Don't think we're going to out meme Donald Trump or that we're
going to beat him on XI. Think it's going to be
ultimately in the in the courts and in delivering better
outcomes and getting people to actually vote with their feet
and want to come back to blue states.
You you sort of tweaked Gavin Newsom, the governor, for being
almost like Trump obsessed. Like shouldn't we be?
I understand what he's doing. He's holding a mirror up to
Donald Trump, who is a threat to our democracy, and I disagree
with many of his policies. I also firmly believe that our
failure to solve our biggest problems has given the MAGA
movement a tremendous amount of ammunition.
It's a big part of what's giving oxygen to this movement, and the
best resistance is delivering results.
So we are now paying more to import dirtier fuel from farther
away, and we've lost all the jobs and tax base from that
industry in the meantime. I tend to think that there's a
there's a difference by an order of magnitude or two between the
between waste and fraud and abuse.
Fraud and abuse happen and they're very noteworthy and they
should never happen and we should always punish them and
root them out and try to prevent them.
But it's waste and inefficiency that is the the bigger issue.
Matt Mahan, mayor of San Jose, and I go back a long time.
I think I was at an election party he threw when Trump was
first selected, and it was a very sad affair.
He's raised money now to run for governor of California from some
people I know well, Gary Tan of Y Combinator, Joe Lonsdale, the
Palantir Co founder. Mahan and I share a lot of
sympathies. We somewhat believe in tech,
somewhat believe in what's going on in AII guess both make a lot
of our money from the tech set. But on the other hand, our
principled Democrats with our own independent ideas.
And so he and I had an honest conversation.
I think I pushed him on a lot of things.
He's competing for governor in a unique primary environment.
It's the so-called jungle primary.
So he can try and pick up some Republican voters.
Obviously that's difficult in a in a world where you have to
pick a team man as a a tall hill to climb to win this race.
I think he's definitely behind, but a fascinating candidate that
says a lot about what's happening in tech and American
politics today. I'm Eric newcomer.
This is the newcomer podcast. That man, mayor of San Jose,
candidate for governor of California.
We've known each. It's been, it's been a while,
but we met back in your brigade days before your mayor.
Not surprised to see you're running for governor, I believe
back then, even though it's like that's you saw.
Yeah, I was like, believable. So thank you.
Thank you for coming on the Newcomer Podcast.
Yeah, I'm thrilled to be here. It's good to see you again after
all these years. Yeah, so just start with the
mission statement of the campaign.
It's what? It's a jungle primary.
It's gonna be sort of a brawl to get to be one of the top 2
candidates. What what is your message for
people? Yeah, and I.
Jumped in just a few weeks ago. I think it's a a wide open race
still. And my, my core argument is that
we need to fix California. We need to fix it for the 40
million people who live there. Also nationally, what happens in
California matters. And frankly, I think that our
inability to address housing costs, energy costs,
homelessness, crime, addiction issues have given Trump and the
MAGA movement the best ammunition imaginable.
And so I really, I want to fix our problems for my family, my
neighbors, all of our fellow Californians.
I also think there's a bigger context here.
I'm worried about this rising populism on the right and now on
the left. And you, you sort of see folks
turning to really easy answers, you know, more authoritarianism
or more socialistic socialist policies that ultimately I just
don't think we're going to work and practice or really be what
America's all about and what actually makes us great.
And so I just, I'm worried, you know?
Yeah. I mean, how much do you
subscribe to the like abundance message?
Because there's clearly echoes of that you're saying in a
little. Bit yeah, yeah.
And I don't think it's a holistic worldview that solves
everything. I've spent a lot of time working
on homelessness, crime, addiction, untreated mental
illness. And is there an abundance
message there? Maybe there's also just like,
accountability. Sometimes you have to intervene.
And there's a whole interesting conversation about civil
liberties that's sort of independent of the abundance
conversation. But the basic notion that we
have made government too slow, too bureaucratic, we create a
lot of cost around the things we most want like housing and clean
energy, I think is absolutely true.
High speed rail being the sort of poster child for everything
that's wrong with the progressive governance model
today. That's why has California high
speed rail failed? Like it's almost, it's so hard
to imagine. It's, it's like, let's just
throw more money at it and someday it will work.
I, you know, I think we're both of the world where we
desperately want it to work. We want these beautiful, you
know, Japan style trains running around, But why can't America
deliver on it? Yeah, it's it's pretty stark
when you look at during the 20 years where we've spent $20
billion and not delivered a train China's build over 10,000.
They may now be at 20,000 miles of high speed rail connecting
their entire country. I mean, it's, and that's not an
entirely fair comparison. But at the end of the day,
people care about outcomes. And I think that's part of why
we're seeing this more authoritarian impulse of this
turn to a strong man is the people just want stuff to
happen. It's it's the, you know,
Governor Shapiro, get shit done mind right that we really need.
So why? You know, I think it largely
comes down to the fact that this project was caught up in years
of environmental review and clearance.
Years of litigation has taken forever to assemble all of the
pieces legally, environmentally, just all of the regulatory
compliance takes years. California has made it that.
I think the country already suffers from the litigiousness
around environmental review, NEPA as well as our California
version of that sequa. But we're especially bad in
California. You can have housing projects
that make so much sense. You have the general plan where
the public's already weighed in. You've said this surface parking
lot in a downtown next to transit obviously should be high
rise residential. And you can still take 18 to 24
months to get through the environmental review process and
you can still get sued for it. It's crazy.
It's. It's amazing, you know, as a
millennial to realize that being a progressive in sort of the
previous generation was some of this sort of Sierra Club.
Like we want green in that we want like a nice park with a
sort of limited scope neighborhood.
And it's like that. It doesn't match with what I
guess progressivism means to my generation.
I think that's absolutely right. I think we go through cycles and
we have to keep updating the operating system, if you will.
I think we went from early progressivism 100 years ago
where there was actually a trust in big institutions to solve
society's biggest problems. And you ultimately saw the
height of that in the New Deal rose like we've we need
government to be extremely active and robust.
And coming out of that in World War Two, there was a lot of
trust in government and expertise and big bureaucracies.
And then I think much of kind of leading toward when around the
time we were born and, and up till today was the
disintegration of that model. And progressives taking a very
different approach, largely the environmental movement, but just
sort of the rights based, very litigious approach to protecting
individuals from big government and big business.
But we've we've unintentionally I think hobbled government and
we are no longer able to move quickly and efficiently and do
big things. And now there's, and I mean,
obviously it's being covered by a lot of folks like Ezra Klein
and Derek Thompson and others. But I think we're now sort of
grappling with what is the next version, what's the next
operating system need to look like?
Can you achieve, if you're governor of California, will be
you be able to achieve great things through government?
Or is it about clearing the way for businesses and others to
achieve great things? Like is there a way to get the
actual humans working for government?
I don't know to build things, deliver things more effectively
or it's just like government's not always best positioned to
solve these big problems. It's a great question.
I do think you have to take it case by case.
I would not simply rely on the private sector to magically fix
education or transportation systems or I mean, there's some
big complicated systems that are largely what you might call
public goods where government just needs to do better.
We need to use technology to deliver better services.
Small example of this is in San Jose.
We've been using an AI powered tool.
There's a startup called Light that has helped us to speed up
all of our public bus routes. So buses across the city of San
Jose in the last called 18 months have become 20% faster on
average through just this very subtle synchronization of
lights. And that's a.
It's hard not to hear this without the direct sort of
mumdani contrast, right? He's promising free buses.
You're like, we can make buses 20% faster, which is probably
more important in some ways better, right?
Yeah. Yeah, people pay for this.
But one thing goes viral and the other does.
Not no. You're right, the kind of more
technical competence based approach is not always the most,
the most viral, It doesn't always make the headlines.
But I, I do believe, you know, people pay for things that they
value. And if you're going to pay
$20.00 for an Uber ride, you should be willing to pay 2 or $3
for a bus ride. But it can't take five times
longer like we, we need to, we need to speed it up and provide
a great, a great service. But back to your, your bigger
question. I do think there are areas where
the answer is to pull back some of the robustness of the public
sector. I, I think on housing to some
extent energy. I'll give you another example on
energy that will probably not win me any friends in the
environmental movement. And I consider myself a lifelong
environmentalist, very big on open space, love being outdoors
and hiking and camping and all that good stuff.
We though, have been so single minded about our support for
clean energy. And we have so aggressively
regulated the oil and gas industry that we have pushed
refineries, most of the refineries that are just
regulated to be the cleanest, best run refineries in the
world. We have pushed them out of
California, but we're still using gas.
So we are now paying more to import dirtier fuel from farther
away. And we've lost all the jobs and
tax base that industry in the meantime, but we're still using
it, burning it. We've just kind of killed the
economics of it. And it's actually producing more
emissions. And it's just sort of like good
intentions gone awry in an overly regulated state.
I think it was, John Arnold, the philanthropist and billionaire
said the other day. Like there are a set of states,
you know, like Texas, where he lives.
They feel like they're competing for people to come and set up
businesses. And then there are states like
California that feel like we don't need you like with, I
mean, the the billionaire tax proposal, I guess being the most
prominent. Now, that's obviously not like
Gavin Newsom's idea necessarily. Or what is your sense of the
political support for this billionaire tax?
You've obviously been opposed to it.
And what's your read on like the seriousness of it for
California? Yeah, it's it's a very real
risk. Governor Newsom's opposed to it
as well, but most of the Democratic leadership in the
state has either supported it or stayed pretty silent on it.
I think the governor and I have been two of the only more
prominent Democrats in the state to say this is a bad idea.
And it's not because we are, you know, worried about protecting
billionaires from taxation or don't believe in progressive
taxation. I think the wealthiest amongst
us should absolutely pay substantially into the public
system to continue the the prosperity, the infrastructure,
all the things that make that, you know, the platform on which
their prosperity was was created.
But this is going to backfire if it passes.
And I think I think it is backfired.
You're right, Google. Govounders are fleeing the
state. That's right.
We've seen over a trillion dollars of capital flight to
your point we there, I just saw a projection the other day there
was a debate at Stanford and out of that there there was this
analysis that showed that we're likely to lose 25 billion per
year. That's recurring revenue.
This, remember this proposal supposedly is a one time tax
that will generate 100 billion. At this point maybe it would
generate 50 because we've already lost so much wealth and
that would be one time. It may have cost us 25 billion
per year in revenue. Nobody really knows yet.
I think it will be defeated. A lot of damage has been done.
As you I'm sure know and your listeners know, there are 12
European countries that have tried wealth taxes at the
national level, not the sub national level and they've
mostly all rolled them back. They've seen tax their their tax
base shrink. It's just not a smart.
And of course, some of the reason the tech industry in
particular is going ballistic is sort of the potential for
unrealized gains being taxed. And startups are all about
having these on paper, highly valued companies that, you know,
it's like if you actually had to cash it out, I'll put the money.
Right, it's just. Like someday it will maybe be
worth that, but I don't have that money today.
That's right. You know, on the flip side of
this, like, oh, we don't need a larger tax base.
You know, California already has so much money.
I mean, a lot of that money is going to state health care,
right? I think sometimes when I see
sort of criticism about the size of government from the left, and
you sort of saw this with doge on the federal level, where
Elon's Cruz said, oh, we're gonna like save so much money by
cutting federal workers, which I think, you know, they did cut a
bunch of federal workers, but they didn't balance the budget
because so much of the spending is still in healthcare and other
things that people love about government.
Right. You're absolutely right.
And California, the two biggest areas of expenditure by far are
healthcare and education. And I think the right approach
is to get more value for the dollars we're spending.
Now that may involve cutting certain programs or staffing
within that larger bucket of healthcare provision or
education. We may find that we need to
dramatically reallocate how we're spending the dollars.
But you're very unlikely to find the political support nor would
it necessarily be good for society to reduce the spend with
an education and healthcare. I, I think, you know, 50% of
healthcare spends in the last five years of life and it's
people choosing to want better end of life care.
Now, can we do more prevention or reduce chronic illness and
all that? Yes.
But I think the real focus needs to be on how we get more value
for per dollar spent. So it is saving in some of the
health spending areas. I think it's saving, but it's
really just optimizing the spend.
I think in healthcare, for example, I would like to see
less of the spend on managing chronic illness and more on
upfront prevention. We also spend a lot of our
healthcare dollars within a very expensive and inefficient
hospital system versus providing more accessible clinics and
leveraging the capacity of nurse practitioners who are capable of
doing a whole lot more than they are often allowed to do per
their for their license or local regulations.
So there are ways to actually, we offer more care, higher
quality care, more preventative care to more people in more
places with the same amount of spending.
So it's more about the inefficiency of the spending.
When there's this discussion of waste, fraud and abuse, I tend
to think that there's a, there's a difference by an order of
magnitude or two between the between waste and fraud and
abuse. Fraud and abuse happen and
they're very noteworthy and they should never happen and we
should always punish them and root them out and try to prevent
them. But it's waste and inefficiency
that is the the bigger issue. We spent a lot of money without
knowing if it's actually performing, if it's delivering
the outcome that we want. Do you, do you think Doge you
have? Was there anything valuable that
came out of that? Well, I think it started an
important conversation about waste and government and how to
do things better. I think where Dodge really went
off the rails was in seemingly taking joy in firing public
servants, many of whom you know had done, most of whom had done
nothing wrong. And we're just very committed,
genuinely committed to the mission of the agency where they
worked. It seems like some of the best
among us, like who developed special specialties over many
years. I mean, I get yeah, I just
especially sort of the, you know, foreign aid stuff, the the
malice about people who are trying to help other people or.
The the different roles in different science, you know,
scientific fields, doing research, long term research
that may be valuable. It just it, it seemed like it
was attacking the people, not the problem of innovation
spending. Let me try to make this more
concrete. In San Jose we have, as with all
governments, limited resources for different priorities.
One of our priorities is ending homelessness.
We spend somewhere between 50 and $100 million a year,
depending on revenue. It's a volatile revenue source,
but we spend 50 to $100 million a year on tackling homelessness
and housing issues. When I came into the mayor's
office a little over three years ago, we were spending most of
that money building brand new apartments for people.
And for those who got those apartments, it was a great
solution. They remained off the streets
and their outcomes were much better.
The problem was the math just didn't show any path to
scalability, $1,000,000 a door, six years to build this
apartment, we've got thousands of people living outside.
So I said we there's a much more optimal way of spending these
limited dollars given the magnitude of the problem and the
timeline that we have, which is which is like we need to solve
this today because. People expect it like.
Yeah, people are dying on the streets.
A couple 100 people a year die on our streets.
So we shifted the dollars toward buying and fixing up old motels,
buying prefabricated modular units, and putting these
sleeping cabins, if you will, on public land.
We brought outreach in house. Reduce the number of people, but
improve the quality and actually something to offer people
because we had built shelter. We've put money into prevention
and slowed the inflow into homelessness.
Same amount of money, but we've reduced the number of human
beings living outside in tent encampments by about 1/3 in just
the last few years. And with the next count, we will
for the first time have a majority of people who are
homeless in San Jose living indoors, not outdoors, which is
qualitatively a completely different type of homelessness
than having people literally wallowing in misery in a tent
encampment and dying of overdose and, you know, down in the
Creek. I mean, it's it's a totally
different situation and we didn't have to raise taxes to do
it. We just had to think differently
and be willing to reprogram our dollars.
The tech industry is very enthusiastic about your
campaign. I think from, you know, Gary Tan
to Joe Lonsdale or back end like what?
What do you what do you think is like getting them excited about
your candidacy? More than anything, I think it's
that being the mayor of the Capitol, Silicon Valley.
You got to meet them, you know that?
Yeah. I know, I know the tech world
well. I've I spent a decade working in
IT, in the civic tech space, as you know, with with causes on
Facebook and early philanthropy. I was saying, I think perhaps
the last time we ran into each other, though I might have been
somewhat intoxicated, was when Trump beat Hillary Clinton.
I think you guys had a party in San Francisco, 2016.
I was sort of like at a wandering day, you know, I wound
up at that party was like this saddest set of people that San
Francisco, It was a really cultural turning point where
you're telling me, I don't know if I can Fact Check this either.
You sort of think you saw the Trump thing coming from.
So we had a map on on Brigade's website and Brigade, just for
your listeners benefit was I would analogize it to a
LinkedIn, but for your civic or political identity.
We hooked into the voter file. We, we allowed you to claim your
voter record and then showed you all of your representatives who
else lived in your district or districts, depending on which
level of government and allowed you to basically organize with
other voters. You could, you could kind of put
your votes together around issues you cared about and
support candidates. And this was 10 years ago.
We had a map and it was much more red than other maps.
And I don't think our map was particularly accurate.
But what we did see was this crossover behavior of, you know,
older, middle-aged and older voters, white voters in the
Midwest, lower propensity voters who had voted registered
Democratic but told us they were going to vote for Trump or had
voted for Obama and told us they were going to vote for Trump.
And it was just so interesting to pick up on this trend of
people who were telling us that they were all for Trump.
But none of the previous data about their behavior or the
registration, their status as a voter would have led us to
predict that. And so we sort of saw that
coming. And on election night, I mean,
the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and others
literally had reporters call and be like, what did you guys see
in your data? Like, what should we did you?
What did you guys know that we didn't know?
Because we were kind of, you know, dismissed going into that
race. It's like, oh, there's that
weird app over there that seems to have been taken over by Trump
supporters. And we were like, no, not
really. Yeah.
It was really interesting. Do you from that experience like
any validity to election denial claims or what's what's your set
like this save act and everything?
We we did not get any indication of you're talking about like
voter fraud. But whether voter fraud is
something, you know, sort? Of well, our.
Middle of the road sort of person.
Our apartment. Didn't pick up you any of and
you don't think? There's like any I don't.
Think it is a is a rampant issue.
I I do think that building trust in the process is really
important. And whether it's whether the
claims are legitimate or not or the scale is significant enough
to matter. The notion that there should be
some identity verification, some sort of voter ID or or some
safeguards beyond what we have today, I think it's reasonable
because you now have half the country doubting if our
elections have the integrity that they need to have.
So for better or worse, we're kind of at a point where I do
think we need to address this issue.
The SAFE Act seems like if that pass, it would be give the
federal government under Trump a lot of control over the
election. Yeah, that makes me very
nervous. There's a conversation in
California right now about voter ID, which I think 70 to 80% of
people support. The notion that if you've got to
use ID to buy alcohol or to buy a car or a gun or any other
thing, and you've got to carry your ID with you as a driver and
to get into a bar or whatnot, there ought to be some form of
identity verification. It's still very, I mean you go
on. Everything else, you're like,
oh, we need need to be pragmatic and sort of tell people the
truth and like, yeah, I just think this voter ID thing,
there's just not that much fraud.
No, I agree there's not. Too hard to commit the fraud at
the level they want. Like you have to go.
You say your address like it's just like it's be a lot of but I
don't. Think that's the point really,
in the sense that you're right, I totally agree with you.
And yet the democracy is based on trust.
And if half the country is believing that our elections
aren't secure and don't have integrity and they shouldn't
trust the results if they don't like the outcome, that's a
problem for us as Democrats whether we like it or not.
And we can, we can do the very academic and classically
democratic thing and try to show them a bunch of data and
explain, Oh no, don't worry, it's a rounding error.
It almost never. It's probably never changed the
outcome of an election, although you'd be surprised how many down
ballot elections are decided by a few votes.
But you can try to explain to people that they're wrong or you
can take a common sense action that I mean, I, I just don't buy
that it is an impossibility for us to give people 3 or 4
different ways to to have an extra layer of protection where
they show up and show a driver's license or a passport or
something. So.
So you right now you represent San Jose, which is tech, you
know, Ground Zero, their hometown.
Like, what is your view of now that you're campaigning of the
average Californians view of like the tech industry right
now? Well, there's a lot of
skepticism, and I understand that there's the skepticism of
high housing costs that I don't think it's fair to completely
blame tech for. But the truth is we've created
jobs at a much faster rate than we've built housing.
I see that as a public policy failure first and foremost.
But a lot of people say, well, if it wasn't for all these tech
companies and all these high paying jobs, our housing prices
wouldn't be as high as they are are.
And there's, there's some truth in that.
I, I don't think the answer is to get rid of the industry.
I think it's to build housing, to be clear.
But there's also a lot of fear that AI is going to destroy jobs
and massively displace workers. Ironically, it may be those
higher paid white collar jobs that start getting automated
faster than than. Others double down on that.
I mean, it's mystifying right now.
You have, you know, Alex Carpet Palantir going around sort of
bragging that, you know, the blue collar worker is going to
benefit and it's sort of he literally said, you know, it's
like the white women who vote Democrat, they're the ones that
are going to get screwed. He.
Specifically said something
about women. I, I don't know who are the
democratic base, but anyway, we don't need to get in that carp
specifically, but there's definitely this sense from, I
think it's become sort of a right wing tech talking point
that, you know, white collar workers get screwed and the
plumber like nothing better to be a plumber.
But the, the flip side of that is like nothing better to be the
owner of an AI company. Like the person on the top top,
maybe, you know, all their coders running around are about
to get screwed, but this technology is still gonna be
controlled by white collar shape rotator or whatever, you know,
but like, not, not the plumber or yeah, I don't know totally.
What do you worry about? Sort of the tech industry having
more control over what our lives look like if if they have this
powerful technology outside of government.
So I mean, when I think about AII, think about all of the
capability first. I think about the capabilities
that we can leverage to make our lives better.
And I think about that primarily through the lens of public
sector services. We've speed up our buses, we've
improved language translation, we're saving it's it's.
Amazing language translation. That would have been an insane.
Like we would have been like mind boggled.
And then we're like, oh, great, yeah, I did that.
Actually it's like really easy. It's shocking.
We use that just. Just a couple of years ago, we
were paying people in our for the the largest languages
represented in our city. We're an incredibly diverse
city. San Jose is 40% foreign born.
Over 50% of people speak a language other than English at
home. And we would pay human beings
who would not always even show up because they're humans to, to
do translation in, in real time in, in Spanish, Vietnamese,
sometimes Mandarin. That was about all we could
afford and, or find. But people speak dozens of
languages in our community. Now with an app, you can scan
AQR code and in dozens of languages with really high
precision at a very low cost. At all public meetings, you can,
you can be on your phone and see true real time language
translation. It's incredible.
And you can come up and speak in your native language and we can
all see on our screens what you're saying in real time.
You're, you're ticking through things that sort of AI.
Yeah. So when it comes to AI, I mean,
you asked a pretty profound question about the the
concentration of power and wealth in tech.
And what does that mean? I was saying I, I really have
focused on how to apply it to public services to make them
better. We've also created an AI
upskilling course curriculum for our workforce.
And we're, our view is that these tools should not be
displacing city workers. They should be enhancing their
productivity, making their jobs more interesting and allowing
these jobs to evolve naturally. But we're not trying to get rid
of city workers. We're trying to help them have
more satisfying and impactful jobs.
And so we've we've taken that mission very seriously in San
Jose on, on the bigger, more existential issue.
Look, I think tech has to be regulated.
I think the big question is exactly how to do that.
It's such an evolving space. What is what is model
transparency? I mean, this is your world much
more than mine. But you know, what levels of
transparency? When do you need a human in the
loop? I mean, these are big questions
and I'm certainly trying to keep up to speed on them and weigh
the pros and cons. I don't want to prematurely
regulate and push an industry out of California so that others
get all of the job growth, high paying jobs, the economic impact
and then it happens to us. I'd rather keep tech in
California to the extent that we can, where we create the rules
of the road and shape it for societal good to the extent that
we can on the on the concentration of wealth.
It's not just wealth, it's it's sort of power, right?
I mean, you, you know, Mark Zuckerberg is, it's not just
that he's wealthy, it's that he controls Facebook, which you
obviously interacted with with your work.
I mean, yeah. And I, you know, sometimes
they're good stewards. You know, I've been a champion
of some, you know, like Anthropic.
I think we're, you know, I'm glad they're taking a principal
approach. And that requires a little bit
of centrality. So that's part of the American
experiment, that companies get to compete with each other and
build their sort of mini totalitarian regimes within
their company. But yeah, I don't know.
It's a tough, tough question. It is and I and I think it
depends, you know, where you want to go with this.
But if it's if it's there's the wealth piece that that has
become very front and center because of the wealth tax in
California. I think the answer there is to
close a half dozen other tax loopholes at the federal level
that are much more impactful, fairer and have fewer unintended
consequences on the regulatory environment.
We. Support like I feel like if
people can get loans based on their wealth, that's.
The lowest hanging fruit. It's just insane that's it
allows billionaires to be flush. They just get loans.
Against unrealized assets, which becomes a, a loophole way of not
paying on your capital gains. You're right.
There needs to be some sort of trigger where at a certain level
of borrowing or time duration, it it's counted as a realized
gain and you have to pay the tax on it.
And, and if you have to liquidate, so be it because
you're borrowing so much that you're effectively realizing the
gain. I know that's very well.
Federal federal reforms on some of the.
I think on the tax code you really need to go to the federal
level. California already has the, the
second highest overall tax burden, the most progressive tax
structure. In any given year, the top 1% of
our income earners in the state contribute 40 or 50% of the
revenue. So we can try to be a little
more progressive, but at some point you are going to kill the
golden goose. And I just, I think we're
getting close. We're seeing billionaires
literally move out of state. And I just, I, I don't think we
need to push that anymore. We've increased spending in
California at the state level by 75% percent, equivalent to $150
billion a year more over six years ago.
And if you ask Californians what's gotten better, they'd
have a hard time giving you much of a list.
And so, and that's not an indictment of anyone in
particular. I think it is a systemic
problem. I think that we are incredibly
bureaucratic and inefficient. We have a system that's hard to
reform because they're a highly organized interests, corporate
labor and otherwise in Sacramento that just will try to
block any meaningful change. And that's that's the
environment that has LED us to increase spending massively and
not really see much in the way of measurable improvement.
I, I know there's a difference between on this question, I'm
going to talk, we're going to talk about Trump for a second.
And I'm acknowledging that there's sort of a difference
between what you want thematically about your campaign
and sort of your level of upsetness.
And so I guess I want to ask about that, like you, you sort
of tweaked Gavin Newsom, the governor, the current governor
for, I don't know, being almost like Trump obsessed.
Like, shouldn't we be like, isn't it disturbing what he's
doing to the country? Like, if you're running for good
governance, like on the corporate side, he's picking
favourites, you know, helping some, some of your sort of
California companies, deciding which ones, you know, can own
studios and which ones can't. Like, aren't you sort of deep
troubled by some of the stuff he's doing?
I'm deeply troubled by a lot of the stuff he's doing, starting
with how he's treating our immigrant neighbors.
San Jose's incredibly diverse city, and we've got folks who
have been living and working and contributing in our city, our
community, for decades, who are living in fear, scared to leave
their homes. They have children who are U.S.
citizens. We are long past the time that
we should have come to some, the parties should have come to some
bargain here over, yes, a secure border and an orderly lawful
immigration, but with a pathway to at least some form of legal
status for folks who who are here and are otherwise trying to
contribute and play by the rules.
So immigration's kind of top of my list, general disregard for
rule of law, tariffs, I mean, the list goes on and on.
I'm deeply concerned. You know, my disagreements with
Governor Newsom over the last few years have have generally
been very focused on specific challenges we're facing at the
city level. Remember, I'm the mayor of a
city in a big state, and my argument has been we need our
governor leading the charge locally.
And I know he's got his eyes set elsewhere, which you know, is
his prerogative. But we need our governor driving
change at the local level because we cannot address
homelessness, crime, high cost of housing and energy alone at
the city level. We are downstream of so many
state policies and spending decisions on homelessness and
crime. We hold maybe half of the
answers, but if the governor and the state legislature don't hold
the counties accountable and California counties are
extremely powerful, lot of resources, lot of very broad
jurisdiction over the criminal justice system, behavioral
health, If we don't get our counties aligned around
solutions, we get blamed. I mean, like the mayors are
accountable. You I go to the grocery store
and it takes me two hours to get through the grocery store
because people are angry and they want to tell me about all
the problems. And you can't be like, well, the
county does. I'm like, oh, the counties
should do this and the state has this law and if only the
legislature would do that. So look, the governor and I have
disagreed on a few pretty high profile things.
Prop 36, which was a criminal justice reform issue, sober
living environments. And I've just, my argument has
been, yes, it's, it's I understand what he's doing.
He's holding a mirror up to Donald Trump, who is a threat to
our democracy, and I disagree with many of his policies.
I also firmly believe that our failure to solve our biggest
problems in the country's largest and most prominent state
has given the MAGA movement a tremendous amount of ammunition.
It's a big part of what's giving oxygen to this movement, and the
best resistance is delivering results on the issues that
matter to people. But.
There are norms like, do you say, you know, these CEOs giving
you money, like have more of a backbone?
You know, it's just, yeah, I just feel.
Like, I'm intolation, to be perfectly honest, I don't spend
a lot of time with tech CEOs, but I don't, I mean, I used to.
They mail you a check and say yeah, 10 our mayor.
Well, the, I mean, first of all, most people don't realize this.
San Jose is the home of the workforce of tech.
We don't have a lot of tech CEO's who live in San Jose.
They live up in, you know, the fancy, you know, Palo Alto and
Atherton and maybe up in San Francisco.
We're a working city. We're people.
We're the, you know, the engineers and the designers and
the marketing folks and whatnot. They live in San Jose.
Those are my neighbors and they're excited about my
campaign because they see how much progress we've made in San
Jose by bringing this very, to be fair, a, a cultural element
of tech. The, the thing that I've done
differently in City Hall over the last three plus years is
bring a performance management mindset into government.
I came in and was like we're, we're the, the failure motors.
We're trying to be everything to everyone and it's not working.
Let's pick no more than five things.
Let's be focused. Let's set actual goals.
Let's do the really uncomfortable thing of
publishing them on the city website.
Let's create some dashboards. Let's track the dollars we're
spending, the staff time we're allocating.
Let's measure performance. Let's publish our performance
every 90 days. Let's look at it and reflect on
it and let's start to create a feedback loop and be a little
more iterative so that every 90 days to one year, which is every
12 months, we do our budget cycle.
We can make adjustments and say, well, we're spending money here,
but it's not actually leading to any measurable improvement, so
maybe we need to change it. That's been the unlock for us.
And we've led the state in reducing homelessness, reducing
crime, reducing blight, speeding up permitting.
We've got thousands of new homes under construction.
It's been bringing focus and performance management to City
Hall, which is something that I get really excited about.
And maybe in San Jose you can, you know, get constituents
excited about. And I appreciate that.
And I think that is sort of, you've enumerated a lot of the
virtues of the tech industry and how they do business.
How do you, but how do we get some of the corruption out of
government? I mean, it's funny, I feel like
it's been the right who's been railing about corruption in
government. So I feel right wing saying it.
But you know, like some of the crypto stuff, the Trump
administration is doing how they want executives to treat them.
I mean, it is the biggest public graft of like all time.
If we weren't dragged into 500 different issues everyday, this
would be a huge 1. And it matters, you know, as a
business writer, because I'm trying to hold people, you know,
there's, there are norms of business and it's like there are
expectations of what you're supposed to do.
And if we descend as America into a culture where it's like,
I've got to get mine and like, you're a sucker if you don't do
XYZ, like that's going to be like the death of America.
And so I don't know. Do you have any ideas on what we
can do to regain a culture of honest dealing in in business,
even as the president sort of begs people to to be dishonest?
Yeah, I I think one of the big challenges really flows from the
Citizens United notion that your political spending is simply
speech and should be unlimited. And the disclosure, the piece
is, is important, it's valuable, but it's sort of insufficient,
the dynamic. And I'm much more familiar with
what happens within California because I've been serving at the
city level and thinking about counties and how we interface
with our state government. But.
These are Californian businesses that I'm worried about.
Yeah, that's, that's fair. I'm just saying I, I can give
you the, the, I imagine it's the same at the federal level.
I'm just not, I don't spend, I don't spend time in Washington,
But I mean, I've been maybe twice since I got elected mayor,
but I. I can tell you mechanistically
that the failure mode and the, the form of corruption, if you
will, is not as straightforward as you might think, but it's,
it's effectively there's a policy status quo that's in
place or, or maybe there's been a recent change.
But if it's not optimal for society and someone wants to
change it, you have a, an idealistic legislator who wants
to change something. I ran into this couple years
ago, getting a legislator, A legislator to carry a bill for
me. I can give you the example later
if you're interested. And we just ran into a buzz saw,
special interest power and basically the groups, these
outside groups spend so much both lobbying off cycle.
They've got a full Time Team up there writing legislation,
taking people out to lunch, hanging out, just kind of
monitoring and spending a lot of time and meshed within the
legislative world. And I mean, they spend so much
money around elections that it does.
I, I think for many of these legislators, it just becomes a
calculus of like, why would I take on changing the status quo
if it means that somebody's going to dump $1,000,000 in
negative ads against me and I'm going to lose my seat in two
years anyway. And that becomes the calculus.
And it's not clear enough to the voters why change doesn't
happen. And I really believe that's the
primary mechanism. There may be other things that
happened that I'm not aware of. But I tried to change this
construction defect law because it's it's having an impact on
our ability to get condos built. And that matters because condos
are the most accessible form of home ownership.
And basically Sacramento didn't want to touch it because it was
kind of like, well, the, you know, the travellers are really
powerful and they've sort of already come to an understanding
with the building community. And there's just kind of like
everybody's happy, Like don't, don't touch it.
Yeah. I mean, I'm sympathetic.
I mean, what you're saying California's complicated because
it's like there are all sorts of unions that have become
extremely powerful in a way, sometimes more powerful than
through the big business. World by spending the most, but
yeah. I mean, I guess I'm, I'm more
incensed on the sort of like I'm going to cozy up to Trump
specifically and then he's going to use the antitrust authority
or whatever. Yeah, let me.
Well, OK, so let's talk about that.
I mean, I, I think what is really, yeah, I think it's
incredibly concerning. I think unfortunately tech
didn't engage in politics for so long and which was probably a
good thing. And I think the culture for a
long time was avoidance. Tech was like, hey, I'm we're
out here in California, let us do our thing, leave us alone.
There was this very libertarian undercurrent that still I think
largely exists in Silicon Valley.
And but then as tech became more powerful and government started
to engage, suddenly I think they realized how to play the game.
And now they've figured it out at a scale and in a way that is
that is more powerful than almost any other industry.
And it's, it's really, it is concerning.
I think the, the question, well, one, I don't think tech's
monolithic. I think we have to take it sub
industry by sub industry. So like crypto, you make a
great, you make a great point, right?
There are other elements of technology like, I don't know,
solar and batteries, like that's tech, but it's a different kind
of tech that I'm less, I'm less worried about.
And the startup economy generally, like, I believe in
that philosophy. I think that is, yeah, it's
great. It's like create new businesses.
Now, sometimes they're worried about regulation on stuff like
AI because, you know, regulations can protect the big
businesses and hurt the small ones.
But generally, I think, you know, the startup agenda is good
for America by and large. Yeah, I think so.
I think our our entrepreneurship is a real strength and all that
creativity and dynamism and we we want to be at the fore.
What do you make, You know, Congressman Ro Khanna has
clearly made the calculation that tech is not is very
unpopular. Like, yeah, yeah, you're running
for governor, you know, not so friendly.
Like, I've learned a lot from tech.
And I don't know what do you make of his political calculus
here, or this is just true belief, or what do you make of
his sort of turn against the hometown industry?
Yeah, it's so noteworthy. I I try not to spend a lot of
time serving this work. With people as political.
Pundit, I mean, I I've openly and publicly disagreed with the
Congress member on the on his position on the wealth tax and I
already gave you my my main reasons why I really just the
unintended consequences of it. I don't know.
Just wealth tax, it's like everything.
He feels like he's looking for a fight.
Yeah, I don't know what else what else lately.
I don't know, I'm not following. Up to it.
Well, one of the big discussions, and I don't know so
that he's weighed in on this, but here's another one where I
have concerns. There's this question of when
does a human need to be in the loop?
And at the at the high level, the idea that a human should be
able to review decisions that involve safety, certainly life
and death decisions sounds really good.
It makes a lot of sense. But the details really matter.
There's a push right now to say, well, the the logical extension
of that principle is that we should have a human in every
autonomous vehicle because you never know, there could be a
case where the human needs to override what the vehicle does.
Now, the data is already pretty clear from way MO, for example,
that the autonomous vehicles on autonomous vehicles on average
are much safer than human drivers.
And so there's this big tug of war going on where, you know,
largely, you know, labour unions who don't want to see job
displacement. And they're right to worry about
it. I'm worried about job
displacement. It's a very legitimate concern,
but may lead to a sort of ossification of society, pushing
innovation out and say, well, we've got to have a human in
every vehicle, which completely defeats the point.
Yeah. I'm a radical on this issue for
sure. It's like, what are we fighting
for? Horse drawn carriages.
Still, that's kind of my point. You.
Spend time in a way MO it's like this.
Is it works? So much better and and as
progressives should love them in that like cars kill people and
like. Yeah, you can, yeah.
They could be central, You could control them more from the
government. You could also go here.
You can't go this fast. You can't like I'm.
The least popular guy on the board of our transit agency,
Because I keep talking about autonomy as part of the future
of transit because it frankly will allow us to offer a better
service to more people more quickly and more efficiently.
And we need to plan for it. And if you think of the.
Elderly who can't drive, you know, there's so many
progressive the disabled. Sorry, I know I'm preaching to
the converted here, but. So that's the optimistic side of
tech. I mean, I think with tech it's
always OK. You get new capabilities that
can make life better and you want to maximize the deployment
of new tools that make people's lives better while minimizing
the whether it's privacy risk or the the loss of agency or the
political corruption. To your point, and it's yeah, I
just, I don't think there's an easy answer though, to how to
how to. I mean, regulation is really the
primary answer to curbing the excesses, Do you?
Think. But we have to get it right
because we could also just push it to other, not just other.
States, but other country, I mean at once it's like you're
saying I don't know California is one of the top 10.
If, if it was, you know, it's own country, it'd be.
What number 4 or? 5 Right, exactly.
By GDP. By GDP, yeah.
So by that argument it's like take some responsibility,
regulate, you know, come up with your own regulations.
This is a big place with a lot of people.
We have our own views and obviously there have been what I
think auto regulations, right, with fuel economy.
There have been areas where California is, yeah,
particularly. On environmental policy, we've
often been out in front. So how much do you think
California should embrace that when it comes to the tech
industry versus taking a posture of these need to be federal
because you're going to scare out industry from our state?
Yeah, again, this is going to be an unsatisfying answer.
I I think it depends on the type of regulation.
I I do, I am generally a believer in the notion of
decentralization. And you know, we're not France
where everything emanates from Paris.
We are, we have 50 states. Those states are laboratories I
have pushed back against. There was a bill somebody
proposed that would have allowed every city in California to
regulate autonomous vehicles. And I was very much against that
for obvious reasons. But when it comes to this
evolving policy landscape, given how close we are to what's
changing in California in this area, I think it makes sense for
us to be able to regulate. I mean, we, we need to figure
out how to protect our children. I think we've, we've made a lot
of progress. Now you're seeing cell phones
being banned in schools, which I think is a good thing.
It's crazy. Isn't a new parent just the
idea? It's just like everybody in tech
knows about the danger of phones.
That's the other irony. It's like, I feel like people in
the industry are like, I don't know, don't let my kids on the
phone. I think that's right.
I think people in tech are less likely to have their kids using
devices all day or if at all, right.
I mean, we're, we're pretty anti screen in, in our home and
really very cognizant of the risks.
So I think protecting our children's a no brainer.
I would not want to wait for the federal government to figure
something out. If a state wants to experiment
with basic, you know, privacy safety.
We just passed a bunch of changes policies in San Jose
that really limit how we use our license plate readers.
So on the one hand, automated license plate readers are very
powerful law enforcement tool. On the other hand, I, I, you
know, we don't want to create a, we don't do facial recognition.
We don't want to create a surveillance state, some sort of
Big Brother where we've stored all of your movements for all
time. And now we can go back and I
think it'd be really creepy to kind of know everything about
where you've ever gone. So we delete all the data every
30 days. So it's really useful in the
short run if there's a crime to be able to say, well, we need to
respond and figure out who did this and apprehend the person
and, and have enough evidence. But on the other hand, we're
really limiting what we collect, how we collect it.
We're very transparent. We tell people what what we
collect and why. And we have very strict data
retention policies, meaning we delete the data regularly.
So we're, we're regulating tech at the local level, which is it
depends on the right, right. Right.
And I mean, that's the answer that makes sense that it depends
on the issue and you don't want to like give away the total
authority, but you know, you sort of have to take a balanced
approach and and on AI specifically, like are you using
language models? Like how, I mean, you said you
were enthusiasts about about autonomous, but the sort of
other pieces of what's happening in AI.
Are you a big user? And like, what's your view of, I
don't know, the rate of progress and how much this is going to be
a concern for government, for the next governor?
Yeah, I do use models. I, I don't, I wouldn't say I'm a
power user, but I, I certainly find that there's a, there's a
different and and very meaningful use case over and
above search. Obviously, we've created a
custom GPT around our budget process where we've uploaded
past budget documents and then generated insights in a way that
would have taken a lot of manual work.
I'm especially excited though, about how city workers are using
these tools. We have city employees who have
gone through our AI upskilling course, built a custom GPT for
whatever their job function is. A couple that come to mind are
one woman in our Department of Transportation was applying for
a grant, put various documents into a GPT and refined her
application. And then when that grant, it was
a federal grant that the Trump administration then basically
invalidated she because she had this tool and it ingested all of
this information. She was able to quickly pivot
and apply for a different grant at the state level and she
secured dollars, but she never would have made the deadline had
she needed to basically like manually start from scratch
again. And then we've got a, we've got
somebody in our, I think it's in our IT department who took our
311 data. And as people are calling in
for, you know, potholes and graffiti and, and different
service calls, there's our one of the biggest categories, of
course, is other where it's not, it's not well classified.
He basically built a classifier that saves 500 hours a year of,
of what was previously a lot of manual classification.
So I think there are a lot of interesting applications of
these tools. I generally think, though, that
if we invest in people and their training and education and
expose them to these tools, particularly at a young age, and
give them some guardrails and the confidence to experiment,
they'll figure out how to adapt the tools.
And you may see tasks automated. But most of the jobs we do
inside City Hall at least are complex enough that I don't
think they're going to be eliminated.
I think they'll be enhanced by. A.
Do you think there are any circumstances where, you know,
states should embrace what the New Jersey like gasoline
attendant model, where it's like we need to protect jobs in this
industry because things are being disrupted too fast?
Like, are jobs alone a reason to slow the pace of AI development
or to sort of make make rules? I'm hesitant because I don't
know at that point, as you create that constituency around
jobs that otherwise wouldn't exist, how you make the
decision, if ever, to eliminate them.
And so I think that in the long run, it is better to allow
innovation, though we do have to buffer.
So, So really the question is we have to buffer people from the
impacts of technological change. Technological change generally
leads us to a place where there are a number of benefits, but
the transition is really hard. So the question is just how to
best buffer people. One is you try to freeze things
in place and say these jobs have to exist, even if they're no
longer necessary or very productive.
We're just going to create the jobs because we want people to
be working. I feel like that kind of
devalues those workers in that work and eventually it may kind
of seem like a farce and they may feel like why am I doing
this thing that I don't need to do?
So I'm a little skeptical of that approach.
I think another approach, of course, is a Ubi, although that
also doesn't, there's no work involved with that, right?
So that's another way of sort of protecting people, but it
doesn't particularly value work. And then there's my preference,
and I would hope that this would manage most of the transition,
even if you need some of the other two categories, is to
invest early and often in the training, the skills, the access
to tools, and allow people themselves to create new jobs,
new companies, evolve their existing jobs and become more
productive. Now that's idealistic, but I do
see evidence of that happening. We're doing that City Hall.
We have 1000 workers going through our AI upskilling course
and they're changing in their jobs by applying these tools in
new ways. And that that's actually what
happened with past information technology people.
We started using smartphones before that PCs, you know, the
word, the office suite. I mean it's, you know, so you
know, we started using Excel spreadsheets.
Most of those did not dramatically destroy jobs so
much as change the way the jobs were done.
Right. I mean, I feel like one of my
more AI pilled concerns is just, yeah, I mean, you hear like Sam
Altman talk about it and just this access to AI and sort of
intelligence is going to be another sort of dividing line in
who has sort of. So I'll make a point on that,
which it's only a starting point and we have a, we have a lot of
work to do here. But last year we launched AI for
all and San Jose became the first city in the world to get 3
of the leading AI companies. So Google Anthropic and Open AI
to collaborate. And that we created a portal
through our websites with this this Lander on our website at
the through our library where anyone with a library cards,
that's 700,000 people in San Jose get access to the tools
training, including self-guided tutorials.
We're doing some in person trainings and then there are
some licenses for unique courses that in some cases would be
paid. And so we're trying to get these
companies to start opening up more of the tools and training
for anyone through our library system.
I'm, I'm going back to the Trump thing because honestly, I feel
like I agree with you and sort of tonally on a lot of it, but
the one I'm concerned about is just if we become more anti
democratic on the federal level, like are you what do?
You mean more well? It's just like if like we don't
have a free, we don't have free election or like not not anti
democratic like the Democratic. Party does more like succeed
but. We become more authoritarian
like California in particular has an important role to play in
like standing up for the American like Democratic
project. And what makes you feel like
you're prepared to take on that mantle?
Well, even as mayor, we've sued the Trump administration.
I mean, we've, we've joined a number of lawsuits and we've
passed local regulations much more limited than what I think
we can do at the state level. But there's no doubt California
has a critical role to play in offering a a counterpoint, in
fact, showing that our values work and practice and are are
distinct from and better than what Trump is offering.
But also using the power of our legal team.
Our attorney general has been, has done a great job of, you
know, really prosecuting the case against Trump's overreach
and abuse of power, from withholding funds to the
birthright citizenship issue to reproductive rights and so
forth. And so I, I think continuing to
use the law, the bully pulpit and the power of a, a better
example, I suppose you could say are, are some of the tools in
our, in our toolkit. But I just, I think there are
limits to the rhetorical game. It's as important as it is, I
don't think we're going to out meme Donald Trump or that we're
going to beat him on XI. Think it's going to be
ultimately in the in the courts and in delivering better
outcomes and getting people to actually vote with their feet
and want to come back to blue states.
What is your path to being governor like?
What can people watching this podcast do to support the
campaign? So I'm at Mahan for
california.com is the website. You can find me all over, all
over social media, as you would expect, I mean.
Mom, Donnie, I feel like he won on TikTok or like, have you
figured out and you're a guy, you know, like the social media
stuff? Yeah.
What do you do? You feel like you've found your
platform. I think mom Donnie would say
that he that he won in a lot of different ways.
I think social media was part of it.
He he really highlighted the door knocking.
I know they do. Not like the video I mean.
I think the videos were powerful.
Those were good. Don't underestimate.
He also spent more on television than Cuomo, so it wasn't just a
single all. All campaigns are multi channel
and they try to reach people from every angle.
And that's not to take anything away from what he did.
I mean, I, I think the way that they used short form video is,
you know, pretty inspired. I think it's very powerful and
we're, we're doing our best to kind of adapt, you know, to
those mediums and, and find our own footing there.
It won't, you know, my policies are not the same.
Obviously I'm much more centrist And so, but we're, we're the,
the medium itself, the media are, are quite powerful.
So yeah, people can find me on Instagram and TikTok.
The election the the primary is June 2nd and in California we
thankfully we have. An open top two primary, meaning
whether you're a Democrat, independent or Republican, you
can still vote for me. If you want to see common sense
leadership that actually is focused on solving our biggest
problems in California and providing that that very real
counterpoint to the Trump administration.
That's what I'm all about. And we've.
Yeah, we've had a great start. I only jumped in a few weeks
ago. I'm starting with low name ID.
So I was late. Yeah.
Well, I mean late I guess is
it's very subjective, but I jumped in later than I was the
last major candidate. Were you still sort of deciding
or? You know, to be perfectly
honest, I wasn't planning to do it at least last year.
I I've love being mayor. I've got a great job and my wife
loves her day job. We have two little kids.
They're happy in their schools and on their soccer teams.
Our plan, if you will, was not to try to go move to Sacramento
and take on this task. But I was watching the race last
year, which is when all the other candidates got in.
And as we got to the beginning of of this year, there just felt
to me to be a huge void in the race.
I actually got home early January from a transit board
meeting and my wife looked, it was probably about 10:30 at
night and she just looked at me and said, I think you need to
get in this race, which was my jaw hit the floor because she,
you know, we both know what that means.
I mean, I've, I've been on the road almost non-stop.
It's a big state here. I am with you out of New York.
Here in New York City all over. The place and we have little
kids, so it's been hard on our family.
But you know, Sylvia, my wife, like me, is concerned.
We're worried about this rising populism on the right, the
reaction on the left, and this sort of people looking for easy
answers rather than a real clarity around the the
limitations we face, the real tradeoffs we face, what's
realistic, what we should expect from our government.
We need to rebuild trust in government and I don't think we
do that by being the loudest, the most sensational, the most
gratuitous in our politics. We've increased trust in City
Hall in San Jose and my time as mayor by 40% by delivering
results for people, by speeding up the buses, filling the
potholes, reducing homelessness, reducing crime, cleaning up the
streets, speeding up permitting. You get government start working
again and you take that oxygen away from anti Democratic again,
lowercase D Democrat impulses on the right and the left.
And so that's that's what motivated me to jump in.
And frankly, if you look at the rest of the field in California
right now, the two leading Republicans are going as hard
right as they can, catering to Trump and trying to be the
standard bearer of the modern movement.
I don't know. Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco are
like, you know. Hilton's like ATV sort.
Of he was a Fox News, Yeah. Not the main one even like yeah,
but. Yeah, sorry.
And then and then the other leading Dems, at least up to
this point, have been basically just trying to be the most anti
Trump possible, which I understand.
I mean, I agree with them philosophically and say many of
the same things. But if that's your whole message
and you just know what you're against or you I think
incorrectly try to pretend that Trump is the reason that
California is struggling, which is just not.
It's not. It's not Trump and it's, you
know, frankly, it's not even, I don't even think you can blame
tech for our problems. I'm not saying that tech has
been perfect or shouldn't do more.
Believe me, tech should. And it should be regulated.
And all those things are true. And Trump is awful and that's
true. But none of that's like the
reason that our public schools are underperforming for low
income students or we've increased spending by 75% and
homelessness hasn't gone down or that crime is what it like.
These are just not connected. And it's so much easier to just
say, oh, it's Trump or it's the billionaires or for the guys on
the right to say it's these failed Democrats.
We need to start getting more specific about what are the
actual policies that are in the way or that need to be changed
to make our lives better. Mayor Mahan, thank you so much
for coming on the show. Thanks for having fun, it's good
to see you. That's the newcomer podcast.
Thanks so much to Matt Mahan for coming out to New York and
recording with me. I think he might have been in
town for The Daily Show, but happy to have him on the
newcomer podcast. While he was here.
I had a lot of fun, like comment, subscribe.
As you know, this is a growing YouTube channel.
I also have another podcast called this Ruble Valley Show
with Max Child and James Wilsterman.
I think it's pretty funny. It's a very different vibe.
It's, you know, a host show for doing power rankings.
You know we want to be the ringer if TBPN is Sports Center
for tech, we want to be the ringer for tech.
So you know this this is hard hitting interviews.
That's fun chat show together. You can have you know your
vegetables and your your cake yeah Anyway, you can find me on
slep stack at newcomer.co and we'll see you with some great
episodes coming up. I'm excited at the pipeline and
guests we have coming and please comment suggest people we should
have on the show. I'm just getting sassed.
People are sassing me more in the beginning.
I haven't improved that much. So give me your feedback and
thanks. Thanks for following this
growing channel.