"I look at California schools ranked 46, jobs ranked 46, No. 1 in poverty. Someone has to fight to turn it around and I don't see a bench," Kashkari said.
 

"I don't see a long line of people running to Sacramento to make major changes in the state, and so I said, look, if a guy like me - 40 years old, a lot of energy, experience in public policy - if a guy like me is not willing to try and turn it around, how's the government going to get better?" he asked.

But before Kashkari takes on Brown, he needs to be among the top two vote-getters in June's open primary where all candidates vie for the top two slots, regardless of party.

"We're all vying for No. 2," he told Buzzfeed.

Kashkari grew up in a middle-class household outside of Akron, Ohio. After earning bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering at the University of Illinois, he moved to California in 1998 to work as a design engineer at TRW in Redondo Beach.
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