Former Health Secretary Xavier Becerra and former Fox News host Steve Hilton race to be the next governor of California.
Former Health Secretary Xavier Becerra and former Fox News host Steve Hilton race to be the next governor of California.
In the span of just a few months, the outlook for the Democratic Party in California has shifted from fears of a shutout in the gubernatorial race to expectations of a shoo-in to win another four years at the helm in Sacramento.
The Democratic pick, former Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, appears to be sitting firmly in the driver’s seat in the race to be the next governor of California. Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host who sports the strong backing of President Donald Trump, hopes that confidence is misplaced and is feverishly campaigning to upset the prevailing wisdom.
Like his fellow establishment Democrat and former boss, President Joe Biden, Becerra leans heavily on his long record in government, which includes more than two decades in the House of Representatives, plus a term as California’s attorney general. He offers a sense of stability to voters in a deeply Democratic state — and a promise to fight all-out against Trump.
By contrast, Hilton has picked at every one of California’s flaws and its residents’ frustrations with rising utility bills, the lack of affordable housing and the eye-popping price of gasoline, among other hot-button issues. He paints California as an antibusiness and overregulated state heading in the wrong direction. Hilton also doesn’t believe its strong Democratic voter base precludes him from victory as a Republican.
It is in many ways a typical tilt between a Republican and a Democrat, though it nearly didn’t end up that way.
The two finalists were winnowed from a wide-open primary field unprecedented in recent California history. The primary field was also a source of deep anxiety for some Democrats, who feared that a broad array of candidates would split Democratic support. A split would have allowed two Republican candidates to move on to the general election in California’s rare “jungle” primary system, which allows the top two candidates to advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation.
Those fears were assuaged in the final weeks of the primary, when it became clear Democratic candidates like Becerra and challenger Tom Steyer had adequate support to prevent a Republicans-only ballot. And, alas, after all the ballots were counted, Becerra was the leader with Hilton close behind.
“Now it just feels like a very generic 60-40 Democrat-Republican race,” says Matt Harrigan, a political science professor at Santa Clara University.
Mark Baldassare, survey director at the Public Policy Institute of California, says the organization’s first poll after the primary election showed that almost the same percentage of voters (61 percent) plan to vote for the Democratic candidate for governor as plan to vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress (63 percent) in November — reflecting high levels of party allegiance. “That really says a lot about where we are in terms of the political landscape this year,” Baldassare says.
Whoever wins the race will take the reins from Governor Gavin Newsom, who legally could not seek a third term in office. He is widely rumored to be eyeing a run to succeed Trump, but leaves office with mixed approval ratings among Californians.
The question facing Hilton’s campaign is not only whether he has correctly identified what irks Californians, but whether or not they agree with his proposed solutions. Critical, too, is whether they’re willing to vote with a Republican candidate closely tied to a president with an approval rating that usually sits at less than 30 percent in California.
Trump has not only endorsed Hilton, but aired false allegations of election fraud on his behalf. In June, Trump claimed that Democrats had planned to rig the primary in order to exclude Hilton from winning one of the top two positions.
Hilton, however, has looked to distance himself somewhat from Trump. In a July television ad, Hilton says, “I get it: Maybe you hate Trump, MAGA — whatever. But life here has become impossible for anyone who isn’t already rich,” he adds. “We are going to fix that.”
Dan Schnur, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, notes the line Hilton is trying to walk. “He’s trying to separate himself from Trump without incurring Trump’s wrath,” Schnur says.
It’s not that Californians are “thrilled about the direction of the state,” says Baldassare, but that Californians feel better about their state than they do about the country as a whole.
Hilton can present himself as the “change candidate” in California, Harrigan says. “But if all the voters in the state just hear about Donald Trump all day and about what Republicans are doing, how Republicans are doing things that they don’t like, then why would they elect somebody from that team?” asks Harrigan. “I just think that is the big barrier.”
Raised in the United Kingdom, Hilton moved to the United States in 2012 and became a citizen in 2021. He promises to reduce gas prices to $3 a gallon, cut utility bills by half and eliminate state income tax on Californians’ first $100,000 of income. To offset that loss of revenue, Hilton says he’d cut down on waste in the state budget.
Becerra is a California native who grew up in Sacramento with Mexican American parents. He isn’t just hoping Hilton’s endorsement from Trump backfires; he’s actively touting his record battling the president. Becerra has regularly pointed out on the campaign trail that as California Attorney General from 2017 to 2021, he sued the first Trump administration more than 120 times.
Becerra has also promised to work toward building a single-payer health care system in California, immediately declare the housing shortage a state of emergency and instruct state agencies to address it as such, and implement a freeze on utility hikes.
Becerra’s surge in the primary marked a safe return to traditional Democratic Party values, which could not have been said had voters elected a progressive like former U.S. Representative Katie Porter — well known for her whiteboard-wielding years in Congress — or Steyer, an outsider billionaire and former hedge fund manager who poured more than $200 million into his own campaign.
Becerra surged in the primary after U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell, an East Bay Democrat who helped lead Democrats’ impeachment efforts against Trump in the House of Representatives, resigned amid accusations of sexual assault. After Swalwell’s downfall, Becerra hired campaign operatives from Newsom’s political orbit and wooed many of Swalwell’s donors.
Schnur had assessed Becerra during the primary as a “perpetuation” of Newsom’s administration. Now, Schnur says it’s increasingly clear that Becerra might differ from Newsom by de-emphasizing climate and environmental policy, and also in how he uses the bully pulpit. “It appears that he has been particularly cautious, and it’s entirely possible that Californians don’t want another governor like Newsom who is so visible, and so strident and so combative,” Schnur says.
To win, Hilton will need to make up a major deficit in the basic demographics of California, where Democrats account for 45 percent of registered voters compared to just 25 percent who are registered Republicans.
It wasn’t all that long ago that California elected a Republican governor. Arnold Schwarzenegger won a second term in 2006, but Harrigan notes that political polarization in California and the United States has only worsened in the subsequent years, and that Schwarzenegger was able to reasonably distance himself from the image of national Republicans at the time.
“It’s just a huge advantage, baked in for Democrats,” Harrigan says. “And with the polarization today, it would take an awful lot to get people to decide that, ‘Oh, that other label that I have come to despise for the last 20 years, I should now be with them.’”
Critically, despite being conducted early in the campaign, the PPIC poll found that very few voters are undecided, leaving little wiggle room for a candidate like Hilton.
“He’s doing the right thing in terms of getting out there early and not waiting until it’s Labor Day to kick off his campaign,” Baldassare says of Hilton. “He’s got a lot of work to do. It’s a challenging environment for Republican candidates in California today.”
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