Matt Mahan, the centrist Democrat and mayor of San Jose, announced on Thursday that he would run for governor of California, joining a sprawling but stagnant field to succeed Gavin Newsom.

Mahan, 43, is a former tech entrepreneur who was first elected mayor of Silicon Valley’s largest city in 2022.

He has touted that his pragmatic approach has helped make San Jose the safest big city in the nation, and has led to a significant drop in homelessness, a chronic problem vexing many large California cities.

But the approach also had his critics. Mahan was one of the few prominent Democrats backing proposition 36, a 2024 tough-on-crime ballot initiative that imposed harsher penalties for some drug and theft offenses.

Mahan has long been critical of Newsom, who is term-limited and cannot run again, over the governor’s approach to homelessness, crime reduction and even his social media taunting of the president.

In a series of interviews on Thursday, Mahan suggested he saw an opening as a candidate focused less on the national politics dominated by Donald Trump and more on the problems facing the state, including homelessness and the soaring cost of living.

“We have a lot of candidates following a tired playbook,” Mahan told Politico. “They’re either running against Trump or they’re running in his image. I’m running for the future of California.”

Mahan hasn’t held statewide or federal office. But he has signaled an interest in running for governor for weeks. His entrance into the race, months before the June primary, reflects the unsettled nature of the field, which has so far failed to produce a frontrunner.

The Democrats running for governor include the former congresswoman Katie Porter, congressman Eric Swalwell, former health and human services secretary Xavier Becerra, former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer.

Welcoming Mahan to the race, Steyer said in a statement: “California needs a governor who will stand up to powerful interests, not carry their water.”

Speaking at an event in San Francisco hosted by Bloomberg, Newsom said: “I don’t know enough about him. I wish him good luck.”

When the moderator followed up, quoting Mahan’s public rebuke of Newsom’s Trump-trolling social media strategy, the governor said the combative posture has been both “style” and “substance” and has “allowed me to drive a conversation that I couldn’t drive in the past”.

“I’m trying to put a mirror up,” Newsom said. “I think it’s been important what we’ve done.”