☆ Pat Waite: can Mahan’s “lather, rinse, repeat” approach clean house in Sacramento?
With a heavy application of performance metrics, Matt Mahan’s state spending plan draws from the same formula as his San Jose mayoral race, says SVBA’s Pat Waite. He warns that a Governor Mahan would have to work through intractable grit at the state level. An Opportunity Now exclusive reaction.
Matt Mahan has been consistent throughout his rather brief political career. When running for San Jose mayor, he made three essential promises to voters. If elected he would: try new approaches to the intransigent problems that have befuddled our government for decades, measure government and hold it accountable for delivering results, and focus on efficiently providing core services before supporting other spending. He is laser-focused on these as San Jose’s mayor.
His gubernatorial campaign reflects a belief that what is working in San Jose can succeed at the state level. Mayor Mahan is betting the success of his campaign on a nearly identical message. His platform emphasizes using performance metrics to drive improvements in government efficiency and accountability to solve the state’s most stubborn problems: housing affordability, ridiculously high energy costs, a hostile business environment and extremely poor public-school system educational outcomes. He dubs this his “back-to-basics” approach. As it says on shampoo bottles, “lather, rinse, repeat if necessary.”
This is a noble objective but deeply entrenched special interest groups will fight tooth and nail to protect the trough that Sacramento has become. This is not idle speculation. In 2005, public sector unions and the California Teachers Association spent $80 million defeating all four of then-Governor Schwarzenegger’s special-election government reform measures. The CTA even went as far as mortgaging their headquarters to supplement their campaign war chest. That is a serious commitment to the status quo.
Perhaps Governor Mahan could use the bully pulpit to rally voters to his cause an d overwhelm the special interests. Or maybe he would close out his term by puffing cigars in a tent on the lawn of the Capitol Building as a previous governor did. At least his platform provides measurable specifics in a race where other Democrat candidates’ platforms are “Trump is bad.”
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