California Doesn’t Need Ideas. It Needs Matt Mahan.

California doesn’t need more ideas. It needs someone who can actually execute. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan is proving that right now—and I think he’s the governor California desperately needs.

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We need focus and accountability This is true leadership California needs. It’s not empty words. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan reduced homelessness 20% in a year through shelters, treatment and recovery Competence California hasn’t seen since Governor Jerry Brown is coming back https://t.co/8plUkck7Iw [Quoting @NikkiLaurenzo]: NEW: I asked San Jose Mayor Mahan a new idea he’d like to implement if elected governor. “I don’t think we need of bunch of new, shiny, crazy, off the wall ideas that you’ve never heard of before. I think we need focus and accountability.” https://t.co/XnIjJivRMC

Garry Tan @garrytan January 30, 2026

This is true leadership. Not empty words. Not focus groups. Not another Sacramento politician promising transformation and delivering bureaucratic paralysis. Mahan reduced homelessness 20% in a year through shelters, treatment, and recovery. It’s competence California hasn’t seen since Governor Jerry Brown.

Ideas Are Cheap. Execution Is Everything.

When FOX40’s Nikki Laurenzo asked Mahan what new idea he’d implement as governor, he gave a CEO’s answer—not a politician’s. “I don’t think we need a bunch of new, shiny, crazy, off-the-wall ideas that you’ve never heard of before,” Mahan said. “I think we need focus and accountability.”

That’s his mantra from his days as a CEO: ideas are cheap, execution is everything. It’s a direct rebuke to California’s pattern of passing ambitious legislation that never gets implemented properly. Care Court. Prop 36. Housing First mandates. All good ideas on paper, all strangled by Sacramento’s inability to follow through. We’ve tried lawyers and career politicians. Maybe it’s time for a builder.

The San Jose Model: Results, Not Rhetoric

Talk is cheap. Here’s what execution looks like: San Jose reduced outdoor homelessness by over 25%, and Mahan expects it’ll be more than a third by the next count. The approach is brutally simple—build basic, dignified shelter, and when it’s available, require people to come indoors.

This contrasts sharply with California’s Housing First mandate that allows drug use in shelters, which I’ve called out before as a policy failure. Unlike LA’s misleading data, San Jose is showing real, verifiable results. I’ve highlighted this contrast before—one city actually solving problems while another jukes the stats.

Sacramento’s Sabotage: Prop 36 and Care Court

Voters overwhelmingly passed Prop 36 for drug treatment and retail theft accountability. What did Sacramento do? Refused to fund it, effectively sabotaging the measure voters demanded.

Care Court was supposed to help people with severe mental illness. Instead, it’s caught in bureaucracy and is “hardly helping anyone,” as Mahan puts it. Meanwhile, thousands have died on our streets from overdoses while these simple accountability concepts go unimplemented. The state’s mental health system is so broken that violent offenders get released to locations completely unprepared to handle them.

California has no shortage of ideas or resources. What it lacks is leadership that actually delivers. Matt Mahan has proven he can do what other politicians only promise. He’s the future of California—and the question is whether voters will finally choose competence over charisma.

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