I first tried to recruit Matt Mahan into politics more than a decade ago. He’s an exceptional man with a rare temperament for governing — mild-mannered, pragmatic, and too honorable to make promises he can’t keep. So when he announced his run for governor earlier this year, I jumped at the chance to help. But I faced an immediate problem: how do you introduce an unknown candidate to a state as large and loud as California?
Mahan was known only in San Jose. All of his principal opponents — Eric Swalwell, Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter, Antonio Villaraigosa, and Tom Steyer — were recognized by more than 90% of the state, either from years on the airwaves or from the personal wealth to put themselves there.
Campaign consultants told me a statewide campaign for an unknown candidate would require $75 million. Because Matt’s own campaign was limited by state law to donations of $39,200 per donor per election, I concluded the most useful thing I could do was build an independent expenditure (IE) campaign — which can raise unlimited amounts — and set a target of $50 million. That figure was nearly as much as the $60 million Govern for California had raised across all of its political activity over 15 years. But given a weak field of opponents and widespread enthusiasm for Matt in Silicon Valley and beyond, I thought it was doable.
I was wrong. After Matt announced, I helped form an IE. We quickly raised $10 million — a significant amount, but much less than I had hoped. A second IE for Mahan emerged in Los Angeles, lured away our campaign consultant, confused donors, and ultimately folded after raising just $3 million. We gathered another $18 million, but it was too little, too late. Matt remains unknown to 40% of Californians. In retrospect, even $50 million might not have been enough.
The principal lesson I take from this: when backing a non-flame-throwing unknown candidate, you must collect your full budget before the campaign begins. Flame-throwers can generate short-term momentum that in turn generates fundraising — candidates like Spencer Pratt feed on controversy and attention. Pragmatists cannot. It takes time to introduce a non-flame-throwing candidate and then to move the polls, and that time costs money you can’t raise on the fly.
The successful mayoral campaign of another non-flame-throwing pragmatist, Daniel Lurie, illustrates the point. Lurie entered the San Francisco mayor’s race with his financing already secured. Had he been forced to raise sufficient funds during the campaign itself, I doubt he could have done so while staying true to his pragmatic, non-combative character — the very qualities that made him worth backing in the first place.
You might respond by telling me I should have backed a flame-thrower. But the goal is good governance, not just victory. California has had more than enough experience with charismatic-but-empty public officials. Among the audiences that got to know him, Matt was one of only two candidates in this race with a net-positive favorability rating. The problem wasn’t the candidate. It was exposure.
There is more than enough money in California to solve that problem. You can see clear evidence of it in San Francisco, where a network of persistent donors just had more success supporting pragmatic candidates for the Board of Supervisors and defeating a ballot measure sponsored by that city’s most powerful special interest. The same kind of deep-pocketed, patient support needs to take root in Los Angeles and Sacramento.
There has been some recent press about dysfunction in Matt’s own campaign. Whatever the truth of those assessments, his campaign could have run perfectly and he still would have been known by only 60% of Californians — because an IE campaign didn’t spend enough to introduce him to the other 40%. That’s my failure, not his.
