Silicon Valley spends $25M backing Matt Mahan for California governor but polls show 4% as Hilton and Steyer lead June primary

"Silicon Valley has spent more than $25 million backing San Jose mayor Matt Mahan for California governor, with donors including Sergey Brin, Reed Hastings, and Steve Huffman, but he is polling at four per cent with the June 2 primary less than four weeks away. The campaign is part of the tech industry's broader push to reshape California politics, including a proposed 500 million dollar endowment and opposition to a billionaire wealth tax ballot measure."

"The most instructive thing about the campaign of Matt Mahan, the 43-year-old mayor of San Jose who entered the race in January backed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman, and a constellation of venture capitalists who collectively represent hundreds of billions of dollars in assets, is not that Silicon Valley is trying to buy political power. It is that political power, unlike market share, does not appear to respond to capital injection at the rate the industry is accustomed to."

"Mahan's biography reads like an origin story designed in a product management meeting. He graduated from Harvard, where he was a classmate of Mark Zuckerberg, who he has said persuaded him to go into technology instead of law school. He joined Causes, one of the earliest Facebook applications, which allowed users to form groups around nonprofits, and rose from director of nonprofit partnerships to chief executive while the platform attracted more than 186 million users in 157 countries."

"In 2014, he co-founded Brigade, a nonpartisan civic engagement platform backed by Sean Parker, Ron Conway, and Marc Benioff, which was later acquired by Pinterest. He was elected mayor of San Jose in 2022. He announced his candidacy for governor on 29 J"

Silicon Valley has spent more than $25 million backing San Jose mayor Matt Mahan for California governor, with major tech donors including Sergey Brin, Reed Hastings, and Steve Huffman. Despite this financial backing, Mahan polls at about four percent, with the June 2 primary less than four weeks away. The effort reflects a broader tech push to reshape California politics, including a proposed $500 million endowment and opposition to a billionaire wealth tax ballot measure. Mahan’s background includes leadership roles in technology and civic engagement, including work connected to early Facebook applications, co-founding a civic platform later acquired by Pinterest, and serving as mayor since 2022.

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