By Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters
Republican Steve Hilton will advance to the November general election in the race for California governor, setting up a longshot contest against Democrat Xavier Becerra in which he’s promised to slash spending and regulations if elected.
Hilton, a British American former Fox News host, secured about 25% of the vote in the June 2 primary, with about 88% of votes counted as of Tuesday evening.
His opponent, Becerra, is a former state attorney general and U.S. Health and Human Services secretary who emerged from a large pool of Democratic candidates.
In a statement, Hilton said he would “lead the movement for change” in California and called Becerra the embodiment of the same decade and a half of Democratic control.
“My mission is clear: to go to Sacramento, clean up the corruption, cut your costs, help your business, and fix our schools,” he said. “We can’t keep voting the same way and expect different results.”
Hilton’s win knocks billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer from contention after he spent $215 million of his own money to boost his populist campaign and blanket the airwaves with ads. It will make the general election a traditional partisan matchup during a midterm election year that Democrats will treat as a check on President Donald Trump’s administration rather than the intra-Democratic Party brawl that Steyer supporters had hoped for.
California uses a top-two primary system; the two candidates with the most votes advance to the November ballot regardless of party.
Steyer conceded in a statement Tuesday evening and endorsed Becerra for the November election. He said he was proud to have made “enemies” of the state’s utilities, tech companies and Big Oil, and didn’t blame Californians who “just couldn’t stomach voting for a billionaire.”
“It is absolutely essential that (Trump’s) handpicked candidate does not hold the keys to California,” he said, referring to Hilton.
With a crowded field of Democrats all competing for votes, Hilton led in the polls for much of the race, energizing conservative voters with promises to cut income taxes and the gas tax, boost oil drilling and overturn environmental regulations such as the state’s greenhouse gas reduction mandates.
He’s sold his candidacy as an opportunity for Californians crushed by high costs to end “16 years of one-party rule.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last Republican to lead California, left office in 2011.
“The people of California have really been generous in giving the Democratic Party the opportunity to show that their ideas work,” Hilton said last week, declaring victory early at a press conference in Sacramento. “I think the patience is running out, really.”
He faces an uphill battle in November.
California Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two-to-one. Though Hilton says he’s presenting the chance for the state to go in a different direction, there has been a GOP candidate in the general election for governor in every race in the past two decades — and besides Schwarzenegger’s tenure, Democrats have won them all.
He’s also endorsed by Trump, whom Californians disapprove of by high margins.
But he has not downplayed the endorsement.
“I think it’s going to be very helpful to Californians to have a governor who has a good working relationship with the president and his team,” he said.
Hilton’s signature campaign promise is to eliminate the income tax for the first $100,000 in earnings and institute a flat tax rate above that; he said last week that his campaign will consider raising that cap after conducting an economic analysis of the California cost of living. Either option would represent an enormous reduction in state revenue that Hilton has said he expects to offset by cutting a third of state spending.
He has not said how, if elected, he would get such a proposal through the Democratic supermajority in the state Legislature.
Hilton was born in London, the son of Hungarian immigrants to the United Kingdom. He got his start in politics working for the British Conservative Party and played a prominent role in the rise of Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010. He moved in 2012 to Silicon Valley, where his wife was a Google executive, and dabbled in startups before launching a weekly Fox News show in 2017 during Trump’s first presidency. The show, The Next Revolution, ran through 2023.
Hilton hasn’t got a chance. Promising to slash environmental protection regulations in CA will never win. Thank God we live in a state where the vast majority of people value our planet over profits.
Hilton is a far cry from Arnold and his moderate policies. Heck, I’d maybe even vote for The Governator given how liberal his conservatism really was compared to the MAGA criminals and bigots like Hilton and that loser Sheriff.
Adios Steyer. It’s good to see you can’t quite buy an election win once in a while. Becerra is a status quo fail for the state – schools, crime, taxes, business, infrastructure, you name it.
See you Chadwick Bianco, no one wants your criminal MAGA crazy trash here. And Larry Elder didn’t have a chance last go around either. Sad!
We’ll just have to continue failing upward from fourth place in the world.
Take a real look at where we’re at in education in this country relative to the 1st world, and then factor in just how bad CA is in within the U.S. Do the math. It’s ugly. But hey, giant economy! Ehh….be smarter.
“Be smarter” coming from hands down the most intellectually dishonest and ignorant person here is hilarious.
Let’s stick to facts. You can at least try instead of spewing random junk, or can’t you?
The U.S. is lagging amongst first world nations in terms of education. We’re getting beat badly by a host of nations that have far smaller economies than ours. Bigger isn’t always better, kiddo. Then, factor in California – which as you clearly must know – has been run by one party for a couple decades now and has bottom third level educational success overall, despite being at the top in spending on education. Hmm….
I’d call that failing.
You call everything failing.
BASIC – those were your own words. Don’t like em, don’t say em. Pretty simple, even for you.
As for the US failing, yes. Absolutely. We are a joke compared to other civilized nations across all measures – education, quality of life, healthcare, poverty, homelessness, gun violence, the list goes on.
But no, just focus on CA which is blowing away every red state in the nation on pretty much everything else other than education.
Tell us how Republicans want to solve the issue (other than privatizing
school, using the voucher scam to fund already wealthy people, giving lucrative educational software contracts to their buddies, taking away early education programs, defunding transitional kindergarten , defunding all after school programs, and looking in kids pants to determine they are the appropriate gender).
Tell us how doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is supposed to work. Are you smarter than Einstein?
We’re not expecting a different result. Why change something extremely successful?
Are you smarter than a rock?
Basic, posts like yours show how easily some Republican beta men get their feelings hurt so easily. They try to stand their ground withb a weak flex like yours
> how bad CA is in within the U.S
Ahead of 2/3 of red states.
Haven’t you kept up on where CA stands nationally?
Just because you hate red states and their citizens means absolutely nothing. Here are some examples of where CA stands nationally on key metrics (US News and World Report):
Crime 36/50…ouch
Economy 32/50…wow, I bet you didn’t see that one coming.
Guess what, bigger isn’t better economically.
Education 24/50…on a bell curve that is, yes…a C. Clap for it.
Fiscal Stability 42/50…yay! Pension debt anyone?
Health care 7/50…that’s surprising! Far and away our top score.
Infrastructure 35/50…sounds about right. Some of your favorites
that you love to rip on like Alabama, Tennessee, and
Kentucky are better.
Natural Environment 24/50…mediocre.
Opportunity 50/50…=dead last, may as well move to North Dakota.
But hey, you can argue all you want.
Nicely bogus stats.
Sourced from Fox outlets?
Hey BASIC – properly cite your sources.
Also, at least for Opportunity, you failed to mention the factors that contribute….
#21
Economic Opportunity
#50
Affordability
#33
Equality
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/opportunity?sort=rank-desc
#21 in Economic Opportunity ain’t too bad. Our low rank in overall Opportunity is due to being dead last in Affordability. Big surprise. We’re the most desirable state in the nation and one of the top locations in the world. It’s expensive to live here. That’s hardly Newsom’s fault. Go blame Capitalism.
Also, #1 in Business Environment ….
My statement was factually correct, person who is a model of what a human being SHOULD NOT BE.
Well, crime is decreasing so that’s good to know we’ll continue that trend!
Adios the chance for a truly progressive governor for California.
From Tom Steyer:
It’s now clear that we do not have the votes necessary to advance to the general election in November.
First, before any pride in what we accomplished or disappointment in what we didn’t, I want to express my gratitude. To all those of you who knocked doors, made phone calls, came to a town hall, or trusted me with your vote: Thank you. Your support – and dedication to your fellow Californians – humbles and inspires me, and I’m forever changed by the months we spent together. Every day reminded me of what I knew on the very first: that Californians are special, and they deserve a state they can afford to live, work, play, and imagine a future in.
For the rest of my life, I will be proud of the ways we fought for and with working people, earning endorsements from unions representing nurses, educators, carpenters, home care workers, hotel and restaurant workers, and the votes of almost 2 million Californians who dared to demand more for each other and the state they love.
Together, we fought for a California that belongs to the people who keep it running every day, and we insisted that they do not have to settle for a system that protects corporate profits at the expense of working people. I’m proud of how we never compromised our values or lowered our sights for what California can and should be.
And I’m proud of the enemies we made. We forced Chevron, PG&E, Meta, and so many others out of hiding. We forced them to show who and what they have always stood for, and we challenged the greed and cowardice that allow them to raise costs, suppress wages, pollute communities, and treat workers as disposable.
In this race, those corporations revealed that they see a government that puts working people first as an existential threat – even when proposed by a billionaire. By spending $55 million – the most ever against a single candidate in a California primary – they showed the lengths they would go to in order to protect a status quo that only serves them and their profits.
And now, the genie is out of the bottle. This campaign proved that business-as-usual depends on politics-as-usual, and there is no going back. We must continue to fight for a system where democracy serves Californians, not corporations – and where you do not have to be a billionaire to run on single-payer, or on breaking up monopolies, or on calling out a corrupt system when you see it. Because people are fed up with a system rigged to benefit billionaires and leave them behind. They see what’s happening, and they know who to blame. It’s why so many people voted for our platform. And it’s not lost on me that it’s also why so many people just couldn’t stomach voting for a billionaire. It’s hard to blame them.
I have always been an optimist, and today, I remain an optimist. Nothing this campaign fought for is far off. These dreams we dreamt together are not too big. Californians deserve a life they can afford, and they deserve for it to be in California. My commitment to this fight didn’t start last November, and it doesn’t end today. Because the work of winning a better, fairer California is not the work of a campaign. It is the work of my life.
For now, we must stay focused. Donald Trump is the embodiment of the corporations’ craven, soulless, profit-first model of politics, and it is absolutely essential that his handpicked candidate does not hold the keys to California. It would be a travesty for Steve Hilton to win the governorship, and Californians must unite behind Xavier Becerra to ensure he does not.
To my supporters: Thank you for everything. When I promised to fight for you, that was not a campaign promise. It was just a promise. And I am a man of my word. I’m on your team forever. I wasn’t born a billionaire, I won’t die a billionaire, and I’ll spend the rest of my life working alongside you to dismantle a system that only benefits billionaires.
Today, my message to you is simple: Pay attention. Know what you deserve, and know who is on your side. Understand who the villains are, and say their names out loud. Continue to demand more from your leaders and your government, until they give you the California – and the country – you know you deserve. I will be with you all the way.
With gratitude,
Tom
Of course MAGA will vote for.an immigrant. We should submit a freedom of information act request for his immigration paperwork. He certainly lied about something on there. Republicans are incapable of speaking truth.
No one has a problem with immigrants that come here legally and don’t become criminals. Got it yet?
OOOOF BASIC…. you must have been asleep the last year or so as hundreds (if not thousands) of people have been assaulted and arrested who had legal residence here or were even US citizens. Even people who were trying to do it the “right way” by going to their VISA appointments and immigration hearings were being attacked and arrested.
Comments like this portray a person who is incredibly, even wildly, ignorant about current affairs. Or, just a liar.
Maybe stop getting your news from internet memes and Truth Social?
If you get your news from hallucinations, you’d believe as BI Guy does.
Basic, these posts are typically smarmy conservative drivel. You can’t even control your emotions enough to stay on topic. Sad.
“no one is xenophobic” says the serial liar who is a model for what a person SHOULD NOT be like.
BASICLIAR …. “No one has a problem with immigrants that come here legally and don’t become criminals” IS THAT WHY IMMIGRANTS THAT HAVE APPLUED FOR LEGAL STATUS, ARE FOLLOWING THE RULES AND GOING THROUGH THE PROCESS LEGALLY (HAVE NOT COMMITTED CRIMES) ARE BEING ROLLED BY ICE, KIDNAPPED AND DEPORTED? Are you really that naive, or do you just promote misinformation like FOX?