STATE: Governor

Note: this post will be periodically updated! (10/07/2026)

TOP * Xavier Becerra (D) * Steve Hilton (R)

VOTER GUIDE – QUICK LINKS:

Governor – Vote for (1)

TOP * Xavier Becerra (D) * Steve Hilton (R)

As attorney general from 2017 to 2021, Becerra led or joined 122 lawsuits against Trump administration policies, including:

  • Travel bans, the border wall, family separation, sanctuary-city restrictions, and immigration-enforcement grants.
  • The termination of DACA, helping preserve the program after the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling.
  • Efforts to repeal or weaken the Affordable Care Act, including contraceptive-coverage protections.
  • Adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
  • Rollbacks of vehicle-emissions, methane, climate, energy-efficiency, and toxic-pollution regulations.
  • Weakened protections for endangered species, migratory birds, wetlands, salmon, and other public resources.
  • Various civil-rights, education, consumer-protection, internet, and gun-policy cases.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWIjf9qKrgY)

  • Age: 68
  • Residence: Los Angeles
  • Education: B.A. in economics from Stanford University, J.D. from Stanford University Law School
  • Employment & experience:
    • U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (2021-2025)
    • Attorney general of California (2017-2021)
    • U.S. Representative from California (1993-2017)
    • California State Assemblymember (1990-1992)
    • Deputy attorney general of California (1987-1990)
  • Priorities:
    • Affordable health care – protect the Affordable Care Act, expand ACA coverage, strengthen Medi-Cal, build towards Medicare for All
    • Fight Donald Trump – health care, ICE overreach, reproductive freedom, air quality, protecting Dreamers from deportation
    • Fight for rights – abortion access, voting, who we’re allowed to love
    • Build more affordable housing
    • Lower costs – stand up to corporations to battle wage theft and consumer fraud, stand up to price gouging, expand access to childcare and early childhood education, lower prices
    • Clean Energy – invest in clean energy to lower bills and make grid more resilient
    • Improve disaster preparedness
    • Artificial intelligence – make sure it broadens opportunity, doesn’t concentrate it
    • Homelessness – find new ways to resolve homelessness
  • Contributions (All PACs that support this candidate may not be identifiable.)
    • Contributions (as of 6/30/2026): $22,373,949
    • Top contributors:
    • California Association of Health Facilities PAC $156,800
    • California State Council of Laborers PAC $93,900
    • California State Pipe Trades Council PAC $93,900
    • So Cal District Council of Laborers PAC $86,200
    • United Nurses Assoc. of Calif./Union of Health Care Professionals PAC $85,700
    • Pechanga Band of Indians $83,800
    • Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation $83,800
    • Link to more detailed contribution info: (https://www.transparencyusa.org/ca/candidate/xavier-becerra)
  • Notable endorsements:
    • Kamala Harris, former Vice President
    • Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla
    • Governor Gavin Newsom
    • Rob Bonta, Attorney General
    • Rep. Julia Brownley
    • Rep. Salud Carbajal
    • Calif. Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limon
    • Attorney General Rob Bonta
    • Tom Steyer (former gubernatorial candidate)
    • Dolores Huerta, labor and civil rights activist
    • Organizations – Indian Gaming Association, California Chamber of Commerce, Women’s March Action, Planned Parenthood, Latino Victory Fund
    • Unions – nurses, construction workers, Teamsters, food workers, engineers, longshore and warehouse workers, teachers, musicians, government employees, law enforcement, electricians, farm workers, physicians and dentists, fire fighters
  • Links:
  • Campaign Website: http://xavierbecerra2026.com/
  • Campaign Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/becerraforgovernor
  • Campaign Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/becerraforgovernor/
  • Campaign X: https://x.com/XavierBecerra
  • Campaign YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@becerraforgovernor
  • Campaign TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@becerraforgovernor Campaign Threads: https://www.threads.com/@becerraforgovernor

Sample endorsements below:

CADEM
GOOD club
California Young Democrats
dem. party of san fernando
equality CA
SALUD CARBAJAL
Leiu

Speaker
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTRAL CALIFORNIA ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE NETWORK 
Nayamin Martinez		CO-DIRECTOR, LEADERSHIP COUNSEL FOR JUSTICE & ACCOUNTABILITY 
Phoebe Seaton		EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE LATINO EQUITY, ADVOCACY & POLICY INSTITUTE 
Rey León
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, JUST TRANSITION ALLIANCE 
José T. Bravo		FOUNDING PRESIDENT & CEO, GREENLATINOS 
Mark Magaña		FOUNDER, LATINO OUTDOORS 
José González
international warehouse-socal
Liana
UFCE 770
Central Coast Labor Council

Steve Hilton (R) – Former Fox New Host – Small Business Owner – TRUMP APPROVED!

TOP * Xavier Becerra (D) * Steve Hilton (R)

Didn’t anyone think to check with his previous employers? THEY WERE TRYING TO WARN US!

(NO, NO, NO! Another problematic Stephen? Tiny twins from different continents? Is there a third continent where we can send them both?)

(gvwire) “Hilton’s American political renaissance has bemused his former colleagues and rivals in Britain. His alter ego on “The Thick of It,” Stewart Pearson, was portrayed as a clownish figure who tries to push “thought circles” on bewildered Tories and utters pablum like “knowledge is porridge.” The real Hilton became a larger-than-life figure, infamous among colleagues for walking the corridors of Downing Street shoeless and in shorts and proposing idiosyncratic ideas that made headlines, such as using cloud-bursting technology to make Britain sunnier and abolishing maternity leave. (He disputed how both ideas had been previously characterized.)..

Cameron won a general election in 2010 but without a majority, forcing him into a coalition with the centrist Liberal Democrats. Some of that party’s advisers were not impressed.

(guardian,com) “Now he wants to be a politician proper, rather than an aide working behind the scenes. Some are sceptical of how this will work.

The former Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable, who served in Cameron’s coalition government, was unenthusiastic at the prospect. “I think of him as ideologue rather than doer, gadfly not a serious politician,” he said. “His big idea, the ‘big society’, was a disappointment.” Cable believes Hilton can only get elected “by freak accident”.

Giles Wilkes, said Cameron knew “that of Steve’s 20 ideas, only one of them will be good and the rest will be stupid.” He added, “It was policy by mouth feel. If it sounds good coming out of your mouth and it passes the speech test, or surviving the questions in Parliament test, then it’s good policy.”

“He would be terrible!” said one government adviser who worked in No 10 at the same time as Hilton. “He is someone who was very quickly insanely frustrated with how government works in reality. He comes in with these incredibly wild ideas, wants them all to happen instantly, isn’t interested in compromise, and when it doesn’t happen he throws his toys out the pram.”

These donors each gave Hilton the $39,200 maximum

⚖️ What we lose: he would let Louisiana extradite a California abortion doctor. He would end Medi-Cal for about 1.4 million people. On AB 1266, which protects transgender students, he said, “I will immediately suspend the law while we begin legal proceedings to overturn it.” He would cooperate with ICE “100 percent.”

🇺🇸 Trump gave him his “COMPLETE & TOTAL ENDORSEMENT” on April 6.

Vote by November 3.

  • Age: 56
  • Residence: Atherton
  • Education: B.A. in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University
  • Employment & experience:
    • Fox News Contributor (2023-present)
    • Host of The Next Revolution on Fox News Channel (2017–2023)
    • Author & UK Think Tank Fellow (2015–present)
    • Co-Founder & CEO of Crowdpac, a tech startup focused on political crowdfunding and candidate data (2014–2018)
    • Consulting Professor & Visiting Scholar, Stanford University (2012–2015)
    • Director of Strategy to UK Prime Minister David Cameron (2010–2012)
    • Director of Strategy, UK Conservative Party (2005–2010)
    • Co-Founder, Good Business, a London-based corporate social responsibility consulting firm (1997–2005)
    • Political Strategist & Advertising Executive for the UK Conservative Central Office (1990s)
  • Priorities:
    • $3.00 gas by removing taxes and loosening air quality standards and refinery regulations
    • Cut utility bills in half by ending solar and wind farm mandates & subsidies
    • First $150,000 of state income tax free, cuts tax rates on the wealthy to 8%.
    • Reduce housing costs by cutting red tape and regulation
    • Schools – every student reads by 3rd grade, skills training, reduce waste and improve accountability at public colleges and universities
    • Shrink California government – he contributed to the Cameron-Osborne austerity programs in the UK, which led to severe underinvestment in UK public infrastructure, contributing to deteriorating public services, overstretched councils, and frozen development projects. Don’t think it was an accident that he left the country when he did.
    • One of his BIG ideas is to abolish the DMV. Seriously, who loves the DMV? But has this newbie considered these issues? (According to reviews from his former U.K. coworkers, probably not.)
      • Capping vehicle registration at a flat $73 annual fee would slash state registration revenue from roughly $11 billion down to $2.7 billion. 90% of DMV-collected fees fund Caltrans, highway infrastructure, and the California Highway Patrol (CHP). Slashing this would leave a massive funding black hole for road repairs. 
      • Privatizing or shifting driver safety checks, road tests, and fraud prevention to third-party local businesses or county offices risks lowering regulatory standards. 
      • Like all flat taxes, hisflat $73 fee disproportionately benefits owners of luxury, expensive vehicles (who currently pay much higher value-based registration fees)
    • Abolish the $800 small business tax
    • Restore gun rights – we too can have people carrying guns around in Walmart like they’re going to war. (Note: The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Giffords Law Center, and the Trace are all warning us that gun violence will increase if we drop CA’s gun regulations.
    • Reduce workers’ ability to sue employers for labor law violations, make state government decide the cases. (Note: Wage theft is the largest crime in the US!)
    • Require voter ID and make ballots count only if received by election day
    • Make California the crypto capital of the world by reducing regulation (Note: What that money buys: a plan titled “Make California the Crypto Capital of the World,” easier permits for data centers, and no new taxes on AI. Asked about restricting chatbots aimed at kids, he would not answer yes or no.
    • Keep California as the Artificial Intelligence capital of the world
    • Keep trans athletes out of girls’ sports
  • Contributions (All PACs that support this candidate may not be identifiable.)
    • Contributions (as of 6/30/2026): $17,445,485
    • Top Contributors:
      • Steve Hilton $90,100
      • Donald Friese  (billionaire who built glass giant C.R. Laurence before selling it in 2015) $78,400
      • Andrea Friese $78,400 (wife of Donald Friese)
      • Michael Chunhan (engineer at Lighthouse Worldwide Solutions, a contamination monitoring systems firm) $78,400
      • Thomas C Saunders (senior VP at Lighthouse Worldwide Solutions) $78,400
      • Timothy Draper (venture capitalist in tech and crypto) $78,400
    • These Contributers all gave the $39,200 maximum (Transparency USA):
      • Chris Larsen, crypto billionaire and Ripple co-founder
      • Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril, whose border towers “use machine learning software to perpetually scan the horizon.” CBP confirmed Anduril is now “the country’s only approved border tower vendor.”
      • Baiju Bhatt, Robinhood co-founder, now building orbital data centers for AI
      • Rupert Murdoch, his former boss at Fox
      • Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale gave $25,000. An oil company owner gave $24,200.
      • Link to more detailed contribution info: (https://www.transparencyusa.org/ca/candidate/steve-hilton)
  • Notable endorsements:
    • President Donald Trump
    • Gloria Romero: (Former Democratic Majority Leader of the California State Senate, who joined Hilton’s ticket as his endorsed candidate for Lieutenant Governor) 
    • Vivek Ramaswamy (biotech entrepreneur & politician, critic of “woke” policies)
    • Israeli-American Civic Action Network
  • Links:

But he’s more than a gadfly now…he’s trying to be another Trump!

Donald J. Trump
Orange County evangelical pastor Jack HibbsGloria Romero
Vivek Ramaswamy (biotech entrepreneur & politician, critic of “woke” policies)Israeli-American Civic Action Network
4 stars! Not good.
4-STARS FOR STEVE! He doesn’t talk about very much about the hard-right culture war stuff unless pinned down, but you can see that he did disturbingly well on the Election Forum questionnaire, (posted below) which is all about that stuff. He’s running as a MAGA-GOP in the time of Trump for a reason.

Election Forum’s Governor Questionnaire

  1. What is your name?
  2. Why are you running for Governor?
  3. To help California’s economy grow, do you support
    • Raising fees, (If so, which ones?)
    • Closing tax loopholes (If so, which ones?)
    • Raising income taxes (If so on whom?)
    • Raise the sales tax
    • Cutting spending (if so, what areas of the budget and by how much?)
  4. Do you have plans to increase or decrease State regulations? Explain.
  5. What is your view on Parental consent for a minor to get an abortion?
  6. Should California outlaw abortion as some states have? Explain.
  7. Do you support or oppose the Covered California healthcare plan for Californians? Why or why not?
  8. California ranks in the bottom tier of educational excellence in the nation. What do you propose to do with the schools and education policy?
  9. Do you support or oppose AB5 restrictions on independent contractors?
  10. Are we spending the right amount on K-12 Education in this state? Community colleges? The California University System?
  11. What solution do you have for the pension issue in California?
  12. Do you support or oppose transgender bathroom/gym access in schools?
  13. Do you support or oppose:
    • Homeschooling
    • Charter Schools
    • School Choice
  14. Do you support parental notification and school communication on gender confusion of a student?
  15. Do you believe marriage is only between a man and a woman?
  16. Do you favor or oppose a Religious Freedom Act in California?
  17. Do you support or oppose covered California for illegal immigrants?
  18. Do you support or oppose California environmental restrictions on oil and gas drilling and manufacturing?
  19. What would you do to cut waste and fraud in California?
  20. Do you believe in absolute truth? Why or why not? If you believe in absolute truth, what is the source of absolute truth? If you do not believe in absolute truth, how do you determine what is true?

That’s because, under his posh British accent, he’s just another MAGA con artist.

Exhibit 1 – The man described as “terrible” for California is intent on infesting our state with Cal DOGE, his version of a failed and corrupt program that came nowhere near it’s $2 trillion dollar spending target, but still managed to harm millions of people. (Death toll tracker from USAID here)

California used to look like this…

For people too young to remember what living with smog was like before the Clean Air Act, or are addled enough to think everything was better in the “good old days” – here’s a little graphic to remind you of what our air can be again, thanks to dicks like Steve Hilton. (We’re guessing that he’ll take himself off back to his properties in England by the time gas masks are required again.)

  • POLLUTION FOR EVERYONE! No surprises here:
  • Climate, Schmimate!: His solutions include getting rid of regulations, including “stripping [CARB]’s climate policy authority. That’s cool! Dirtier air, water, food, and soil for us, more profit for corporations!
  • Private Equity rules: CalDOGE does not suggest breaking up and municipalizing private-equity monsters like PG&E.
  • In-State Drilling: Oh, and increasing drilling everywhere in CA, through more permits issued via CalGEM.
  • Energy Deregulation: Aims to end renewable energy mandates and allow natural gas and nuclear power to compete freely. Because we’ve solved all the issues with nuclear energy (not!).

Huh, dirty air is actually BAD for business!

(eco-business.com) Every US$1 invested in tackling climate change and air pollution together can generate around US$15 in economic benefits, according to a report published today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC). This is higher than tackling climate and clean air separately, and it includes both market and non-market economic gains. 

Released on the International Day of Clean Air for blue skies, Hidden assets: The economic and health case for climate and clean air action is the first comprehensive global economic assessment of integrated climate and clean-air action. 

“For too long, we have treated climate action as a cost to be managed and air pollution as the unfortunate outcome of development. This report shows the opposite: clean air is a key driver of development, health, food and energy security, and climate stability – an asset we must invest in,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “Proven solutions already exist. What we lack is the decisive leadership from governments, financial institutions, and businesses to deliver them with the speed and coordination this crisis demands.”

Oh, you’re getting sick from breathing the air? Well, that’s too bad!

Since he is proposing policies to make our air and water more dangerous, we’re checking out Stevie’s plans for our health care system, soon to be further ravaged by the tax cuts of his favorite president.

  • Is he going to championing universal health care, to make up for the increased health issues he will cause? So CA businesses can compete on an equal footing with countries who already have it, and people can become more entrepreneurial without risking their families’ access to health care?
    • Hahahah. No.
  • Nah, he’s doubling down on a “free-market solution.” like the shit we had to deal with before the Affordable Care Act. His great idea? Replacing parts of Medi-Cal, an actual insurance program, with personal health spending accounts. This is a disaster just waiting to happen, and it’s already been tried unsuccessfully in Arkansas.

Stevie’s BIG IDEA – $3 gas! God, he thinks we’re idiots! Or he is.

Are you sure you want to crawl out on this limb, Stevie?

Oh, yes…here he goes! “Addressing California’s high gas prices, Hilton pledged to work toward $3 gas by reducing the gas tax, eliminating hidden taxes like the low carbon fuel standard, scaling back refinery regulations, and increasing local oil production. 

“We have abundant oil reserves just like they do in Texas,” Hilton said, blaming state policies for the disparity in gas prices.”

Oh, Stevie, about your Texas analogy… Have you met Mr. Global, an actual industry expert?

Watch here, as he explains to an crazy-eyed Texan influencer why buying gas from a nearby source is not at all like buying local vegetables from that cool local farmer’s market.

Why Gas In Texas Isn’t Cheaper #gasprices #dieselprices #OilPrices#educationalcontent #explained #BreakingNews

We do appreciate Stevie’s commitment to this grift…showing up in a cute little printed T-tshirt and all to lie about gas prices!

We also appreciate the discernment of the Santa Barbara public, who went online to discuss this nonsense with each other. This all feels very Tammany Hall all over again.

He’s a forced-birther. He just doesn’t want us to know that until it’s too late.

When Governor Newsom was faced with the question of extradicted a doctor to a forced-birth state:

(Guardian) “Louisiana’s request is denied. We will not allow extremist politicians from other states to reach into California and try to punish doctors based on allegations that they provided reproductive health care services. Not today. Not ever.”…

Stevie gave this answer to an interviewer who asked what he would do in a similar circumstance:

(Video below) Hilton said by not honoring the extradition request, California is trying to impose its will on Louisiana. UC Davis law professor Mary Ziegler, an expert on reproductive rights and laws, said “It’s a zero-sum game. One state is imposing its will on the other. It’s just a question of which one.”

Hypothetical question – what if it became illegal for minor children of some misbegotten state to watch a drag queen review…If such a minor saw one on a CA vacation, or watched a video from home, would that state be allowed to arrest the performer?

NOTE: If the doctor had been convicted of violating a Louisiana statute that bans “criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs” he could have faced fines and up to 50 years of “hard labor.

His inclination to ship California doctor’s off to “DEATH PENALTY“ states didn’t age well…

(kqed.org) Reproductive rights advocates slammed Hilton’s position. Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California CEO and President Jodi Hicks accused Hilton of “brazenly” rejecting California’s “values and leadership as a reproductive freedom state.”

“Any governor or future governor’s job is to protect the values and principles here in California — and certainly ones that Californians have voted on,” Hicks said, noting that Proposition 1, which enshrined abortion access in the state constitution, passed with 67% support. “Their job is to protect those principles and anyone in California, including our California providers.”

Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of the national group Reproductive Freedom for All, called Louisiana’s extradition attempts “outrageous and dangerous,” saying in a written statement that by leaving abortion to the states, President Donald Trump has given “anti-abortion extremists free rein to criminalize providers, terrorize patients, and reach beyond state lines to block care.

“This is not a moment for capitulation,” she said. “The next governor of California must be an unequivocal champion for reproductive freedom, willing to push back against the extremists working to undermine our fundamental rights.”

Steve-O retreats, confesses he didn’t understand the law. That sounds like governor-material to us!

Oh, Steve-O, we LOVE ignorant people in power making stupid statements in public about stuff they know nothing about! But we’re also pretty sure that he’s also telegraphing to us that our laws don’t mean anything to him.

  • On AB 1266, which protects transgender students, he said, “I will immediately suspend the law while we begin legal proceedings to overturn it.”
  • He would also cooperate with ICE “100 percent.”

What Steve isn’t = “The next governor of California must be an unequivocal champion for reproductive freedom, willing to push back against the extremists working to undermine our fundamental rights.”

“In an interview last summer with Orange County evangelical pastor Jack Hibbs, he talked about moving the state “towards life.” He called abortion an “awful, awful outcome” and said he would encourage adoption. He endorsed Hilton last week, sharing an audio clip where Hilton also said he would end the use of taxpayer funds to promote what he called “abortion tourism” if elected governor.

Hibbs is the founder and senior pastor at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills and a hard-core Christian Nationalist who is featured in the SoCal Extremism website, He has questioned why he has to “tolerate” the LGBTQ+ community and that the community’s existence “must be addressed.” He also wants nationwide campaign to require educators to out LGBTQ public school students all in the name of fighting the “demonic and dark satanic powers” that are supposedly “sexualizing” and “mentally abusing” them via the public school system. Yes, Jack, let’s leave traumatizing kids to pastors.

More Tax Cuts for the Rich!…

  • He says he wants to eliminate state income tax on the first $100,000 of earnings, (now $150,000) and impose a flat 7.5% (now 8%) rate above that. GREAT! Oh, wait! The richest people in California currently pay a 12.30% tax on whatever earning their accountants feel is prudent to declare.

    Let’s check out what this would look like in real life – Hey, this is a surprise!!!!

It looks exactly like the RICH WOULD GET A SUBSTANTIAL TAX CUT!

…Austerity for everyone else! Probably why he had to leave the U.K.!

  • AUSTERITY (PRE-PANDEMIC) BUDGET/SPENDING CUTS TO MATCH THE TAX CUTS FOR RICH PEOPLE. And since we have Prop. 13, he won’t be able to raise property taxes like Texas does. Steve is experienced in creating antidemocratic austerity politicies, which structurally transfer resources from the working majority to the 1 percent of the population that subsists mainly off capital ownership (i.e., stock dividends, rents, and interest). In other words, austerity is not about spending less but about spending in the “correct” way — in favor of the economic and financial elite and to the detriment of the majority of the population.” 
  • LOOK AT THE DAMAGE HE DID IN THE U.K. “Given that Hilton wants to realize a version of [his “Big Society”] in America, a question naturally presents itself: What happened when it was implemented in the U.K.? He elides this question, and no wonder, because the Big Society in practice was a vicious mess, demonstrating only the cruelty of its designers and the vacuity of its promise to somehow disentangle an idea of community from economics. The facilities he identifies as the constituent parts of a community—public libraries; neighborhood parks; youth clubs— all need money to function; the Britain he presided over provides an object-lesson in what happens when they‘re deprived of it. Since 2010, over 600 public libraries have been shuttered, along with more than 500 youth centers. Uncountable green spaces have been concreted over and sold off to property developers. Austerity was the only real policy the coalition had: everything else was decorative, and the Big Society was the gaudiest bauble of all, a vast shiny distraction from the brute fact of 110 billion pounds in spending cuts.“

Stupid stuff Steve has done…It’s just the posh accent that fools us.

Steve Hilton, former UK political strategist and director of strategy for Prime Minister David Cameron, became notorious in England for eccentric policy ideas and anti-bureaucracy rants. His casual, barefoot-in-No. 10 style and management concepts inspired the satirical TV character Stewart Pearson in The Thick of It. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Dumb ideas he had while in the UK!

  • Abolishing Maternity Leave and Consumer Laws (“Plan Z”): 
    • Reports surfaced that Hilton floated scrapping paid maternity leave and suspending all consumer rights legislation for nine months just to “see what would happen” and ease burdens on businesses. (Hilton later strongly denied ever advocating to abolish maternity leave). [1, 2, 3]
  • Ignoring the Law: 
    • He reportedly asked top civil servant Jeremy Heywood why Prime Minister David Cameron actually had to obey European labor regulations, requiring Heywood to explain that breaking the law could land the PM in prison. [1, 2]
  • Cloud-Bursting for Sunshine: 
    • Hilton suggested that one of the United Kingdom’s biggest problems was too much cloudy weather—“Why can’t we fly planes over the eastern Atlantic,” he suggested, “to drop chemicals on the clouds and force them to break up, and get rid of their rain before they get to our shores?”[1, 2]
  • Replacing Press Offices with Blogs: 
    • He suggested firing hundreds of government press officers across Whitehall departments and replacing them with a single person who would communicate strictly via an online blog. [1, 2]
  • The EU Makes Britain Ungovernable: 
    • Leading up to the 2016 referendum, Hilton argued that membership in the European Union made the UK “literally ungovernable” and dismissed modest reform attempts as receiving arrogant treatment. [1]
  • Slashes to Employment Protections: 
    • Floated stripping back core workplace regulations and employment rights under the guise of boosting “hustle” and enterprise. [1]
  • The “Big Society” Vague Vision: 
    • Championed Cameron’s flagship localism policy, which critics and parliamentary committees dismissed as an ill-defined, confusing smokescreen for austerity and cutting state grant funding to local charities. [1, 2]
  • Bureaucracy Rants: 
    • Claimed that 70% of government work was pointless paper-shuffling and that “bureaucracy masters the politicians,” earning eye-rolls from seasoned civil servants for oversimplifying the realities of governing. [1]
  • Equating Policy to Tech Products: 
    • Argued that government should be disrupted like a startup—ignoring warnings that failed public policy ruins lives permanently, unlike a failed commercial gadget.[1, 2]
  • Tough Choice on Trump vs. Hillary: 
    • Publicly stated in 2016 that picking between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was a “really tough choice,” praising Trump for “shining a spotlight” on political corruption. [1]

(https://www.ijpr.org/politics-government/2026-07-06/who-is-steve-hilton-heres-how-he-has-rebranded-himself-multiple-times)

Dumb ideas he’s had while here!

  • Suggesting People Should Just Shoot Gray Wolves
    • The Quote: While discussing wildlife management in California, Hilton learned about the state’s growing gray wolf population.
    • Why it drew fire: His knee-jerk reaction was to suggest shooting the protected animals. When reminded that killing wolves is illegal and carries jail time under state and federal policies, he just blasted the Department of Fish and Wildlife instead of acknowledging the law. [1]
  • Comparing California’s Vote Count process to India’s
    • The Quote: Hilton called California’s deliberate and secure ballot-counting process a “shameful” international laughingstock.
    • Why it was mocked: He complained that it takes California over a month to process under 10 million votes, trying to compare it to India counting hundreds of millions of votes in a single day. Critics pointed out that he ignored the vastly different mechanics, mail-in ballot verification, and signature-curing laws that prioritize election security and accuracy over speed in the U.S. [1]
  • Calling the Coastal Commission “Idiots”
    • The Quote: While visiting the Oceano Dunes, Hilton slammed state regulators, saying, “The idiots, the bureaucrats on the Coastal Commission have been trying to shut it down for years… Well, I am done with all of that.” [1, 2]
    • Why it turned heads: Instead of engaging with the complex environmental and conservation issues surrounding the popular off-roading site, he resorted to name-calling and pledged to replace environmental officials with hand-picked loyalists. [1, 2]
  • Blaming Everything on a “Nanny State”
    • The Quote: Hilton loves a broad catchphrase, often declaring that the solution to California’s problems is simply to “stop doing stupid things.” [1]
    • Why critics roll their eyes: Opponents note that while his anti-establishment populism plays well on television, reducing decades of housing, energy, and infrastructure challenges down to “stop being stupid” offers very little in the way of actual, workable policy. [1, 2]
  • Being as stupid as Trump about climate change:
    • Hilton blames climate change policies for the housing and affordability crisis in California, saying the policies have made it more costly to build. He added that he doesn’t believe climate change played a role in last year’s destructive and deadly wildfires.“
  • Not understanding fundamental shit about California: “In a state as big as California, where just 5% of the land is developed, there’s plenty of room to build the housing we need. They call it “sprawl.” I call it the California Dream, and I will do everything I can to restore it.”
    • Steve’s only been a citizen since 2021. He apparently knows NOTHING about how Californians care about open space, our SOAR initiatives, the already large losses of agriculture and grazing land and our issues with water.
    • Yes. 90% of our population lives on 5% of the land. That sounds crazy, right! But if Steve had done 5 minutes of research, he’d have learned that: more than 27% of CA is agricultural land. Approximately 46% of the state’s land is federal land, which includes mostly national forests, national parks and wildlife areas and military areas. People can’t build homes there. Our state also have this mountain range taking up a huge amount of space, and deserts where there is no access to water. “The only places that are “empty”, and is not tall mountains or impossible deserts of federal forest or park land or productive agricultural land is extremely far away from any infrastructure.” (https://www.quora.com/If-there-is-so-much-empty-space-and-desert-in-California-why-dont-they-just-build-a-bunch-more-houses)
    • We invite Steve to “spread out” from from his current home in Bay-area Atherton, maybe to a place like Modoc County for example. It’s only a five hour commute to Sacramento! It’s been losing people for 30 years and could certainly use your cheerleading!