Episode summary
How Matt Mahan Thinks He Can Save California
All-In Podcast
· · Guests: Matt Mahan
Summary
Matt Mahan argues that California’s core problem is not a lack of money but a broken incentive structure that rewards process, spending, and organized interests over measurable outcomes. He says state spending has risen 75% in six years, yet major results like housing, crime, schools, and homelessness have not improved, and he frames his campaign as a push to force accountability through public goals, audits, and a willingness to veto bad legislation.
He points to San Jose as his proof-of-concept, saying the city cut crime, reduced unsheltered homelessness by about a third, and accelerated housing production without raising taxes by changing process, cutting ineffective programs, and setting dashboards. On housing, he says the problem is fundamentally supply constrained, but also made worse by zoning, fees, litigation, and California’s regulatory culture, which he argues has priced out young families and eliminated the condo ladder to ownership.
Mahan also links California’s energy, insurance, and pension problems to the same pattern of policy drift. He says the state has regulated refineries out, making gasoline expensive and the system less resilient; homeowners insurance has become unaffordable because risk is mispriced and wildfire prevention is neglected; and the pension system is a looming liability that will require reforms similar to the ones San Jose already undertook. Across all of it, he argues that California needs less performative government and more ruthless focus on outcomes.
Key takeaways
- Mahan says California has increased state spending by 75% in six years while outcomes have stayed flat or worsened, proving the problem is incentives, not just revenue.
- He claims San Jose reduced unsheltered homelessness by about a third and became the safest big city in the country without raising taxes by changing process and cutting low-value spending.
- On housing, he argues the crisis is fundamentally a supply problem compounded by zoning, fees, and litigation that make California construction far more expensive than places like Colorado.
- He says California’s gas prices are inflated by taxes and regulatory choices that pushed refineries out of state, hurting working families most.
- He warns that California’s pension obligations are a major structural liability and says San Jose’s reform path offers a model, though it took a long legal and political fight.
Notable quotes
“We have a structure that allows us to keep shoveling more money into things that aren't working”
“I think the state is heading toward an inflection point past which there there may be no return”
“We're going to publicly set goals. We're going to measure the performance of every dollar we spend”
“I think it's fundamentally a supply problem”
“We have to pull the cost out of building because as long as the state of Colorado can build the exact same home at half the cost”
How the episode opens
Matt Nahm, welcome to Allin. — Thanks, David. I have no idea who you are. Who are you? I mean, you're a guy who kind of popped up running for governor of California last minute. How'd that come about? And who is Matt Mayan?
Well, David, like everybody, I'm frustrated with a state that keeps spending more and seemingly getting less, which is why I jumped in. But to back up, I grew up in a little farming town here in California, a town called Watsonville, where your strawberries come from. Home
I do work in Watsonville. — Frisco berries. You know it well. — I got green houses. Yeah.
Yeah. Exactly. working-class family.
Mom was a teacher, dad was a letter carrier. My lucky break in life was getting into a great college prep high school on a work study scholarship. I took buses about two hours each way.
Worked my way through high school and college and uh came back as a public school teacher through the Teach for America program. Always was very community oriented, was interested in politics, wanted to know how to make our city, our world a better place. ended up in the tech sector and spent about a decade building civic tech tools to help people navigate their democracy.
What did you build?
I was involved with an early Facebook application called Causes and then went on to start a platform called Brigade that was sort of like LinkedIn for voters. And the whole premise was to build grassroots bottomup power by connecting voters around issues they're passionate about, outcomes they want to see, and help them organize to hold their elected officials accountable. After about a decade in the civic tech space, our company was acquired.
I decided to run for city council, and I went out and knocked on 10,000 doors, got yelled at for a lot of things that I wasn't necessarily responsible for, but I got a real feel for the common sense of the residents of California who would ask questions like, "If I'm paying $20,000 a year in property taxes, why haven't my local roads been paved in the last 15 years?
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- california housing crisis
- public sector unions lobbying
- energy policy gas taxes
- pension underfunding
- tariffs populism
Watch the episode
Watch “How Matt Mahan Thinks He Can Save California” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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