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Steve Hilton’s long-shot campaign for governor is courting Golden state voters with unapologetically populist message
‘Of course I’m the underdog’: the British former spin doctor trying to turn California red Steve Hilton’s long-shot campaign for governor is courting Golden state voters with unapologetically populist message’s next governor, but that isn’t stopping him from campaigning as though he was just one step away from pulling off the impossible.
The former Downing Street political adviser and Fox News host refuses to be daunted by the rancid political environment for Republican candidates this year, or by Instead, as he barnstorms the state in an effort to rally the Republican faithful and win over as many Democrats and independents as he can find, he is following a full-throated people-versus-the-powerful script and pumping out what he hopes will be crowd-pleasing policy proposals as fast as he can come up with them. Abolish the department of motor vehicles, he suggested a couple of weeks ago.
Cut the price of gas to $3 a gallon. Start a new business school in working-class East Los Angeles. Set up a competition among California’s 58 counties to build 10 brand-new cities from the ground up. Many of these ideas dovetail with the argument Hilton has made from the day he started running, that California has been driven to the brink of ruin by 16 years of Democratic party control over every statewide office.
“Enough is enough,” as his campaign slogan says. But they also mark a return to his roots as a prolific and occasionally unpredictable political ideas man, known during his time working for the British Conservative party for spitting out proposals while wandering barefoot through the corridors of power. Policy has been one of the few throughlines in Hilton’s unconventional political journey from one side of the Atlantic to the other.
He’s been a restaurant owner and business consultant as well as a senior adviser in the coalition government led by David Cameron in the 2010s. He came to California largely because his wife, Rachel Whetstone, established herself as a big tech public relations guru in Silicon Valley.
, while he wrote a couple of policy books – about “positive populism” and putting a human face on government – and used his connections in the conservative movement to land his Fox News show. Seizing the chance to try to resuscitate a largely moribund California Republican party came only much later.
Hilton prides himself on being “un-pigeonhole-able” and thinks of his campaign style as some combination of three startlingly different recent presidential candidates – Bernie Sanders, for his unwavering commitment to lift up struggling people; the Kentucky senator Rand Paul, for his fondness for libertarian free-market solutions; and John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio, for his “happy warrior” campaigning style. Steve Hilton talks to attendees during a town hall in Modesto, California, on 26 August 2026 in an effort to connect with farmer’s about their concerns for the upcoming governor’s race.
Many of his ideas come straight out of the Republican playbook, accounting for the mistrust he inspires in many Democratic voters. He wants to set up a California version of Doge, Elon Musk’s so-called department of government efficiency that took a hatchet to federal agencies in the opening months of Trump’s second presidency. He wants to kill several environmental regulations, including a plan to introduce more energy-efficient vehicle tires over the next decade.
, then telling a gaggle of Republican women in stars-and-stripes shirts that they needed to copy Democratic get-out-the-vote techniques instead of complaining about the other side cheating.
“This election is not about who you hate in Washington,” Hilton pleaded in his Trump-distancing ad in July, “it’s about what you love here. ” His supporters keep telling him he has to win because their livelihoods depend on it. But, so far, the wider California electorate believes the race is indeed about who they hate in Washington – and nothing Hilton does or says seems to be changing their minds.
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