A November California election will see a television personality make a run after all.
A day after Spencer Pratt was eliminated from the L.A. mayoral race, former Fox News host Steve Hilton clinched second place in the California gubernatorial primary and will face Biden-era HHS secretary Xavier Becerra in the general election. The British-born newbie candidate held off progressive Tom Steyer, who had been nipping at Hilton’s heels as votes rolled in but could never quite close the gap.
The Republican Hilton held a lead of at least 300,000 votes and four percentage points over Steyer pretty much since the primary a week ago, even as Becerra passed him for first place several days in. On Tuesday, with a fresh vote drop of more than 600,000 ballots, Steyer closed the gap slightly. But Hilton still maintained a lead of 200,000 votes and 2.5 percentage points after the vote drop. With just 9% of votes remaining to be counted, the AP late Tuesday called the race.
The move ends the progressive billionaire Steyer’s bid to reform California with a series of activist, worker-centric, AI-regulatory and environmentally aggressive policy proposals, as well as a staunchly opposing position on the Paramount purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery. He spent a nationwide high $200 million+ on the effort, but still acquitted himself well with more than two million votes. Liberal scenarists will be left wondering what if, though, as Congresswoman Katie Porter will end up notching more than 400,000 votes — enough, potentially, to have given Steyer the win had the fellow liberal Democrat dropped out.
A former strategist for Tory prime minister David Cameron in England, Hilton arrived in Silicon Valley with his wife Rachel Whetsone in the early 2010’s as she worked a series of high-profile comms jobs at Google, Uber and Netflix. During that time, Hilton was an entrepreneur and also hosted a Sunday Fox News show for six years; while arguing for conservative positions, he stood out on the network with a more inclusive, less tendentious vibe than some of his colleagues.
Hilton also had a different kind of television fame back in the U.K. with the buzzword-loving political spinmeister Stewart Pearson in Armando Iannucci’s political satire In the Thick of It, based on him.
Hilton faces a tough challenge in his bid to stop Becerra — in addition to having the backing of Donald Trump in a frequently anti-Trump state, Hilton also must defy partisan gravity. A Republican has not won the governorship since Arnold Schwarzenegger last did it in 2006 — in fact, a Republican has failed to reach 41% of the vote count since that time.
Hilton will seek to build a campaign on exactly that fact, arguing that California’s challenges stem from longtime Democratic dominance; during the primary, he hit that note hard, keying on the eight-year reign of Democrat Gavin Newsom (who is term-limited). Certainly Hilton’s policies differ sharply even from a moderate Democrat like Becerra — he favors lowering taxes, lowering regulations and even building low-density housing to solve the state’s housing crisis.
Hilton also has distinguished himself on the Hollywood front, promising a major entertainment tax-credit program of as much as 60% per project with no annual cap and both below-the-line and postproduction eligibility. Becerra has taken a far more measured approach, though whether that will sway many Democratic entertainment workers to jump parties remains to be seen. Becerra also has a lot more electoral experience, having won 14 elections in California (many cakewalks as a Congressman).
Whoever wins can take solace in the likelihood they’ll be in the job for a while. In a California electoral peculiarity, every single governor since 1942 has served more than one term.
