Musician Grimes has thrown her weight behind a candidate for California governor. Rob Latour/Invision/AP It was nail-biting time on Tuesday for industryites invested in the outcome of California’s primary. But singer/songwriter Grimes isn’t one to just sit on the couch and doom scroll.
She hit the studio with her favorite candidate for governor, Matt Mahan, and they recorded a duet. She asks Mahan on the track, “30% on homelessness is big progress. Do you wanna make a song about it?”
Mahan is the current San Jose Mayor whose bid for the governor’s mansion was backed by Reed Hastings, until the Netflix chairman pulled back his $1M donation amid the candidate’s lagging poll numbers.
Mayor of San Jose and California gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan interviewed in Beverly Hills, California, May 15, 2026. REUTERSU “You understand I have no musical talent whatsoever?” he warns. Alas, Grimes shared the tune across her various platforms including TikTok, and with her 1.39 million YouTube followers.
Although her former partner, Elon Musk, has become something of a kingmaker by backing candidates like Donald Trump, Grimes has mostly avoided the political fray.
Sources tell Page Six Hollywood that the Canadian songstress became enthralled with Mahan’s policies and asked for a meeting. “For some time, she’s been concerned about where tech is headed. But she’s been disappointed by politicians who hate tech, but don’t understand it,” says a source familiar with Mahan’s studio visit, which came together over the past few weeks. “She jumped into making a song for the race because she was so happy to see a Democrat candidate who understood tech including the problems within Silicon Valley. To top it off, she was impressed with how good he was in the studio.”
Grimes and California gubernatorial candidate Matt Mahan hit the recording studio together. YouTube/Grimes Mahan, considered a moderate Democrat, ran a campaign on “making life more affordable for working families, on accountability in government, and on building a future that works for all Californians, not just those at the top.” Those at the top would most certainly include Musk and his tech titan pals.
Sadly, the Grimes-Mahan duet didn’t result in a surge of voters pulling the lever for the gubernatorial hopeful. Last year, he vowed to build the most “AI-enabled city hall,” but still champions erecting guardrails on the tech industry.
