Stockton mayor, Elk Grove NASCAR driver make Forbes 30 Under 30 list

Forbes magazine named Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs to its 30 Under 30 list of top business and industry figures in the category of Law and Policy.

Elk Grove-born NASCAR driver Kyle Larson made the list in the category of Sports.

The annual list features 600 young stars in 20 different industries, including Art and Style, Technology, Hollywood and Entertainment, Education, Music, Finance and more.

“Perhaps none of our list members is making as ambitious an attempt to experiment with social policy as Michael Tubbs, the 27-year-old mayor of Stockton,” the magazine writes in an Opinion piece accompanying the report.

Forbes specifically mentions Tubbs’ push for a program that would pay monthly stipends to young men likely to engage in gun violence to stay out of trouble. The program, based on one pioneered in the Bay Area, provides mentoring, internships and travel opportunities.

“In a city of 315,000 people, it’s less than 100 guys who commit 70 percent to 80 percent of our violent crime, meaning less than 100 people control the narrative and the image of our city,” Tubbs, who graduated from Stanford, told Forbes. “As a community we have to do something about it.”

Tubbs wants to change Stockton’s notorious reputation for violent crime. The city saw 49 murders in 2016, and a high of 71 murders in 2012.

“When I first left Stockton for college, I thought, ‘OK, I’m successful now,’ ” he told The Sacramento Bee earlier this year. “I made it.

Then, in 2010, a cousin was murdered at a Halloween party, according to The Bee, and his focus changed. Tubbs decided he did not want to be another educated young person fleeing his home city. He wanted to help change Stockton’s fate.

“I decided it would be cowardly for me to continue to do research and write essays about all of Stockton’s problems and not try to do something about them,” he said.

Tubbs, with the help of a $1 million grant, also wants to provide a universal basic income to a handful of low-income Stockton families of $500 to cover basic expenses with no strings attached.

Larson, 25, was the 2014 Sprint Cup Rookie of the Year, the Nationwide 2013 Rookie of the Year and the K&N Pro Series 2012 Rookie of the Year. He was a front-runner for this year’s Monster Energy Cup before engine troubles cost him a shot at the title.

“The biggest difference for me this season, I think our race car is just a lot faster than in the past,” Larson told the Bee earlier this year in a phone interview. “Our whole team has done a real good job to find those little gains to make our stuff faster. Every engineer, every mechanic has done a great job this season.”

A graduate of Pleasant Grove High School, Larson became the first Elk Grove native to receive a key to the city when he was just 22 years old. He drives the No. 42 car for Chip Ganassi Racing and is the only full-time Asian-American driver currently in the sport.

Tubbs, who was elected mayor in 2016, is engaged to Anna Malaika Nti-Asare. Meanwhile, Larson and longtime girlfriend Katelyn Sweet announced last week that they were expecting their second child.

This story was originally published November 15, 2017 at 8:01 AM with the headline "Stockton mayor, Elk Grove NASCAR driver make Forbes 30 Under 30 list."