee to it. ” Steyer said in a statement.
The challenge is that Mahan isn’t the only person in a crowded field. On June 2, California voters will choose which two candidates advance to the general election in November. For Mahan. the primary is turning into a test of whether the same donors and business discipline that helped him build campaigns will help him break through suspicion.
Underneath the political soundbites is a life that starts far from Silicon Valley wealth. Mahan grew up about an hour south of San Jose in Watsonville. a farm-country hometown where his mother worked as a teacher and his father as a mailman. He commuted hours a day to a “swanky San Jose private high school” thanks to a work-study program for low-income kids.
At Harvard, he rose through student government. He eventually succeeded Rohit Chopra—the future chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Board—as president of the student council. Nick Josefowitz, a friend from that period, remembers Mahan as an idealist who took those responsibilities seriously. Josefowitz recalled Mahan negotiating with the school to expand the number of emergency phones around campus and fighting to extend dorm parties until 2 am.
Josefowitz. who is now CEO of the energy affordability non-profit Permit Power. says Mahan’s upbringing in an agricultural community away from elite campus life made him unusually focused on opportunity. “He was acutely aware there were many. many kids who were his neighbors growing up and his friends growing up. who didn’t have those same opportunities. ” Josefowitz said.
A Harvard Crimson profile from 2005 captured the mood of disillusionment. Mahan told the paper: “I think it’s so sad that the vast majority of Harvard students will go into a very lucrative profession. do a little bit of community service on the side to feel better about their lives. [and] do nothing to change the underlying structures that have produced them.”.
Instead of moving straight into law, Mahan taught for two years in East San Jose. He has said Zuckerberg—his dormmate—steered him away from law school. “He said, ‘If you want to change the world, don’t be a lawyer. Go into tech,’” Mahan told KQED.
Within three years of graduation. he joined Causes. an app that let people start their own petitions and fundraisers on Facebook. Mahan became its CEO. In 2014, Causes was folded into Brigade, a social network for civic discourse co-founded by Mahan and Parker. Parker funded Brigade in a $9.3 million Series A round, and Mahan served as CEO.
Josefowitz described the shared goal of those ventures: giving people power over political and social causes “without having to go through all these intermediaries who had their own agendas.” He has remained close with Mahan and volunteered as a policy advisor on the campaign.
By 2020, Mahan and Parker had sold Brigade. He and his wife, Silvia—also a Harvard graduate—were settling down with their first child. As the costs of living and local pressures built, Mahan began asking himself what had gone wrong: “You just start to wonder: What has gone wrong?” he said.
A seat opened on the San Jose city council in that same period, and Mahan ran and won. Less than two years later, he was elected mayor in what he described as an upset victory after promising accountability in local government.
As mayor, his tech roots showed up in the mechanics of governance. He launched public-facing dashboards tracking San Jose’s progress on issues including housing production and community safety. He describes the approach as “performance management.”
In recent years, Mahan has touted results such as making San Jose the safest big city in the country and reducing unsheltered homelessness. But the tactics have also triggered backlash, including a policy that allowed police to arrest homeless people for repeatedly refusing shelter.
He has also been visibly bullish on AI. In 2023, Mahan launched the GovAI coalition, a national group representing hundreds of government agencies working on responsible use of AI. In San Jose, he has deployed AI tools to speed city buses and identify potholes. He has also backed data center development that other communities have resisted. criticizing what he sees as a kneejerk impulse to blockade the industry.
“Technologies come along and just completely remake labor markets over time,” Mahan told me, comparing AI to the invention of the tractor. “It’s a fool’s errand to go out and try to stop it from happening. We need to shape it.”
That kind of framing may sound like responsible adaptation to supporters. To opponents, it reads like an insistence that tech interests should steer public policy. The political battle over Mahan’s identity became sharper when he joined the governor’s race late.
Mahan entered the race only after donors—angry over the proposed California billionaire tax—tried unsuccessfully to recruit him as a congressional challenger to Rep. Ro Khanna. When Mahan announced his candidacy for governor. he criticized other candidates’ approach as “tired playbook. ” saying: “They’re either running against Trump or they’re running in his image.”.
He positioned himself as the field’s moderate option. arguing that Democrats had fueled Trump by failing to deliver on promises. “The best resistance is delivering results,” he told me. He added that leadership has failed on basic metrics: “When you lead the country in most expensive housing. second most expensive energy. highest rates of homelessness and overdose. highest level of retail theft. at some point. you are enabling this would-be dictator.”.
In this race, Mahan’s tech money is not just money—it’s a story line. Democratic Assemblymember Ash Kalra said Mahan was “handpicked” by the tech elite, telling the San Jose Spotlight that “They want someone who is going to be obedient to them.”
Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, told Bloomberg Mahan would be a “disaster” as governor. Gonzalez’s stance is especially pointed in a state where labor influence matters; Mahan’s father was in a union. but Mahan has clashed with local unions in San Jose. including over contract negotiations. On social media, the federation has cast him as “just more AI BS.”.
Mahan’s critics also say his early momentum didn’t deliver what supporters promised. Polling has not given him a breakthrough. “Today, few polls have shown Mahan attracting even 10 percent of the vote share,” the article notes.
A Silicon Valley donor familiar with the campaign described mistrust growing as results lagged. “You can make whatever promises you want, but if it’s not followed up with reality, then people lose confidence in you,” the donor said. “Once you lose credibility, it’s a death spiral.”
The campaign has also undergone restructuring. In April, Mahan and his former advisor, Eric Jaye, parted ways. Early proponents have also shifted. The New York Times reported that Brin. in particular. did not follow up on his $1 million donation to Mahan’s independent expenditure committee. Brin instead sent $40,000 to Steve Hilton, the leading Republican candidate.
The online fallout has added another layer. Brin’s girlfriend, the influencer Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto, compared Mahan to “a wooden spoon” online. Mahan briefly tried to own the label in a post, saying he “won’t melt under pressure.”
Mahan has also faced flak for ties to Republicans. including Joe Lonsdale. who a Democratic operative in California described as a “boogeyman on the left.” The operative said the money would be worthless because of political costs: “That money is pretty much worthless because of all the shit you’re going to get for it. ” the operative said. “You’re trying to win a Democratic primary here.”.
Mahan’s response is familiar. He told me: “I jumped into this race because Californians shouldn’t have to choose between more MAGA or more of the same.”
He also rejects criticism that he is too cozy with tech. He casts himself as “the only candidate in the race who has actively regulated tech.” His argument is narrower than critics want it to be: he says he regulated how his own government uses tech. He says San Jose deletes license plate data and camera footage within 30 days and doesn’t use facial recognition technology as part of its object detection pilots to spot potholes.
Setting municipal privacy policies, though, is not the same as governing statewide. California. after all. passed the country’s first privacy law and. more recently. passed the country’s first major AI safety law. Governor Gavin Newsom signed both bills despite furious opposition from the tech industry and amid persistent inaction in Congress.
During Newsom’s tenure. California became a de facto tech regulator. writing many rules of the road that govern tech across the country even when the industry has resisted them. That puts a clean question in front of voters: whether they believe Mahan—despite industry ties and support—would be ready to take the same kind of weighty decisions at the governor level.
For now, Mahan remains an underdog. He is behind fellow Democrats Xavier Becerra and Steyer, as well as his Republican opponent Steve Hilton. But his bid has become something more than a longshot run. It is. in the end. a referendum on whether a Silicon Valley pedigree still reads as a credential in California politics—or as a warning label.
Matt Mahan San Jose mayor California governor race 2026 Silicon Valley tech backlash Sergey Brin Joe Lonsdale Palantir venture capital campaign finance independent expenditure committee homelessness policy GovAI coalition performance management AI safety law privacy law Steve Hilton Xavier Becerra Tom Steyer Ash Kalra Lorena Gonzalez