When I finally got San Jose mayor Matt Mahan on the phone early Friday evening, he was in a rental car zigzagging through the west side of Los Angeles, and Artemis II was about to splash down off the coast of San Diego, two hours south.
Mahan, one of 10 candidates in California’s gubernatorial race, was back in the city to do some television hits and meet and greets, and he was sounding appropriately somber: A few hours before, the San Francisco Chronicle and then CNN had reported on several women accusing Representative Eric Swalwell, the front-runner in the race, of sexually assaulting or harassing them. One woman had accused the congressman of rape.
Swalwell denied the allegations, calling them “absolutely false,” but the long knives were out. There were a lot of votes on the line. And campaign cash. And endorsements.
