Mayor of San Jose, California's third-largest city, aged 43. He is running for governor of California in 2026, considered one of the "fixer" candidates with a local governing record rather than a national profile. His campaign argues that the best defence against Trumpism is proving that Democrats can govern effectively in places they already run.
Mahan grew up on Rainbow Lane in Watsonville, a farming town in the corner of California best known for Steinbeck and strawberry fields. He received a scholarship to a Jesuit prep school in San Jose, commuting two hours each way via a relay of car rides and bus transfers. The school catapulted him to Harvard, where he overlapped with Pete Buttigieg and Mark Zuckerberg. Joe Green, his campaign chairman, is a college friend.
After Harvard, Mahan returned to Silicon Valley and co-founded Brigade, a platform for political discussions. As mayor he has blended technology and civics, using artificial intelligence to co-ordinate traffic signals so buses are not caught at red lights.
San Jose is not a YIMBY paradise, but Mahan has worked to reduce fees and red tape to make it easier for developers to build. On homelessness, he favours erecting shelters quickly rather than spending years and millions on permanent housing. The number of homeless people in San Jose has stayed fairly steady since 2019, but the proportion with a roof over their heads has increased from 15% to nearly 40%.
Mahan's centre-left politics and startup mindset have attracted donations from Californian tech moguls, whose millions help finance ads in the state's expensive media markets. He entered the crowded race in January 2026 as a long shot, but an uninspiring field and a scandal that torpedoed a front-runner have made the contest unpredictable. His challenge is introducing himself to California's 23m registered voters: San Jose is more populous than San Francisco, but few outside California know it.
All phone calls are obscene.