‘It speaks really well for San Jose’: Mayor’s bid for governor boosts city seeking recognition to match its size

San Jose restaurateur David Mulvehill is one of Mayor Matt Mahan’s biggest fans, crediting him with doing more “by a long shot” to corral crime, homelessness and blight and make his staff and customers all feel safer than he’s seen in decades.

So when Mahan announced Thursday he was running for governor, he had mixed feelings.

“You’re kind of happy and sad at the same time,” Mulvehill said. “You’re happy for him, and you want him to succeed, but initially there might be a vacuum here downtown of leadership.”

There’s no telling yet whether Mahan, a moderate Democrat in his third year as mayor, will break out from the crowded group of candidates all vying to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom. His candidacy, however, is not only shining a spotlight on this relatively unknown mayor, who has a limited national profile despite leading California’s third largest city, but on the South Bay city that has long struggled to distinguish itself as well.

Mahan’s path to Sacramento surely would be paved with stories of this city, from shutting down the infamous homeless encampment at Columbus Park to restoring the city’s reputation as one of the safest big cities in America.

San Jose’s big-city neighbors both have sent former mayors to the governor’s office in recent years: Jerry Brown from Oakland and Newsom from San Francisco.

Now, the eyes of the state and country are on an upstart Democrat leading San Jose, with a tech friendly, Silicon Valleyesque focus on practical problem solving. He established an online dashboard to chart the city’s progress on its main priorities from building more housing to reducing homelessness, proposed tying pay raises for politicians and department heads to measurable progress, and implemented a controversial policy allowing police to arrest homeless people if they refuse shelter three times.

“I think it speaks really well for San Jose,” said Marsey Kahn, who credits Mahan for cleaning up the sprawling homeless encampment along the Guadalupe River running behind her South San Jose neighborhood and moving its residents into a new temporary housing project. “He’s very personable, he’s very friendly, he remembers your name. And then on the other side, he’s very, very strong in his business dealings, his views, his ways of getting things done. So he’s kind of got it all. As a San Josean, I’m really proud of him.”

His detractors, however, criticize the mayor for focusing on short-term housing for the homeless at the expense of long-term solutions, threatening to arrest homeless people, and supporting Proposition 36, which Newsom opposed, that toughened penalties against repeat drug and theft offenses.

Some of those positions could limit his appeal among many Democratic voters. The city’s online scorecards show perceptions of the cities’ cleanliness and downtown vibrancy are improving, but the city is more than 3,000 units short of demand to shelter homeless people and construction of affordable and market rate housing has also fallen short of goals.

“He’s going in the wrong direction,” said homeless advocate Sandy Perry, who considers himself a staunch progressive Democrat. “He wants to unite with the tech community, which is creating a lot of our social problems, which has been, as we know, moving closer and closer to the Trump administration. It’s just not the direction that either San Jose or California wants right now.”

Like San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, Mahan has a library of numerous social media posts touting success stories, from photos of the old Bank of Italy building downtown being converted into apartments to the mayor picking up trash and planting trees on Saturday morning clean-up days, though critics argue social media can oversimplify complex issues.

Russell Hancock, who leads think tank Joint Venture Silicon Valley that addresses regional issues, acknowledged both Mahan and San Jose have a long road ahead.

“The statewide image of San Jose is, ‘I can’t remember, isn’t there a song about San Jose?’” Hancock said. “It’s always been San Francisco’s poor little sister. We can debate whether that reputation is deserved or not, but people don’t really know about San Jose — and it gets snubbed all the time.”

After Mahan’s announcement, the New York Times sized up the South Bay city of one million people as still seen as second-tier: “While San Jose lacks the iconic landmarks and cultural dominance of San Francisco or Los Angeles, the city faces many of the same urban problems.”

But to Hancock, while ” San Jose has reputational issues, for sure, it’s also the engine of Silicon Valley and is producing legions that are going into the workforce, and has done some pretty interesting things.”

San Jose has a rich history, from its early days of blossoming orchards and canning companies to the hub of Silicon Valley. During the mayoral years of Tom McEnery in the 1980s, San Jose attracted the Fairmont Hotel on Cesar Chavez Plaza and lured Adobe Systems to build a campus downtown. It’s home to Cisco, PayPal, eBay and Zoom. San Jose was on the cusp of a renaissance in 2019, but the pandemic shelved numerous development plans, including a mega project on the downtown’s western edge by Google.

Still, San Jose is a rare launching point for higher office. The closest have been Mahan’s predecessor Sam Liccardo, who won a congressional seat, and the late Norm Mineta, who also won a congressional seat before being appointed Secretary of Transportation. Unlike running for governor, they didn’t need to court votes from beyond their long-held constituencies.

McEnery called Mahan’s candidacy “courageous.”

“On the issues that people care about, crime, homelessness, you compare his record to anybody else’s in the state — just have them take a walk out to Columbus Park and see how that has been cleared up in a thoughtful way against a lot of opposition,” McEnery said. “It’s resulted in hundreds of people getting a decent place to live.”

Bob Staedler, a San Jose land use consultant with a politics blog and podcast, said Mahan’s bid is audacious, regardless of his Harvard and tech career bonafides.

“Going from six years of municipal government to running the fifth largest economy in the world is a Tech Bro thing to aspire to,” Staedler said.

Still, he said, because both Mahan — and San Jose — don’t have big brand names, or the political baggage of San Francisco for that matter, “he’ll be able to create his own narrative.”

Whether California is ready to see San Jose as a city that can launch the next governor remains to be seen. But homeowners like Kahn are already pondering San Jose without Mayor Mahan.

“If he just gets out there and talks to people like he did when he was running for mayor, he’s really impressive,” Kahn said. “I really I wish him well — and I wish San Jose well.”