California is the most successful state in the nation, and as our governor rightly reminds our detractors, we are the world’s fourth-largest economy, with over $4 trillion in GDP.
But maintaining our success requires a relentless focus on the facts in the real world, not a blind leap into meme land.
That’s why I was taken aback when Gov. Gavin Newsom’s vaunted social media team disparaged an announcement from the new CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond that it would not open or operate any stores in California due to anxieties over our state’s business climate. The governor’s team responded to the feedback not with a reasoned argument, but with an extended attack in their new “Trumpian” voice of belittling those who disagree with them. Their message to the CEO (and the 6.1 million other people who viewed the post) was “take your business elsewhere.”
Given that California currently has more than 1 million unemployed residents, this was not the reaction I was expecting — or that was called for.
Gov. Newsom’s supporters say he is “breaking the internet” and “owning” Trump. But the governor, and every elected official and leader, also need to own up to the truth. And the truth is that California has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, at 5.5%, and nearly half the nation’s unsheltered homeless people. We have the highest energy and housing costs in the continental United States, and, largely because of these high costs, the highest effective poverty rate in the nation.
And now let me give you the really bad news.
These problems are even less likely to be addressed today because of the terribly misaligned incentives being baked into our politics. As Gov. Newsom’s surge in recent polls demonstrates, politicians are being rewarded for resisting, even when such resistance moves beyond taking on the excesses and abuses of the Trump administration and begins disparaging businesses merely for expressing concerns over very real problems of crime, homelessness, and overregulation.
I was elected mayor of San Jose in 2022 after offering a simple plan for commonsense change: faster and cheaper solutions to homelessness, an increase in police hiring, and tying our elected officials’ pay to performance. These seemed like pretty radical ideas to some — although not to the majority of San Joseans demanding action.
By tuning out the political noise and focusing on the basic issues that residents care about the most, San Jose has nearly completed over 2,000 new safe and decent shelter units for homeless people in less than two years — and we are shrinking our unsheltered homeless population. We are clearing encampments and requiring that people come indoors if there is shelter available. And, under our new “Responsibility to Shelter” ordinance, if someone repeatedly refuses shelter when shelter is available, they could be charged with trespassing.
Crime is going down — in part because we helped convince Californians to embrace Proposition 36 to end a cycle of theft without consequence, sending the message that serious criminal activity, like repeated retail thefts, would carry consequences.
But we are just one city. We, and every California city, would be doing better if Sacramento was doing more. Instead of spending so much energy attacking his opponents, the governor and his team should be addressing the high cost of energy, helping hard-pressed families make ends meet and keeping them and their employers from fleeing our state. They should be addressing concerns over public safety by fully implementing the will of the voters on Proposition 36 by building enough treatment beds to ensure it doesn’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the opposition.
While the governor should be thanked for taking concrete steps on permitting reform, signing a bill to reduce the use of the California Environmental Quality Act to stop infill housing, he should use that real-world achievement as a model, not a one-off. By doing even more to address the high cost of housing construction and complicated building codes, the governor would help address both our homelessness crisis and our punishingly high cost of living.
Instead of modeling themselves after a governor focused on these important issues, our politicians are instead watching our governor “succeed” by making a ton of noise online, even sometimes at the expense of our state’s reputation. It might be a winning strategy for his presidential campaign, but it’s a losing one for improving the lives of Californians. And now even more politicians will try to get ahead with online antics rather than sensible policies.
Certainly, the governor should be praised — and rewarded politically — for standing up to protect vulnerable Californians whose constitutional rights are under attack. And on more than one occasion, he has done just that — brilliantly and courageously.
But “breaking the internet” doesn’t solve real-world problems — quite the opposite. More often than not, it’s just political theater that serves to excuse inaction and ineffective policies.
So if we really want change, we need to break this pattern of equating spicy online attacks with actual, successful attacks on our very serious problems.
Because the way we win the fight for a better California is by solving problems in the real world, not by stooping to Donald Trump's level online.
Matt Mahan is the mayor of San Jose.