Why did mayor depart?
When Jamie Matthews announced he was stepping down as Santa Clara mayor a couple of days after the Super Bowl, he invoked one of the hoariest cliches in politics and business: He said he wanted to spend more time with his family.
“I haven’t stopped working since I was 15,” said Matthews, 53, a former San Jose code enforcement
1 officer who had 2 ⁄ 2 years left in his term. “I have a full life outside of what I do in front of the camera.” This was a remarkable statement in a variety of ways. Not the least of it was the implication that a parttime mayor’s job unfolds primarily in front of a camera.
It’s true Matthews spent a fair amount of time explaining the city to television and print reporters. To his credit, he was a very accessible mayor.
But any mayor, even one in a strong city manager system like Santa Clara’s, has duties outside the glare of a camera. He studies memos. He makes phone calls. He talks with constituents. You have to wonder if that counted in Matthews’ full life.
The second odd thing was Matthews’ assertion that he hadn’t stopped working since he was 15. No doubt it’s true. It’s also true that he took a retirement in 2015 after 29 years with the city of San Jose. Over the last year, he’s had more time to kick back in front of the TV, not less.
Time with family
Finally is the rubric that a thousand fibbers have made threadbare, the notion that what drove Matthews’ announcement was the need to spend time with family.
Don’t get me wrong: Spending time with your family is a fine thing. But even if it’s
true, it’s virtually impossible to persuade people to accept it as the primary reason for a departure.
Consider the case of Ron Krolik, the CFO of Yelp, who announced on the same day as Matthews that he intended to step down for family reasons. In Krolik’s case, that came just as the company was reporting a fourth-quarter loss. You can’t blame investors who think something else is afoot.
In Matthews’ case, his departure comes amid reports that the civil grand jury — civil, not criminal — is looking into Santa Clara’s Stadium Authority, which oversees Levi’s Stadium.
City manager
It also comes against the backdrop of increasing dissatisfaction on the part of City Manager Julio Fuentes and a power struggle between the factions on the council favorable and critical of the 49ers.
(For some reason, this battle has split along gender lines: The three council members critical of the 49ers are female. The three remaining sympathizers are male.)
In 2014, when Matthews was re-elected as mayor, he signed on for a four-year gig. He’s too experienced a politician not to know what that meant. And he ought to be held responsible for not finishing the job. Nobody should vote for him again for anything, including secretary of his homeowners association.
When I asked Matthews to elaborate, he responded with a lengthy note that said the criticism he has had to endure over the years has been hard on his family. “If you really knew me, you’d know that there’s nothing more important to me than my family, and it’s about time I put them first,” he explained.
But instead of invoking family, he would be better off saying, “Look, I’m exhausted. I’m exhausted with the bickering over the stadium. I don’t want to baby-sit the city manager or fight with Lisa Gillmor anymore. I’ve taken us through the Super Bowl. It’s time for me to leave.”
That might not be the entire truth, either. But at least it would be more believable.