Republican Steve Hilton locked up a spot on the November ballot for California governor after the June 2 primary, setting up a general-election fight against Democrat Xavier Becerra in the deepest of blue states. With roughly 88 percent of votes counted by Tuesday evening, the former Fox News host had captured about 25 percent of the primary vote, enough to advance under California's top-two system, CalMatters reported.
The result knocks billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer out of contention despite a staggering $215 million personal investment in his campaign. It also hands California Republicans something they haven't had in years: a Trump-endorsed nominee with national media reach heading into a statewide contest.
Whether Hilton can close the sale in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two-to-one is another question entirely. But the primary outcome itself is a clean rebuke to Steyer's big-spending progressive populism, and a signal that California voters, at minimum, want a choice.
Hilton, a British American who got his start working for the British Conservative Party and played a prominent role in the rise of Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010, has pitched his candidacy as a chance to end what he calls "16 years of one-party rule" in Sacramento. No Republican has led California since Arnold Schwarzenegger left office in 2011.
In a statement after the primary, Hilton framed the race in blunt terms:
"My mission is clear: to go to Sacramento, clean up the corruption, cut your costs, help your business, and fix our schools."
He followed that with a line aimed squarely at the state's Democratic establishment:
"We can't keep voting the same way and expect different results."
Hilton led in the polls for much of the primary campaign. He energized conservative voters with promises to cut income taxes and the gas tax, boost oil drilling, and overturn environmental regulations including California's greenhouse gas reduction mandates. His signature proposal: eliminate the state income tax for the first $100,000 in earnings and institute a flat tax rate above that threshold.
Last week, Hilton said his campaign would consider raising that cap after conducting an economic analysis of California's cost of living. He has said he expects to offset the revenue hit by cutting a third of state spending, though he has not specified which categories would face the knife.
That gap matters. The California state Legislature holds a Democratic supermajority, and Hilton has not explained how he would push such sweeping fiscal changes through a hostile chamber. It is the single biggest unanswered question of his campaign, and Becerra's team will exploit it relentlessly between now and November.
For Tom Steyer, the primary was an expensive lesson. The billionaire spent $215 million of his own money to blanket the airwaves and run a populist Democratic campaign. He conceded Tuesday evening and endorsed Becerra for the general election.
Steyer said he was proud to have made "enemies" of the state's utilities, tech companies, and Big Oil. He also offered a rare moment of self-awareness, saying he did not blame Californians who "just couldn't stomach voting for a billionaire."
Still, his concession carried a warning shot aimed at Hilton. The Fox News connection between Hilton and the broader Trump orbit is something Democrats intend to weaponize. Steyer made that explicit:
"It is absolutely essential that (Trump's) handpicked candidate does not hold the keys to California."
That framing, Hilton as a Trump proxy, will be the centerpiece of Becerra's fall campaign. CalMatters noted that Californians disapprove of Trump by high margins, and the Becerra camp will try to make the race a referendum on the president rather than on sixteen years of Democratic governance.
Hilton's biography is unusual for a California gubernatorial candidate. Born in London, the son of Hungarian immigrants to the United Kingdom, he built his early career inside the British Conservative Party before helping engineer Cameron's rise to prime minister.
He moved to Silicon Valley in 2012, where his wife was a Google executive. He dabbled in startups before launching "The Next Revolution," a weekly Fox News show, in 2017 during Trump's first presidency. The show ran through 2023.
That trajectory, British politics, Silicon Valley, cable news, and now a run for governor, gives Hilton an outsider profile that cuts both ways. It lets him claim he's not a creature of Sacramento. It also gives Democrats ammunition to paint him as a transplant with no roots in the state's communities.
Hilton has leaned into the Trump endorsement rather than running from it. He told reporters he sees a working relationship with the White House as an asset, not a liability:
"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."
In an era when loyalty to the president carries real political weight within the GOP, Hilton's embrace of the endorsement positions him firmly inside the party's mainstream.
Xavier Becerra emerged from a crowded Democratic field to claim the other November slot. The former state attorney general and former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary is the kind of credentialed Democrat the party defaults to in high-stakes races, long résumé, institutional backing, and a track record that ties him directly to the Sacramento and Washington establishments Hilton is running against.
CalMatters described the coming Hilton-Becerra contest as a "longshot" for the Republican. That framing reflects the raw math: California's voter registration gap, the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature, and the state's consistent leftward lean in statewide races over the past two decades.
But the math also tells another story. A GOP candidate has appeared in the general election for governor in every race over the past two decades. The question is never whether a Republican will be on the ballot. It's whether one can break through. And Hilton's profile, media savvy, Trump-endorsed, armed with a populist tax message, gives him more tools than most recent Republican nominees have carried into November.
Hilton himself argued the patience of California voters is wearing thin. He called Becerra the embodiment of the same decade and a half of Democratic control that has driven up costs and driven out residents:
"The people of California have really been generous in giving the Democratic Party the opportunity to show that their ideas work. I think the patience is running out, really."
The general election will test whether California's one-party dominance is as durable as the registration numbers suggest, or whether the state's affordability crisis, homelessness, and regulatory burden have created an opening that a well-known outsider can exploit.
Hilton's tax plan is bold. Eliminating state income tax on the first $100,000 in earnings would deliver immediate relief to working families crushed by California's cost of living. But the proposal's credibility depends on details he hasn't provided. Cutting a third of state spending is a claim, not a plan. The political realities of governing inside a hostile legislature would test that promise from day one.
Becerra, meanwhile, will have to defend a record that stretches across Sacramento and Washington, two institutions that aren't winning popularity contests with the voters who pay the bills.
Democrats will spend the next five months tying Hilton to Trump. Hilton will spend them tying Becerra to every failure Californians see when they fill up their gas tanks, open their property tax bills, or step over a tent encampment on the way to work.
The broader conservative movement is watching, too. In an era of internal reshuffling within the Republican coalition, a competitive race in California, even an uphill one, would signal that the party's populist message can travel beyond its traditional strongholds.
Hilton declared victory early at a press conference in Sacramento last week. Whether that confidence survives contact with the most expensive, most Democratic electorate in the country remains to be seen.
But for the first time in a long time, California Republicans have a candidate who actually wants to fight. That alone is worth more than $215 million of Tom Steyer's money ever bought.
