Tech leaders funding Matt Mahan’s campaign for California governor say it’s not about tech

San José Mayor Matt Mahan’s run for California governor has been outlined from the beginning by his donor checklist.

Mahan entered the race late and with little statewide identify recognition, however catapulted into rivalry due to huge funding from billionaire tech titans, enterprise capitalists, cryptocurrency traders and different Silicon Valley elites. In a state with greater than 23 million voters and vastly costly media markets, the cash signaled Mahan can be a contender.

It additionally spurred accusations from his extra liberal Democratic opponents and highly effective labor leaders that Mahan is beholden to Huge Tech, together with forces aligned with President Trump.

California Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher lately described Mahan as “funded by Trump’s massive tech billionaires,” whereas fellow Democratic candidate Tom Steyer — a billionaire operating in opposition to company pursuits — known as him “MAGA Matt Mahan.”

That framing has endured, regardless of Mahan being a centrist Democrat who has publicly criticized Trump.

On Thursday, Mahan launched a four-page “Plan to Maintain Huge Tech Accountable and Guarantee AI Works for All Californians.” The proposal known as for AI and information facilities to pay for his or her energy and water wants, fund workforce stability initiatives and guarantee human oversight of AI instruments in essential sectors resembling healthcare. It additionally known as for the state to make use of AI to develop into extra environment friendly, to bar cellphones in faculties and to require parental consent for teenagers 15 and beneath becoming a member of social media.

In an interview with The Instances, Mahan, 43, mentioned AI is “one of the vital vital developments in society” and must be addressed.

He additionally rejected the notion that he would do Huge Tech’s bidding, and the concept that his assist from tech leaders is solely and even largely premised on his plans for his or her trade.

“I’ve spoken little or no about tech with any of my donors,” he mentioned.

Mahan mentioned his fundraising has as an alternative been “centered on how we get California on a greater path by way of constructing housing, bettering the standard of our public faculties, fixing our greatest issues,” which “simply resonates with individuals within the tech trade.”

A ‘digital native’

Mahan, the son of a instructor and a mailman, grew up within the farming group of Watsonville however commuted to San José to attend highschool at Bellarmine Faculty Prep on scholarship as a low-income pupil. He went on to Harvard College, the place he was pupil physique president and classmates with Fb founder Mark Zuckerberg, spent a 12 months in Bolivia constructing irrigation methods, after which taught for 2 years in Alum Rock as a part of the Educate for America program.

He then joined Causes, an early Fb software that allowed nonprofits to construct grassroots assist on-line, and rose to develop into chief govt. In 2014, he co-founded Brigade, a nonpartisan platform the place voters might advocate for points, which was acquired in 2019. He received a San José Metropolis Council seat in 2020, and was elected mayor in 2022.

An early mayoral profile described Mahan as portray a whiteboard behind his desk to “write on the wall as I did in my tech days.” One other famous he used ChatGPT to jot down speeches. A 3rd recounted how he’d used AI to make metropolis buses run quicker.

Mahan mentioned he discovered as a startup chief and a classroom instructor that metrics matter — that “once we take our valuable tax {dollars} and make investments them in public providers, we should always measure our efficiency.”

He mentioned he has at all times believed authorities ought to take the most effective tech has to supply whereas being vigilant in regards to the dangers it poses, which perhaps comes naturally to him as a millennial who remembers “the world earlier than the web” however can be one thing of a “digital native.”

Donors clarify

Between Jan. 1 and April 18, Mahan’s marketing campaign raised practically $13.5 million, based on state marketing campaign finance filings. Throughout the identical interval, an unbiased expenditure backing Mahan known as Again to Fundamentals raised about $22.7 million, whereas one other launched by the group Ship for California raised practically $3.3 million.

The donors are a who’s who of tech leaders, enterprise capitalists and different leaders within the gig, gaming, digital media and AI protection fields.

Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, gave the utmost particular person contribution of $39,200 to Mahan instantly, and $1 million to the Ship for California committee. Reed Hastings, the co-founder and chairman of Netflix, gave the utmost contribution to Mahan, plus $1 million to the Again to Fundamentals committee.

Some donors, resembling LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who gave the utmost to Mahan, are well-known supporters of progressive causes. Others, resembling Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and crypto founder David Marcus, who maxed out to Mahan, are additionally Trump backers.

Brin, a good friend of Gov. Gavin Newsom for the reason that Democrat was mayor of San Francisco, has been transferring rightward lately. He has donated to the Republican Nationwide Committee and in March was appointed to the White Home tech advisory council. He’s additionally a significant donor to the nonprofit opposing the poll measure for a brand new tax on California billionaires — which Mahan is also in opposition to.

Brin, Lonsdale and Marcus didn’t reply to a request for remark. Hastings and Hoffman declined to remark.

A number of different tech donors did communicate with The Instances — and universally described their assist for Mahan as much less to do along with his tech insurance policies, and extra to do with points vital to all Californians.

Jamie Siminoff, who bought his residence safety startup Ring to Amazon for $1 billion and gave the utmost donation to Mahan, mentioned he thinks L.A., the place he lives, is the “best metropolis on the planet” and California is the “greatest state on the planet.” However he sees Mahan as somebody who might make enhancements by bringing the state towards the political center on public security, housing and homelessness.

“He’s similar to a pleasant, pragmatic, type of centrist individual, from what I can see, [who] needs to make California higher, and I’m 100% behind that.”

Siminoff mentioned it doesn’t harm that Mahan speaks the identical language as many tech leaders, who’re principally simply “pragmatic inventors and entrepreneurs” who need California’s chief to be “principled in fascinated with fixing issues.”

Ruchi Sanghvi, the primary feminine engineer at Fb and a former Dropbox govt who state data present donated $25,000 to Mahan, mentioned she has identified Mahan since he was main Causes however fell out of contact. When he entered the governor’s race, and she or he “bought all these emails from those who I respect” saying they have been supporting him, she requested for a gathering.

At that assembly, she mentioned, Mahan “actually dug in on a few of the core points that I care about,” together with housing, homelessness and training.

The San Francisco resident, political unbiased and mom of three mentioned the concept that tech leaders are backing Mahan as a result of they consider he’ll scratch their again in enterprise is incorrect. Referring to his tech plan’s restrictions on social media for youth, she mentioned, “I don’t consider that as scratching my again.”

As a substitute, “what actually resonates with me and my friends is that, sure, he’s pragmatic,” Sanghvi mentioned. “He cares about measurable outcomes, which I believe could be very essential.”

Marc Merrill, co-founder, co-chairman and chief product officer of L.A.-based online game developer and e-sports firm Riot Video games, gave the utmost to Mahan, as did his spouse, Ashley, founding father of the sleepwear model Lunya. In an announcement to The Instances, Merrill mentioned he and his spouse are lifelong Californians who love the state and assist Mahan due to his document “addressing California’s most urgent challenges with sensible, results-oriented options” in San José.

Merrill mentioned Mahan introduced down violent crime, decreased homelessness with “data-driven packages that deal with root causes slightly than simply managing the issue,” and “fostered an setting the place companies are selecting to take a position and develop within the metropolis.”

Tech vs. labor?

Gonzalez Fletcher mentioned tech leaders have lengthy “been very clear about their want to assist candidates who received’t regulate AI, to assist candidates who will go after organized labor” — and their assist for Mahan is not any completely different.

She pointed for example to a March occasion attended by Mahan and hosted by one in every of his most vocal backers: Garry Tan, a enterprise capitalist and chief govt of Y Combinator, a startup incubator in San Francisco.

On the occasion — which was a part of Tan’s launch of a brand new statewide group known as Garry’s Checklist, which he has described as a “Rotary Membership for radical centrism” — Chris Larsen, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency community Ripple, railed in opposition to the affect of unions in California politics and the “weak” response from enterprise leaders, based on video.

“We’ve bought to battle on par with the unions once they’re proposing silly, job-killing concepts just like the San Francisco CEO tax,” Larsen mentioned. He famous that a number of different candidates for governor, together with former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, whom he’d donated to, had backed the measure to tax corporations that pay their chief govt 100 instances greater than their common worker.

Neither Tan nor Larsen responded to a request for remark.

Gonzalez Fletcher, a former state legislator, mentioned the argument that California Democrats have induced the state’s greatest issues by bowing to unions is fake, and that what’s extra true is that “ruling class” Democrats resembling Newsom “acquiesce to enterprise pursuits” driving the state’s affordability and homelessness crises.

She mentioned employers get away with underpaying staff and large landlords are allowed to reap the benefits of renters. She mentioned Airbnb, as a tech instance, has gone unchecked regardless of inflicting “quite a lot of the removing of housing inventory.”

She mentioned one cause she opposes Mahan is that he “suffers from the identical love affair with Huge Tech” as Newsom.

Steyer — who has funded his personal marketing campaign to the tune of practically $200 million — has repeatedly struck an analogous notice.

Earlier this month, his marketing campaign wrote that “Mahan continues to fail working Californians by catering to tech billionaires and rich particular curiosity teams.” In February, it wrote that though Mahan had the assist of “highly effective particular pursuits hellbent on maintaining California a playground for the wealthy,” Steyer had the backing of “bus drivers, cafeteria staff, and custodians.”

Airbnb declined to remark however prior to now has denied claims its platform considerably contributes to housing affordability points, and has donated to housing initiatives. Airbnb co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk, a Mahan donor, didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Mahan mentioned he values unions, partly as a result of he grew up in a union family and benefited from the high-quality healthcare that supplied, included when he was hospitalized for a collapsed lung as a young person.

He mentioned he has additionally labored with tech employers who “are inventing the longer term, fairly actually,” and “creating quite a lot of jobs and alternative.”

Mahan mentioned the concept the 2 are inherently at odds is fake, as a result of “enterprise wants labor, and labor wants enterprise,” and the actual query is “ steadiness everybody’s wants.”

“If we don’t have a powerful sufficient regulatory setting, and enterprise has an excessive amount of energy, staff might be exploited, the setting might be exploited and we are able to see actually detrimental social outcomes,” he mentioned. “However the flip facet can be true. If labor in our politics has an excessive amount of energy, you may as well see distortions, you’ll be able to see funding stream elsewhere, you’ll be able to see much less housing get constructed.”

Mahan mentioned that “neither facet has a monopoly on the reality,” and that authorities has to “convey individuals collectively and strike the fitting steadiness.”

He additionally defended Airbnb, which in San José pays taxes similar to lodges, he mentioned.

“We don’t see Airbnb as an antagonistic factor. We don’t allow them to take over the market, we regulate them, we cost them, and we use their tax income to supply providers to individuals.”

He mentioned the state’s housing disaster is because of over-regulation slowing new constructing to the purpose the place it can’t sustain with job development — which he known as “essentially unsustainable and unfair” to low-income of us pushed out of job facilities in consequence.

The reply is constructing extra houses, extra rapidly, he mentioned, together with by lowering constructing charges and streamlining allowing processes — which he mentioned he has performed in San José and would replicate statewide as governor.

“I’m, at first, centered on making authorities ship outcomes that make an actual distinction in individuals’s lives,” he mentioned. “That’s my North Star.”