How San Jose Mayor-elect Mahan plans to reach big goals in shortened term

Not even a month after his narrow win over a more-seasoned and better-funded opponent, San Jose Mayor-elect Matt Mahan was served the kind of humble pie that could complicate his leadership of America’s 10th largest city.

This past week, the City Council rejected Mahan’s plea to fill a pair of open council seats — including his — with a special election. Instead, councilmembers will use their power to appoint replacements for Mahan and another departing councilmember.

That’s a blow to the new mayor, who just won more votes than his rival Cindy Chavez in both those council districts, meaning an election likely would have seated Mahan supporters. Instead, the seats will be filled by a council whose new and returning members largely backed Mahan’s opponent.

“He’s already seen the limits of the bully pulpit,” said San Jose State University Political Science Professor Garrick Percival. “The mayor doesn’t have a lot of formal powers like mayors in other big cities, and the mayor is left to try to persuade. He’s going to have to find ways to compromise on some issues.”

The path ahead for the new mayor is even more challenging because Mahan has little time to prove himself after voters in last June’s primary realigned the mayoral election schedule to fall in line with presidential elections. “He’s only got two years in office,” Percival noted.

There are signs he’s wasting no time. A night after that bruising defeat on council vacancies, Mahan joined with David Cohen — one of those councilmembers who had backed Chavez and voted against Mahan’s call for a special election — in a compromise resolution for how the city analyzes transportation needs for development projects.

“It was a great collaboration,” Cohen said. “We’ll do things like that whenever we find we have aligned interests.”

Mahan said he’s confident he can work with the City Council to accomplish his goals.

“I’m just going to stay true to my campaign message with confidence the voters are behind me,” said Mahan, the District 10 councilmember and a former social media entrepreneur and school teacher who was endorsed by outgoing Mayor Sam Liccardo.

“At the end of the day,” Mahan said, “I believe everyone on the council, even those I frequently disagree with, we all want to make our community better.”

Since his upset win over Chavez, a Santa Clara County supervisor and former downtown district councilmember, life has been a whirlwind for Mahan.

“When you first get elected into the role, you’re just in this deluge of people wanting to meet, people wanting to sit down and talk about how you can help,” Mahan said. “It’s overwhelming.”

A breakdown from the Santa Clara County elections office shows Mahan won a majority of votes in half of San Jose’s 10 City Council districts — 1, 6, 8, 9 and 10. Chavez carried Cohen’s District 4 by only three dozen votes. And turnout was higher in every district Mahan won than in those that voted for Chavez. He finished more than 6,000 votes ahead of her out of 250,705 cast with a 51.21%-to-48.79% advantage.

Mahan said Liccardo has been “immensely helpful with the transition,” and he’s taken him up on many recommendations. Last week, he traveled to Harvard University to participate in a Program for New Mayors: the First 100 Days, along with Oakland Mayor-elect Sheng Thao.

One of the key takeaways, he said, was the importance of having a good staff. Mahan has been busy interviewing for staff positions and expects some of Liccardo’s team will be part of his administration.

But he said “structurally, the office will look very different,” more streamlined and focused on delivering results on the issues at the center of his campaign: homelessness, public safety, blight and government accountability.

“I ran on a message of focus,” Mahan said. “I’m going to make sure we find the right people, make sure we tackle those big issues which is what the voters voted for in this election.”

He said he’s looking forward to working closely with City Manager Jennifer Maguire and her team and hopes to improve a spirit of customer service and delivering results for residents. He cited as an example someone who reached out to him to report an abandoned couch. Mahan said he made a call to get it picked up and got a grateful reply from the resident.

As he prepares to take the reins, the mayor-elect also has been meeting with returning and incoming councilmembers and having discussions about a recommendation for vice mayor.

“I’ve found those conversations to be productive,” Mahan said. “They’ve all been very kind and open.”

Mahan is hardly the first San Jose mayor to try and lead a fractious council. Terry Christensen, political science professor emeritus at San Jose State University, said that former Mayor Chuck Reed, who as a councilmember was often on the losing end of 10-1 votes, “probably had a tougher council to deal with.”

“But he did manage to build a working majority on the council over time,” Christensen said.

Mahan doesn’t have time on his side. But if he’s able to show voters he’s delivering on campaign promises, he could end up leading the city for a decade, being eligible for two four-year terms after this two-year stint, overseeing the planned arrival of search giant Google and BART downtown.

District 9 Councilmember Pam Foley, who endorsed Mahan’s opponent but supported Mahan’s call to fill the upcoming council vacancies by election, said the council and Mahan need “to find common ground” to move the city forward.

“I’m prepared to collaborate with the mayor-elect and any councilmembers to do that,” she said.

Mahan’s focus on bread-and-butter issues with broad appeal may make his agenda an easier sell on a council that often cleaves along allegiance to labor or business interests. Liccardo won a 2014 race that centered on city worker benefit costs, an issue pitting him against the unions. Mahan’s race turned on how candidates would deal with homelessness, blight and crime.

“Of course, the devil’s in the details,” Mahan said, saying the vote on filling council vacancies was “not a great demonstration of our ability to come together around a common good.”

“But I’m confident when we start focusing on these issues, people are going to have to listen what voters said in the last election.”