Sign Our Petition:
Stop the Attacks and Start the Debates
Sign Our Petition: Stop the Attacks and Start the Debates
This week, Supervisor Cindy Chavez shared a campaign video misleading voters by falsely attacking Matt’s record on a woman’s right to choose. She exploited legitimate voter anger over the overturning of Roe for her own political gain. Matt is 100% pro-choice. Protecting choice is a vital issue and it needs to be addressed with unity and purpose.
Our politics have become so toxic – and too many politicians give in to their own political self-interest by fanning the flames of distrust. We can do better than that. San Jose is better than that.
Rather than false attacks – we need to demand our candidates explain clearly how they are going to address the issues that matter most in our city. Matt has asked Cindy, in a personal letter, to stop the misleading ad campaign and instead commit to a series of 5 debates on issues facing San Jose voters.
If you agree – we need solutions not attacks – I hope you will sign our petition demanding substantive debates on homelessness, crime, affordable housing and government efficiency.
You can read Matt’s full letter to Cindy below.
Election season is here – and the false attacks have begun. Protecting the right to choose is a vital issue and it needs to be addressed with unity and purpose, not exploited by a politician with false attacks on a fellow supporter of a woman’s right to choose.
Matt Mahan's Letter to
Supervisor Cindy Chavez
Dear Supervisor Chavez,
I’m writing today to you personally in the hopes that we can agree to run a spirited campaign for Mayor of San Jose focused on the issues that matter to our community and not the kind of political mudslinging that has made our national politics so toxic.
Sadly, I was forwarded an email that you sent to voters yesterday which contains a video clearly designed to mislead voters about my record on a woman’s right to choose – so I will start with asking you to stop this false advertising.
Supervisor Chavez, you know very well that I support a woman’s right to choose and have consistently done so. Yet you produced a video that attacks me on this issue in an intentionally misleading way.
As CEO of Causes and Brigade, I helped build platforms for meaningful civic engagement. At both civic tech companies, our mission was to build nonpartisan communication tools citizens could use to speak with each other respectfully, even on controversial topics, and to organize support for the policies and candidates they prefer. As a technology platform, we did not censor people for expressing their views as long as those views were shared in a peaceful and respectful way.
I find your misuse of the important issue of preserving a woman’s right to choose for political gain counterproductive to the broader cause of supporting that fundamental right. You know that I support choice. Your misleading claim that I failed to support women because I ran a technology platform that did not censor users’ political opinions is a false choice and a distraction from the mission of preserving vital rights.
Beyond the political cynicism, your position, if you apply it to yourself, is actually quite shocking. Your video attacks me for not supporting an Orwellian version of censorship over open civic debate.
At the Board of Supervisors meetings, will you now refuse to hear citizens who oppose your views on choice? You have not in the past – but yet you attack me for not censoring those views on the platforms I helped build.
Since it is now your position that we should censor and deplatform those who disagree with us, where do you propose this ends? Will you stop public testimony on raising taxes? Will you pull the plug on those who disagree with your position to depopulate the jails? What about those who want to respectfully challenge your approach to solving homelessness by building $850,000/door apartments?
That is what you are attacking me for not doing – not censoring opposing views.
The irony that you are using media and technology platforms that do not overtly censor to attack me for not supporting censorship is not lost on the public. You send an email via a service that also allows anti-choice emails to be sent. Will you stop sending emails? You post to Facebook, a platform that allows anti-choice posts to be made respectfully. Will you stop posting to Facebook? You tweet on a platform that allows anti-choice tweets. Will you now boycott Twitter?
Of course, you will not do that. But yet you run an advertisement that attacks me for doing what you do every single day.
Let’s end this now.
I ask you to end your misleading advertising today – but I am asking for more than that, and the public deserves better than that.
I am asking you directly to agree to five or more substantive debates on the topics that really matter to local residents, debates that could be hosted by third party civic groups or local media. I propose we debate for 90 minutes on these five topics:
- How to end street homelessness
- How to lower crime
- How to make government more effective, particularly as inflation strains family budgets
- How to create more affordable housing where it makes sense
- And a final debate that would take questions submitted by San Jose residents on other particular issues of concern to them.
Supervisor, I disagree with many of your positions. But I know you are better than the shameful advertising you are running.
Let’s join together to put toxic politics aside and show San Jose that issues matter. I look forward to your rapid response both on my call for you to end your misleading advertising and on my proposal to engage in respectful and substantive debate on the issues that matter to voters.
Respectfully,
Matt Mahan
