Steve Hilton is an official candidate for California governor. Here’s what to know | Opinion

Billionaire Tom Steyer is out and gubernatorial Republican Steve Hilton is headed for the November election, where he will face Democrat Xavier Becerra. Hilton’s campaign mixes Trump-style promises with hardline positions on energy, housing and transgender athletes — and Californians deserve a clear-eyed look at what he’s actually selling.

Here are 10 key takeaways:

• The son of Hungarian refugees, Hilton was born in London and spent his early childhood there. He later attended boarding school in Sussex and went on to Oxford University, where he studied philosophy, politics and economics.

• He worked as chief strategist for former Prime Minister David Cameron. He notably led a clean-energy agenda, going so far as to engineer Cameron’s “hug a husky” Arctic trip to highlight effects of climate change.

• He moved to the U.S. in 2012 after his wife, Rachel Whetstone, took a job in California as a top executive at Google. Hilton was a visiting scholar at Stanford University and later hosted a Fox News show. He became a U.S. citizen in 2021.

• His campaign slogan “Make California Golden Again” is a clear riff on Trump’s MAGA, and he promises $3-a-gallon gas, lower utility bills, more single-family homes and 100% of students meeting math and English standards — extravagant pledges no governor can single-handedly deliver.

• According to Transparency USA, the Hilton campaign has raised $12.8 million. Major contributors include tech entrepreneurs, investors, crypto supporters, conservative media and grassroots donors.

• Hilton has done a 180 clean energy and now rails against California’s “war on fossil fuel” as an ideology that’s “crushing people’s jobs.” He wants to end mandates and subsidies for wind and solar, supports drilling off the California coast and calls offshore wind off Morro Bay and Humboldt Bay an “insane scheme” — even though offshore wind displaced nearly 21 million tons of carbon emissions in his native UK in 2025.

• His housing pitch, dubbed “housing choice,” would let communities opt out of state housing mandates and build entirely new towns and cities rather than force development into places that don’t want it, raising questions about who pays for the roads, schools and water systems.

• Hilton has called abortion an “awful, awful outcome” and said he would extradite a California doctor to Louisiana for prescribing and mailing abortion pills. He has pledged “100%” cooperation with ICE and has vowed to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls sports.

• His “street taco” post on X from a Del Taco in Barstow was his biggest campaign gaffe, but is small potatoes compared to his pledge to work hand-in-hand with the Trump administration on energy, immigration and forest management.

• Becerra is the strong favorite in a state where 45% of voters are registered Democrats, 25% are Republicans and Trump’s approval sits around 30%. Hilton’s best shot may depend less on his own appeal than on Democratic apathy and disillusionment with politics-as-usual.

The summary points above were compiled with the help of AI tools and edited by journalists. The source reporting referenced above was written and edited entirely by journalists.

This story was originally published June 10, 2026 at 12:19 PM with the headline "Steve Hilton is an official candidate for California governor. Here’s what to know | Opinion."