Matt Mahan wants to bring the private equity playbook to Sacramento

I came to San Jose in 2001 with a dream, not a trust fund. I came here to work. I spent two decades in the trenches of the tech industry. But in early 2024, I walked away. I spent the time since traveling California, listening to families and farmers to figure out exactly what is broken.

Then I saw it. A pattern I recognized from my old life.

We all know the "corporate climber." This is the manager who launches a flashy project, massages the data to claim victory and takes a promotion before the project fails. He leaves the team to deal with the "technical debt" while he waves from his new office.

Scale that mindset up to a city and it looks identical to the "private equity" raider. They strip the assets, load the debt and execute the exit strategy before the bill comes due.

This is exactly what San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan is doing. He is running the private equity playbook in our city. Now he wants to take it to the governor’s mansion.

In 2020, voters passed Measure E to build permanent affordable housing. It was a commitment to a long-term asset. It appears Mahan wanted short-term stats over long-term solutions. So he raided it. He fought to reallocate up to 90% of those funds to temporary shelters, liquidating a permanent future to buy a temporary political win.

He took a healthy balance sheet and turned it into a crisis.

When Mahan took office he inherited a surplus of $30 million. Today city documents project a deficit of $52 million by 2026-2027. But he didn't cut his own overhead to fix it. Instead of fixing his own house he campaigned for a tax hike on yours.

Just last year Mahan endorsed the Measure A county-wide sales tax increase. At a time when inflation was crushing working families he didn't demand the county cut waste or audit its spending. He simply asked us to pay more.

That endorsement helped push our sales tax burden to 10%.

Families here are already choosing between rent and groceries. This tax wasn't just a burden. It was a slap in the face. Sales taxes are regressive. They miss the venture capitalists and tech giants. They hit the mechanic in East San Jose and the student in Japantown. We are paying luxury prices for basic goods because leaders like Mahan treat taxpayers like an unlimited credit line.

The city budget broke under his watch. He supported higher taxes on the county level. And now comes the final step in the PE playbook: the exit.

Mahan is not planning to stay and fix the $52 million deficit he helped create. He has announced he is running for governor. He is fleeing the mess he made, hoping to trade the local debt he created for a seat in Sacramento.

This is a warning for every voter in California. This mindset of managing the optics while ignoring reality is the same disease destroying our state.

San Jose has a budget deficit despite high taxes. California has a water shortage despite having plenty of water. Both are artificial crises created by mismanagement.

State regulators continue to impose curtailments on Northern California watersheds like the Scott and Shasta rivers. They restrict water to farmers based on rigid, outdated models rather than real-time realities. We see "inefficient livestock watering" bans and fallowed fields not because the sky isn't raining, but because the state’s management is broken.

We ration our farmers into bankruptcy instead of building the storage we need. It is the same pattern I see in my hometown: managed decline disguised as leadership.

California is facing real challenges. We have an affordability crisis driving families out of state and a regulatory crisis driving agriculture out of business. We cannot solve these problems with a leader who cuts corners, raises taxes and runs.

We need fixers, not raiders. We need leaders who respect the working class and farming communities, not leaders who leave them with the bill.

Matt Mahan’s record in San Jose is not just a resume. It is a warning label.