Interview Only w/ Matt Mahan - Good Democratic Governance Is The Best Resistance To Trumpism

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As many of you know, I have spent a lot of time featuring candidates for California governor. I feature candidates for a lot of offices, but I've been especially interested in, you know, when you have an open race for the fourth largest economy in the world now. It's creeping up to number four. Maybe my next guest will confirm for me if it's moved from fifth to fourth now. But we haven't, I mean, there's an open contest and there's really no, even in the previous years, right? You know, Gavin Newsom was sort of, it was there in waiting. Jerry Brown before that was there in waiting. You know, really not since arguably 1998. I had a open race for the California governorship that looks truly open. And obviously with the all party primary, it makes everything kind of fascinating. And so the candidate that's coming on today is the mayor of San Jose, he's a Democrat, Matt Mayan. And he is somebody that I know a lot of, a lot of folks are, or see as somebody that that might be. That might have the ability to unite the Democratic coalition in a way. It's a very fractured primary at the moment. A lot of expectations, a lot of interesting supporters that he has. So wanted to get to know the mayor, Mayor Mayan. Welcome to the top cast. Chuck, thanks so much for having me on. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Well, let me start with this. So why'd you run for mayor when you when you decided to become mayor of San Jose? What got you into politics in general? And what made you want to run for mayor San Jose? Yeah, you know, Chuck, my interest in politics goes back to my childhood. I grew up in a little farming town in California called Watsonville for those who don't know it. It's where your strawberries come from. And like a lot of rural communities, we had, we had big challenges, high unemployment, a lot of crime, our local high school had a higher dropout rate than graduation rate. And it was a work study scholarship on literally on the other side of a mountain range in San Jose and the heart of Silicon Valley that gave me a really big opportunity in my life to branch out and be able to go to a great college. I really just changed the trajectory of my life. And I was always interested in the differences between my hometown with all of its challenges and Silicon Valley with all of its growth and opportunity. I started reading the local newspaper went to a high school that was very into service and civic engagement. My parents were into civic engagement. My mom was a teacher. My dad was a mailman. And I was telling age I came to this belief that politics and government is the area where we work out the big questions, solve the big problems. And it's kind of the only game in town for really tackling the big things that create opportunity for people, which is what I'm really interested in. So I ended up being a public school teacher for a while, worked in tech for a while, but ultimately found myself drawn back to the place where I was living and raising a family San Jose, where it just felt like we kept asking people to raise their taxes. And the outcomes weren't getting any better. And I thought I'm going to jump in and see if I can do this a little differently. So let's talk about your decision run for governor. You were in some ways, I know a lot of people reached out to you wanted you to run. There's a lot of candidates in this race. You could have, you know, so I'm going to ask this, what about the other candidates in the race, particularly on the, in your party on the democratic side. What are they missing that you think you bring to this race? Yeah, I was watching the race closely was not planning to run, sort of watched it all of last year. And then early this year, realized there was a big void in the conversation, particularly in the more moderate problem solver lane to try to bring people together. And it just, I guess a few things felt missing one, I'm the only current mayor and executive with both public and private sector executive experience in the race. I think we earn a moment where the next governor of California has to be very execution focused. We don't have a revenue problem. We have an execution and accountability problem, which I'm sure we'll talk more about. Number two, I'm worried about the partisan divide in this country and rising populism on the right and the left and people sort of just giving easy answers. And so in my party on the left right now in California, at least it's it's invoked to say, well, all of our problems in California are just because of Donald Trump or just because of the tech billionaires. And look, I've got plenty of critiques of both, but the truth is we've got a lot of resources, a lot of assets, we've increased spending in the state of California by 75% or 150 billion dollars in just the last six years. And I'm the only Democrat in this race saying we need to demand that our state government do better before we ask people to pay more. And I've got a track record as mayor of the largest city in northern California of doing now. We didn't raise taxes, but we dramatically changed the level of crime we reduced it and became the safest big city in the country. Same with reducing homelessness, getting housing built. And I just I think accountability is what the state needs and I didn't hear anybody else talking about it. You know, it's interesting. I know that I spent a little bit of time in San Jose and one of the it there are times when you're in the city that you you can't you're unaware that silicon valleys right there. And I'll be honest, I the first you know, I expected more of a presence in a positive way and it isn't there. It's always interesting. Yeah, that that that the silicon valley workers don't really live in San Jose. It's actually the opposite. It's the opposite. We house the work for San Jose was built as the bedroom community. There's a lot of people that seem to commute. It seemed to commute right all the way closer to the same Cisco. Yeah, so historically what happened was the defense industry invested early and well out of that came the semiconductor industry and the jobs were actually closer to Stanford or Palo Alto, which is almost the midpoint between San Jose and San Francisco. San Jose was all agriculture up until the World War two boom. But in the 60s and 70s all of that that value used to be called the Valley of hearts delay all of those orchards got turned into single family home neighborhoods. And so San Jose is one million people in the heart of Silicon Valley, but it is the it is the residential center of the valley. It's where text workforce lives. It's where their kids go to school. They go to the park, the library, but what we've been doing in recent years that I'm really excited about is we're building an urban center in our downtown and it's starting to grow. We're getting housing built Silicon Valley has always lacked a proper downtown or urban center. And that's now becoming that San Jose downtown. But you're right. It's it's a more sprawling. It's not like New York or Chicago or one of our you know what would you attribute this to the why hasn't because I looked at it. I'm I just surprised that the companies themselves. You know, I expected to see the Facebook arena, the arts, the Apple Arts Center, you know, I mean, I'm, you know, which is what you see in other cities where the industry is sort of connected to the community. And I always it is felt as if and I'm just curious if you believe this or maybe you've improved you feel like you can improve this, which is that the big companies of Silicon Valley haven't necessarily invested in San Jose in the way you might expect them to. Yeah, I think that these I worked in the tech sector building civic tech tools helping people essentially organize and be civically active and hold their elected officials accountable and I can tell you from working. in the space for quite a few years, that technologists don't start from the perspective of politics or the kind of presence that you're talking about or even brand building. Yeah, I know it's sort of the myth, although I think kind of the reality of tech that it's much more people who are tinkers and ventors who are literally starting in a garage and they're interested in creating something new and powerful that gives you a new capability that can solve a problem. And it's sort of like the, all the rest, the revenue, profit, sponsorships, marketing, politics is super secondary. For years, the tech sector had a mutual avoidance with government and just wanted to be left alone. It's actually a very libertarian sector. And so whether you're in San Francisco, I think it still is a libertarian mindset. I mean, you know, they stole the mindset. It's hilarious. We do have some exceptions though. I have to give a huge shout out to Adobe headquartered in downtown San Jose, thousands of employees. They contribute a ton to the community. They're always sponsoring things, investing in arts and culture. So, but they are liars. Why do you think they're the exception? Because they do. And the minute you said that, it dawned on me. I remember seeing a lot of the Adobe brand. Yeah, although I've got to say, same for Cisco, which is here in San Jose, I think it depends on the maturity of the company and the maturity of the sub industry. If it's a new robotics company or vertical takeoff and landing vehicle, they're just focused on trying to get the tech to work. They're trying to actually figure out as they're a market for this thing and does it work. Once a company has been around 20, 30 years as profitable as more mature, they're a lot more likely to actually look around and say, okay, how do we show up in the community? What are our responsibilities? But you're right. I mean, I think what you're pointing out is an industry that until recently, at least has been sort of being, you know, nascent, it just wasn't a totally mature. And I mean, I guess if you were to describe them as a person, you'd say they're kind of introverted. They're just, they don't, and I don't, I don't, I don't, right, I don't buy that it's like some nefarious reason they don't want to contribute to a community. It's just this, it's not like you see with other industries. And I remember it feels, I guess I would, it feels as if San Jose should be benefiting more than they are. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, that's my pitch. So for example, we have a Super Bowl and World Cup coming to San Jose to share, we just hosted Super Bowl World Cup's coming with six matches, actually March Madness this week. And I went around to our local employers and asked them to contribute to a fan experience to make it open and accessible to all of our residents. So that even residents who couldn't afford a ticket to one of the big games could have a great experience. We raised about $5 million from local employers, mostly tech employers, but not all view that as being their sort of civic responsibility. I'll give you another example I'm really proud of. We've created something called AI for all. I am concerned as I think most people are that AI is coming quickly. It's, it's very powerful. It could do a lot of good. It could also do a lot of harm. We worked with, reached out to and convinced three of the leading AI companies, Google Open AI and Anthropic to actually partner with our library system to make their tools freely accessible along with tutorials, in-person trainings, and really try to open up this technology and make it accessible for all of our residents. We have 700,000 people in San Jose with a library card, city of a million people, 70% of a library card. We want everybody in our city and ultimately everybody in the world needs to have access to these tools and the training and tech that they need to build a participate and share in this new emerging economy. If we don't get ahead of this, it's there's real risk of harming people. To me, there's two challenges with AI. There's accessibility. You just outlined that one, but there's also guardrails. And the industry doesn't want any. Maybe Anthropic is more open to guardrails and open AI. But ultimately, other than regulatory capture, I'm the political cynic here. You don't have to concur with that. I'm the cynic. I will say it. I think ultimately, usually in one of these instances, there's somebody that is willing to be pro-regulation as long as they get to do it on their terms, right? It becomes a bit of industry capture. So let me ask you this. What should-- because the state of California-- you guys decide on some guardrails. It potentially becomes the standard. It potentially can have that kind of impact. California has that kind of ability that it can have outsized impact on-- we're seeing it now. New York passed a law about surveillance pricing that you've got to let people know about surveillance pricing. So because New York has that law, you see companies, even if they're sending an offer to Oklahoma, they know it might be seen in New York, so they have to abide by the law. So the point being is certain states can have outsized influence when it comes to guardrails. What are the guardrails that you'd like to see state government? If you're governor, what would you be proposing for the AI industry? Yeah, it's a really important question. And I'm-- I have the benefit of being the only candidate in this race that has already had experience regulating AI. We use technology throughout San Jose. In fact, we've been on the leading edge of deploying AI to improve public services. We created something called the Gov AI Coalition that has grown from a handful of cities to over 900 public agencies that are convening and setting policy around the responsible and ethical use of AI. So what does that mean in practice? When we deploy a new tool like automated license plate readers, we have a responsibility for being totally transparent with the public. What do we collect? Where, when, why? How is the data used? Is it shared with anyone? We publish all that on our website. And we're very restrictive. We don't do facial recognition. That is an explicit regulation and standard. We don't keep the data indefinitely. In fact, with our automated license plate readers, we delete the data after 30 days. Unless it is still actively needed in a prosecution or investigation. And it's been kept specifically for that purpose. Otherwise, it's deleted because we don't want to build long-term profiles on people. I'm glad government is. Are you-- how do you guarantee that the company that you've contracted with to do this? Is it-- Well, we make them-- We make them try and contract with us on-- We do not. So in the case of just the license plate readers, we make sure we own the data so it can't be shared by the company. They don't control it. We do. It's in our server. And so I think the importance of being out in front and testing and using these tools in government is so that we don't get blindsided, so that we learn and are in a position to understand the tools so that we can effectively regulate them. And I think that the state of California over the coming years is going to have to create the regulatory framework around privacy, data security, protecting children, all in this new context of AI. And I think the biggest thing is what you referenced in your New York example. Transparency is what I think is the most important starting place. There may be specific things that we need to say, yes, you can do this and no, you can't do that. But you need to know when AI is being used. You want to know if a video is AI generated or not. So I think that sort of transparency and truth in labeling almost, if you will, to use an analogy from a different sector. I think that's really important. This episode of The Chuck Todd Cast is brought to you by Soul. So if you love that end of the day, unwind, but hate banging over, Soul's out of office is for you. These sparkling THC drinks and gummies give you the same relaxed social feeling without the alcohol, without the calories, and without the crash. Soul is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy. Soul specializes in delicious hemp derived THC and CBD products designed to boost your mood and help you unwind. Their best selling out of office gummies were designed to provide a mild, relaxing buzz, boost your mood and enhance creativity and relaxation. With five different strengths, you can tailor the dose to fit your vibe. So also has a variety of products specifically designed to help you get a better nights rest, including their top selling sleepy gummies, a fan favorite for deep resturous sleep. Look, I have made no secret. I am a believer in this stuff in cannabis and hemp derived. I do not partake in alcohol for the most part. I think this stuff is a lot safer than alcohol, a lot less addictive than alcohol. And yes, I have to say I love these drinks. It is the glass of wine. And you know, after work, that's what this is. So no hangover and no excess calories like this. I'm a big fan. So bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to soul today. Right now, soul is offering my audience. 30% off your entire order. Go to get soul.com and use the word, podcast, that's get soul.com promo code, podcast for 30% off. And yes, I too am a customer. (upbeat music) Let me ask you this. Why do you think a fairly large majority of the country is essentially negative on AI? Well, I think it's the unknown. I think it's scary to, I think there are a couple of things that we're an outlier with other Western, democracies, by the way on this. Like we're AI is more unpopular in the United States than it is in other places where there's been some public opinion research. So does see like we're a little bit more. We're on the forefront of it. So we may just be the leading indicator, maybe that is on the countries. I mean, we have the world's leading AI companies in the US. So we're feeling it first. Yeah. I think we're feeling it first. Yeah. We're right to be concerned. And I think one area of concern is privacy. And that's where total transparency around what you collect and how it's used and whether or not it's stored. All of that is right. I use saying the right thing, but let me, let me pause you now. Let me pause you there and privacy. Because this has been an issue for 20 years with Silicon Valley. And the development of social media platforms was we were supposed to have all these concerns. And we'd hear plenty of people talking about these concerns. And then the companies themselves didn't behave. And you know, I personally, I think the reason why there's no trust with AI and some is because the same people that brought you social media, which has been an utter disaster for our information ecosystem. Are the ones bringing you AI and we're supposed to feel good about this? Like I just, that's what frustrates me is the, we're going through the same conversations we had at the, at the advent of social media and, you know, because at first it was awesome. And then of course, after the air, we were like, whoa, this could be weaponized and manipulated. Now we're, and now we're, now it's already toothpaste out of the tube. There's nothing we can do about it. And how do we ensure this doesn't happen with AI? Well, Chuck, I mean, look, I'm not, I'm not here to defend social media. And when I'm trying to make you, but I do want, I do want government to be more skeptical and put these guys a bit through a little bit more of the ringer, if you will. Yeah. Well, and I think there's, okay, so there's, there's a couple of different things here. When there's an actual violation of people's privacy, collecting their data, using it in ways that they have not authorized, there needs to be strict accountability. Remember, Janellinica being an example of a firm that scraped a bunch of data, used it a ways people weren't aware of. And I believe they were fined $5 billion. And that's appropriate. There ought to be serious law enforcement around the regulations we put in place around personally identifying information, PII. And there's a whole body of law around that that needs to be enforced by regulators. And that has to be done. When it comes to the echo chambers of social media, it, you start to get into a, a difficult place. And I think it's important to be skeptical and to think about, but you also don't want to impose on people's free speech. One of the things that is interesting is the crowd sourcing of community notes on X, where somebody can actually say, well, this, this is not the whole story. Click here to learn more. And so I think there's kind of a evolving space of how do we actually deal with misinformation? And that's a harder one because, you know, you're miss, you're, what you call misinformation, maybe somebody else saying, well, that's my opinion. And so it becomes hard to police the truth. And I think there are limits there to what government or technology can do. And ensuring that what people are saying is truthful and accurate. I, at some point here, you said a regulatory environment that needs to be enforced. The Cambridge Analytica's of the world need to be sued and held accountable, maybe criminally liable. But at some point, it's also up to us to think through our public education system about media literacy, critical thinking, you know, training and teaching people so that they don't just passively hear something and think, oh, that must be, that must be true. It is, it's on steroids. I'll grant you this. But keep in mind when the country was founded, everybody was running off pamphlets in the basement. Oh, yeah. Whatever that wanted. And we look, we've always, we've always dealt with this issue of misinformation. This is not a problem. I, and I, and I, it makes me happy to hear you put it in those terms because that is something I'd like to frequently remind people of, you know, I'm, you say, our media is polarised. It's a media has been polarized for a majority of our country's history. We just had a brief period called the Cold War where we weren't in. We can, we can have an entire debate about why that was for an outlaw period of 16 years. We had a, we were, you know, we kept our fringes at the side. All right. I'm going to get off social, the Silicon Valley issues and get to something that is you're doing in San Jose, two issues that you're tackling in San Jose that are also issues that this, to deal with homelessness and affordable housing. And the things you're trying to do, some people love them and you're, some people are pushing back at you. I mean, you know, there's put, you get, you know, in some ways that, that means you're trying something. If you don't have people on both sides of something, it means you're not trying hard enough in my opinion. So you're trying something. Tell me about it. Tell me about homelessness. What do you think you're getting right in San Jose that you can take statewide? Yeah. Well, first of all, the starting point on this as I came into office was things just kept getting worse year after year, even though we were spending more and more of the state had spent over $30 billion, even just in a city like San Jose, we were spending $100 million a year. Our county had passed a billion dollar bond. And I'm, I try to be a data driven guy. It's important to have a governing philosophy and some core, and core values, but then on top of that, you've got to actually look at data and what works in practice and everything was going in the wrong direction. We had this community plan to end homelessness in San Jose. They didn't have any math behind it. And as I did the back of the envelope math, what I found was what we were doing was never going to solve the problem. We would have needed $6 billion in 20 years just to address the people on our streets at that moment. And so we moved away from the slowest, most expensive solution, which was using public dollars to build brand new apartments for folks at a million dollars a door, which is 30% higher than it costs the private marketplace to build new housing. And over six years to build, and we pivoted to building basic, dignified shelter. We converted old motels, bought prefabricated modular units. What they all have in common is we're giving people a safe, dignified place, a room with a door that locks access to services, case management, onsite security, meals, the basic things people need to stabilize and start to turn their lives around. And what we have found in the last few years of scaling up safe and dignified shelter with services is that we've been able to move thousands of people in from these unmanaged tenten campments that have been just where people are living in human misery and dying at very high rates. We've reduced the number of people who were dying. We've reduced the amount of health issues and we've given people a real shot. In fact, 28% of the people we've brought indoors over the last few years have already graduated to permanent housing because they were able to take advantage of the services we were offering. So San Jose by pivoting and looking at the data and thinking differently has led the state of California and reducing the number of people living outside tenten campments by about one third. And for the first time in our history, a majority of people who are homeless in San Jose will be living indoors, not outdoors. And you know, it's very rich of folks to criticize this, but they're not the ones living in dying in misery and attempting campment without even access to a bathroom. And the truth is cities like New York and Boston and Chicago have similar rates of homelessness, but the differences they build shelter capacity. They don't leave people to die on the streets because you can't do that in a place with a cold winter. But in California, we've been complacent. We never built the shelter capacity to bring people indoors. So we think this is an issue in San Francisco, LA, San Diego that they need more shelter capacity. Well, look, the day, yeah, I mean, the data is so clear. Chuck, I mean, we are 12% of the nation's population. We have over 40% of the people who live outside in the country on our streets. We haven't built enough shelter. We haven't built enough treatment capacity. And even when we have those beds, we have been reticent to hold people accountable for coming indoors. Now, I do want to note something else here. We can get into all the addiction and mental illness points, but a place where I agree whole heartedly with the advocates in this case is that we have broken the housing market in California and the rent is two damn expense. So we actually agree on that. You're supposed to say the rent is two damn high. Remember, there was that political party that got that's what it is to high. He was I missed that guy. I don't remember, but he was the rent is two damn high guy. I think he ran for mayor of New York City about 10 years ago, but it's that's I think people feel that way in a lot of places. Yeah. So I mean, look, that's part of the overarching problem here is that we don't have enough housing that is affordable, but I would also say that's largely a public policy failure. We have the slowest permitting times, the most aggressive environmental laws, the highest impact fees. I mean, we just we've made it so slow and expensive to build that the housing market isn't keeping up with demand and actually building housing affordably for people. We ask this because you know, I can we have environmental regulation that's just faster? Like, you know, I hate that the choice becomes, well, we just won't do this environmental impact statement because it slows things down. Well, why does it have to slow things down? Why can't we have? Why can't you both have those things, but in a timely capacity? What is the, and maybe you don't know the answer to this? And I would understand if you didn't. But that's always been one of my, you know, it's always presented as a choice. Well, either you can have an environmental impact, you know, that, or that slows things down. No, well, why does it have to, why does it slow things down? Yeah, no, I agree with you. I don't think it needs to be either or at all. Now I do think there's a big difference between wanting to build out in green field, open space outside of a growth boundary. If you want to build out in the, in the valleys and the hills of California, that probably should take an environmental review process that is quite a bit more robust and takes more time than if you want to do infill development. My big complaint has been even in our urbanized areas, where we have roads and sewers, and we're talking about building on a surface parking lot or a place that is adjacent to a bunch of urbanized development. We will still take, at least up until very recently, on almost all projects, have taken over a year to go through environmental. And our definition of environmental, just to be clear, with California's Environmental Quality Act, Sikwa, is so much broader than what you might imagine is the environment. It's not clean air, clean water. It's, it goes far beyond that. It is noise impacts, traffic impacts, shadows, historic registries, Native American remains in the ground. I mean, just an endless list of potential impacts, with a lot of discretion or debate over what are the right mitigations. And I think we've got to simplify that. Now it's not to say we shouldn't, you know, check if you're destroying a historic building. Right. Sure. That's valid. But it can't take as long as it does. And this is where I actually think technology can be really helpful. It ought to be that we have inventory things in advance. And it doesn't take a year to do a one off bespoke study where we have this cottage industry of consultants who make millions of dollars taking a year or more to study everything. We ought to be able to run it against a database and say, okay, here's, here's how many people are living here. Here's the decibel level. You can't feel it and it can't be a nail after, you know, nine, eight, eight, eight, whatever. I'm going to make a really awkward comparison here. And you could say I'm crazy. And I hope it doesn't get you in trouble. But it's, I sort of feel about it the way I feel. There should be a time because you're right. This stuff can be endless when it comes to like waiting for a permit to be approved and all this stuff. It's like, frankly, when I'm watching a sporting event and there's instant replay. If it's taking you so long to decide whether something is in or out, then whatever the call was is the call. And it's like, you just time is up. You know, there it's, it's like, I almost feel that way about it. Instead of an endless hit being, it's almost like people want to have more time so they can find something that's wrong versus, look, you've got a finite amount of time. This is a reasonable amount of time. And if it doesn't, you don't discover it within this amount of time, then it's, it's probably not there. And if you miss it, that's on you. And eventually you're going to be held accountable for missing it. Yeah. And that exactly. And actually that's part of my plan. I put up my big housing plan on man from california.com. And it's my, you know, 15 point plan for how we unbreak the housing market in California. One of the 15 points is to require that conforming projects for infill get that permit within the building permit within 30 days. And it's just they're just going to get it. You find out within 30 days. Like, you know, whatever it is so that you can move on, you know, yeah, totally. I also think we're so risk averse and worried about litigation. And particularly California is probably the most litigious place on earth that we were scared of ever making a mistake. I mean, I would rather that we bias toward action when we have a crisis like our shortage of housing and our affordability crisis. It's pushing working families to the brain, causing people to leave our state creating so much stress and heartache for folks. Let's bias toward action, particularly when you're in an urban area. Let's build. Where are you on? Look, one of the first places that I learned about ADUs, okay? These are is San Jose. I feel like I get you guys were on the cutting edge of this. I'm of mixed minds on this. I just think that that I can see the, I can see the, the immediate, immediate utility of it and the potential. Like, do we? I think we need to update our landlord laws. We need to update our, there's going to be some issues that come into play about, okay, who's got access to a driveway, who's got access to a yard, right? Do you think we are, we have enough up to date laws to protect both tenants and owners here when it comes to these ADUs? My sense is that in California, we do. I mean, I'm always open to learning more and changing my opinion based on real data. I mean, we have very strong renter or tenant protections. Some might argue though that they're so strong that they're anti-owners. Yeah, that, you got to have a balance here that if you have a problem tenant and you know, it's going to take you three years to deal with it, that's a big problem. That's too far. So then that's too much. Yeah, and I think particularly so if it's a unit in your backyard. Now, a lot of people who are building ADUs are building them for family members, but I mean, I hear you. I do think, you know, just common sense wise, we can go, we can go look at the law and the process and try to get better data on this. But if you've built an accessory dwelling unit and an in-law unit in your backyard and somebody's not paying the rent or they're being a bad actor and this is, you know, your yard, your home, your primary residence, I do think you need the ability to tell the person that they that they've got to vacate the promise that being said, you need some kind of greatest period for the person to pack up and go. So, you know, striking that balance again, kind of what what the job of policymakers is. I will tell you though, in a city like San Jose that is relatively suburban and sprawling. You've said you've been here. It's, it's, you know, a lot of single family home neighborhoods. ADUs are quite popular. In fact, 22%. They're a lot of them. Yeah, 22% of the new housing built in San Jose every year are as ADUs. And they give people flexibility. They can have a a family member, you have your your grandparent or your child returning from college who needs to save up in order to be able to break into the housing market. They can create income for folks. So that flexibility has been really valuable to a lot of families and I think we should encourage it. All right, let's talk about affordability. And I'm going to ask probably a question that you may think is a gotch. It's not meant to be. Are taxes too high in California? Are there too many taxes or taxes too high or is hey, it's California. Welcome, you know, it's a privilege to live here and you know, some things cost one. Taxes are really are high. We have the second highest taxes in the country. They are mostly very progressive, which I support. Those who make more earn more, do better in society should pay more back into the pot to help everybody else. So I don't mind at all. In fact, I very much support the fact that we have one of the most progressive tax structures in the country. In fact, you know, I would say about that is it is a it is a bit of a risk and a vulnerability. 40% of our end we charge an income tax. It's a major source of revenue for the state. 40% of that revenue, sometimes up to 50% comes from the top 1% of earners each year. So we are very concentrated and vulnerable to capital flight because it's the top earners who pay most of the revenue. We also have some of the oddly enough, some of the most regressive taxes. And so if anything where I would look to maybe, you know, modify things is something like our gas tax. So wealthier folks are buying EVs and are sort of homed in out gas tax by doing that. And that's a good thing. We want EV adoption. We want cleaner air. I'm all for it. But what's happening by default is those who can't afford EVs and are still driving gas powered vehicles and driving longer distances, which also happens to correlate with lower income communities like the one I grew up in rural communities in particular are paying the disproportionate share of the nation's highest gas taxes that go to to maintaining the roads. So that needs to be right sized. EV owners should be paying their fair share to maintain the roads. What is the calculation now? I remember about 10 years, 15 years ago now, the state of Oregon piloted a program that would sort of get rid of it, move from a gas tax to a user, basically road user fee. And the idea was you would get charged per mile that you used. And of course, the the the libertarian crown wind bonkers, right? What do you mean? That's, you know, privacy and all this stuff. But I understood the I understood the the larger idea. Well, we've got to figure out not everybody's going to be buying gas. So how do we how do we do this? And I know, you know, some states you get charged an annual fee if you're an electric vehicle. That's this. What should what what is your plan to do this? How would you level the playing field here? Yeah, my preference would be just when it comes to the road maintenance revenue that we that we just do a per vehicle fee because a mileage tax is also regressive like a gas tax. It really when you look for what you just mentioned when you, you know, uh, but working class person may have to drive more because they're the side hustle or whatever. Yeah, I had to drive, I had to go about two hours to get to a really good high school from my little town and my parents drove an hour and a half the other direction to get to their job. So I just, I think a flat fee. Now we do have a fee, we have a flat fee for EVs, but when you look at what's actually paid, it is set way too low. Our EV owners are paying on the order of $100 a year, our working class families driving a gas powered vehicle or contributing over 300 per year to them. So I would just write size that. But look, overall, let me answer you a bigger question on tax bill. Yeah, the average California is we it's it's high. We've also locked in a lot of expenditures and commitments. We have we have pension liabilities. We have a lot of infrastructure to maintain. My goal right now is and as governor, my goal would not be to would be explicitly not to raise or lower. Maybe we can write size to deal with some of the regressive taxation. My goal is to make sure we spend better. I think we can get 20, 30% more impact in terms of outcomes out of the dollars we're spending. And what I worry about in California is a complacency that has set in where Sacramento, our state government is is basically captured by highly organized interests. We have single party rule, my party. We've we have controlled every statewide office for 15 years now, a super majority in the legislature, the governor's office and so forth. And every year, revenues going up far faster than population growth or average income. And we're not getting better outcomes. I mean, we are literally spending 75% more than six years ago and not one outcome that matters is better. Housing costs are as as unaffordable as ever, secondized energy costs, highest unemployment rate, highest poverty rate. So the, you know, our public schools are lagging behind Mississippi and Louisiana and educating low income students. So we just we have we have got to demand better before we even think about asking people to pay more. This episode of the Chuck Todd cast is brought to you by Wild grain. Wild grain is the first bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries and fresh pastas. Plus all the items conveniently bake in 25 minutes or less, unlike many store brought options. 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It is worth giving wild grain a try. Right now wild grain is offering my listeners $30 off your first box. Plus free croissants for life. Come on. When you go to wild grain.com/todcast to start your subscription today, that's $30 off your first box and free croissants for life when you visit wild grain.com/todcast or simply use the promo code Todd cast at checkout. This is a sponsor I absolutely embrace. So use that code. There are some great pilot projects that they are doing down there. Kim Barkstale, former founder of NetScape for what it is worth is done some innovative work down there with phonics with teacher training. The young early reader stuff has been terrific and Mississippi in Alabama. Definitely take a look at that. Look, I'm not here to force a fight on you and force you to criticize somebody. But that's an implicit criticism of the last two Democratic governors. A little bit or certainly Democratic governance. Let me ask you this on Gavin Newsom. What's he gotten right and what's he gotten wrong? Well, I think what the governor has understood and been going to push on is in certain areas that we need reform and he's laid some of the groundwork and so let me tell you all I want to just be sure to give him give him credit. On education, there's a lack of accountability. He's proposed that we align accountability all the way up to the governor's office. Right now we have a separate superintendant of schools statewide who's elected and runs the Department of Education. The governor does not have executive authority over the education department. Huge problem. We're one of just a dozen states who has that structure. Would you like to get rid of the elected state public school instructor? Do you think that that's an office that probably shouldn't be an elected position? I don't know that it matters as long as basically what governor Newsom has proposed, which I agree with is keep the office, but have it be a sort of watchdog, umbudsman and advocate for parents. Don't have it be the executive authority over an entire like a controller or like the way a comptroller works with finances right here. Monitor monitor the spending to be the advocate for the parents and students, but the governor is the chief executive of the state and the Department of Education on a report directly up into the into the governor. So that's one I totally agree with. He sees the need for reform there on housing. We talked earlier. The governor and I are completely aligned on the importance of interim solutions. In fact, it's his state budgets that have helped fund the solutions that we've championed in San Jose now we've done it faster, better, more cost effectively than any other city on the state, but we're aligned there. He also recognizes the need for an alternative on treatment for addiction for mental health, put forward things like care court, proposition one, which expands treatment beds. My, the area where I think we differ is I am very, I'm very execution focused and I have been willing to take on members of my own party, highly organized interests. In some cases disagree with the governor, the most prominent example being prop 36 where I believe that a someone is repeatedly committing crime due to addiction. At some point they should be given a clear choice between treatment and jail. And that was an area where he and I just fundamentally disagreed. That's a philosophic difference. I've had a family member who spent time on the streets with addiction. So I maybe just have a different perspective on the level of intervention that's needed to save someone's life. But look, I just I think he's had a lot of the right directionally a lot of the right ideas. My focus though, it will be on following through and making sure people actually use care court actually implement prop 36 build those beds. And when we're when our execution is bad, when we're too slow and too expensive to execute a good idea, we have to be willing to do something I haven't seen anyone in Sacramento do enough of in recent years, which is take on the interest groups, the highly organized interests from trial lawyers to public sector unions to corporate interests who have a veto right now in Sacramento. And this is kind of becoming the case in our democracy everywhere. Highly organized interest have a veto over change because they're so organized and they don't want anything to change. They want to protect a status quo that protects them. So it's it's the vetoocracy that I'm worried about. And I just haven't seen anybody want to challenge that because it's painful. How much do you think the governor's been stifled by a by the super majority in the legislature? Well, it doesn't help, but look, I'm as a, as you know, my own my own person, a different, yeah, everybody is different. I would be more active in putting legislators on the spot and demanding results and getting behind candidates for the legislature who reflected a common sense problem solving mentality. Sounds like so if you get elected governor, you're going to be a little more active in state legislative races, both assembly and senate. I think we need. We need a significant change in the political culture of California one that is there's really centered on accountability for outcomes. I say this because this has been my experience as mayor of San Jose, where I have had to overcome the objections of highly organized interests who liked the city budget being spent the way that it was spent. I've had to overcome the opposition of colleagues on my city council who also were wedded to the same old way of doing things. And if you want to create change, it should always be rooted in, you know, solid core values and a clear sense of where you're trying to go, but you have to be willing to take on the big fights. And our inability to take on the big fight, it's and solve our problems despite spending more and more is frankly giving a lot of ammunition to the magma movement to a president that thinks that might makes right. are, you know, we talk about being the resistance and pushing back and fighting against Trumpism. And yet we're not minding the story here. If we don't fix our problems and show that our values actually deliver results for working people in practice, we don't have any credibility against this movement. The best way, the best case against magma movement or Trumpism is governance. It's best resistance. The best resistance is results. Yeah, no, I, I, uh, as somebody who considers himself an incrementalist and a pragmatist, that's, you know, I understand, I understand the passionate frustration that's out there in the, in some forms of magma movement. Not every, you know, there's some that are there for their own reasons, but there are others that are frustrated with the system. Hey, you know, there's a lot of people that I think find themselves in that camp. All right. I mean, let's land the plane here. Let's talk about the elephant in the room or the donkeys in the room and the math problem that the jungle primary is creating the pressure that I'm sure you're feeling. Many democratic candidates running for governor feeling because you've got two Republicans who both have just enough traction that the likelihood they could take the two slots, be one, two, and end up being, you know, it's Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, right? And there's, you know, this might be only 40% of the state wants a Republican, 60% may want a Democrat, but their choice may not be on the ballot because of so many Democrats splitting the vote. How much of a concern is this to you and how mindful of you are of this? You know, to be honest with you, I'm not that concerned about it. I think there's been a lot of inks filled on this. I think it is overblown. Most voters are not paying attention. You have people are busy doing their jobs, paying their bills, raising their kids. As voters start to tune in, you will see some consolidation right now undecided is beating everyone. And it's overwhelmingly democratic and independent voters who are undecided. When Republicans see the name on the ballot with the Republican next to it in a state where they haven't won statewide office in 15 years, they say, yeah, I like that guy who's a Republican. So we have a lot of time for this field to consolidate. And I jumped in because no one was saying what's wrong with the state of California. Everybody in my party wants to simply blame somebody else for the problem. And I think as Democrats, we have to remember that the best resistance is delivering results. And we have to take ownership of our public policy shortcomings and be really honest with voters that we can do better, but it's going to mean taking on the interest within our own party. It's going to mean changing things in a way that will always be popular. And so I just, I think I thought it was critically important to get into this race to speak to all of those undecided and disillusioned voters. There has been very low enthusiasm for the field up until now. People are now starting to tune in. And I'm saying something very different. And I think what you're going to see as we marched toward election day is people hear that message. I think it's going to resonate. I'm seeing that as I travel around the state. I was down on the border, you know, looking at the crisis of raw sewage flowing in to the country through the two on a river. I walked a skid row and we talked about the failures on homelessness, all to Dina and the palisades and our issues with how slow and expensive it is to build housing. As we go around the state and talk to people about what's broken and why and how to fix it. We're getting an enthusiastic response. My biggest challenge is most California is still on who I am. So thank you for letting me on the show. No, I get it. Look, Mayor, you're doing something that's quite difficult, which is to run from a mayor at one singular mayor seat, right? Anytime. I mean, it's the only thing harder I would argue is congressional is running from a congressional seat. But let me ask you this. You know, you're, I look, I'm somebody. I'm, I think both parties are broken. I'm somebody who thinks that frankly, the only way they're going to fix themselves is if they, if an independent of some sort or for a movement of some sort sort of, you know, voters demanded, there's a reason why the fastest growing party is no party. And I don't care what state in the union you go to. California's no exception, particularly with voters under the age of 30. You know, and to me, it's pretty logical, right? They've watched this. They've grown up in this polarized environment. Like neither party seems to want to solve a problem. They're just reacting, being, they're just reactionary politics. Why are you staying? Why do you stay as a Democrat? You could have run as a no party candidate. And in some ways, you are advocating for me. It sounds like a sort of more independent, you know, maybe it's small eye capital D is what you're going for. But why you know that the D next to your name, some people who want change will think, well, we've had Democratic governors 16 years in a row now, which is, I'm trying to, the last time California went longer than that. It I think you have to go back to the 30s. Do you worry that the D next to your name is not going to indicate to voters that you're a change candidate? Look, I'm a, I'm a different kind of Democrat who reserves the right to think, you know, think for myself, be independent in my thinking about policy issues and solutions. But I still believe the Democratic Party is, is fixable. I grew up in a party whose, whose core values I, I deeply identified with. I grew up in a working class community where, you know, my, my folks and most people we lived around were generally paycheck to paycheck. And when the party gets back to its roots and gets back to solving problems, we expand opportunity for people. We create better schools. We build infrastructure. We make sure the economy is inclusive and that people don't get left behind. We make sure people have access to healthcare. But we need to upgrade the, the platform because we're still trying to do things the way we did in the 20th century where the answer to every problem is, if we just have more tax revenue and more programs, we're going to fix it. At some point we've got to make government smarter, more responsive, more efficient. We're, we're the party that needs government to work. We believe in government as a force for good. That's why I'm a Democrat. I, I, my sense is, you know, many of the folks on the other side of the aisle, if you will, are, are more interested in just kind of hobbling and shrinking and making government as all as it can be. And that's, that's kind of an endless debate. But, but for where I'm at, it's not about making government smaller or bigger. It's especially in a state with the very high tax burden we have in California. Let's give people value for their dollars. Let's, let's make sure we're making people's lives better. So I just, yeah, I grew up in the Democratic Party. I, I believe in the core values. I think the party is salvageable. But I'm running as a different kind of Democrat to try to make the case for a different kind of politics, whereas by opponents in the race are kind of offering more of the same. No, I, the only thing that look, I get what you're trying to do. And my skepticism is not about what you're trying to do. My skepticism is in the voters, meaning voters right now are very in the moment, particularly Democratic voters. And they're very frustrated with the current presidential administration. And in many ways, right, there's, that's the, you know, and they gravitate towards the resistance warriors, particularly in a campaign, you know, I think if you put them in a focus group, a lot of them would agree with many of the premises you're saying. But you know, sometimes this is more emotional than intellectual. That's, that's your challenge. Do you think you're going to be, do you think that you're, you're not, that you could come up short because you don't bash Trump enough? I have a lot of faith in the common sense of, of the, of the voters of the people of California. I've knocked on well over 10,000 doors. I have spoken with tens of thousands of people over my six years now in public life. And I think when people start to tune into this race here with the candidates have to say, I think people's common sense intuition on this is that yes, we want to elect a Democrat who's going to fight for our values nationally. Somebody who understands that Trump is an existential threat to our values and our way of life. And we need to fight through the courts and through the bully pulpit and everything we can to offer an alternative. But I also think they, they understand. I think this is actually true across Democrats, Independents and moderate Republicans that in California, for most of our challenges around public schools, housing costs, energy costs, we can't blame anybody else. We need to take ownership of our mistakes. We need to take control of our own destiny. And we need to solve our problems because that's actually the best counter to this populist authoritarian strain in our politics. And I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about the so-called wealth tax given your answer you gave to me earlier about how the income, how much of the income tax revenue comes from a very tiny percentage of Californians. I'm guessing I have an idea of where you are in the wealth tax, but I'll let you articulate it. Yeah, my view of it is there are a number of other things we should be doing to make the tax code fairer and to make sure that we have a lot of money. sure that the wealthiest amongst us pay their fair share. And as you've heard, I'm worried about regressive taxation, income inequality and opportunity gaps. That's been kind of my whole career is thinking about those issues. I am not supportive of the wealth tax specifically because I don't think it'll work. And I think it will actually ultimately burden middle class and working families in California because billionaires aren't going to pay this tax. Half of them have already left the state since it's been proposed. We've seen over a trillion dollars in capital flight. I'm interested in what works. And what works in this case is, and I know it's harder. But if we're going to be intellectually honest about this, we need to fight at the federal level over things like what should the capital gains tax rate be? I don't believe you should be able to borrow endlessly against your appreciated assets and never have to pay a capital gain. That's a huge loophole. I don't believe Elon Musk should be able to pass $500 billion worth of appreciated stock onto his kids. Have it rebased at market rate the day that they inherit it. They can turn around and sell it and pay no capital gains. That's wrong. So there's a lot we can do to deal with the wealth inequality in this country. But a wealth tax targeting 200 people in one state is doomed to backfire and mean higher costs for middle class families. There are a lot of Democrats that are against this, but it feels it's not nobody wants to be on the side of defending billionaires. But you're making, I mean, there's, there's just a fiscal. I get it. It's not about defending the billionaires though. It's just like, I mean, you have to think about the second order of facts things. And the truth is, I mean, again, we've got to be honest with people and trust that people, you know, people are smart. People will get it. They will, if you are, if you respect them enough to tell them the truth, I think you over time break through and people get it. It won't be the billionaires who pay this tax. If it's passed, it'll be the rest of us. You worry that's going to be the litmus test between, you know, two of your leading opponents are a pretty, pretty in favor of it, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. They are. They're in favor of a lot of things that don't make sense. Frankly, and they'd rather blame Donald Trump for all of our problems. And look, I have deep concern about Donald Trump. We've sued him a number of times in San Jose and all fight him as hard as anybody as governor. But again, if the Democratic Party in California isn't willing to take ownership of our public policy failures and start bringing down the cost of housing, the cost of energy and improving our public schools, we've got another thing coming. We're going to see a MAGA movement in California, which is what scares me. So let's actually start owning our problems and take control of our destiny and make government work for people. All right. Well, Mayor Matt Mayan has been good to get to know you. I appreciate it. And, you know, as long as it's not been the best of years for California basketball has it for college basketball. I don't feel like you got enough. You know, a lot of years we'll get University of San Francisco. You might get others in there. You see a, you know, I mean, are you going to do something about all this West Coast flight to these conferences in the Midwest and the East Coast? Listen, Chuck, I got to focus and prioritize. I can't solve every problem. I'll leave that one to you. Well, I know there's a lot of sports fans that are frustrated that all those West Coast teams always have to sit on an airplane. There is, there is a, there's got to be a better way. But you're right. Yeah, go worry about how homelessness and housing first. And then we'll go, we'll get somewhere. Be safe in the campaign trail. Appreciate you coming up. Thanks, Chuck.