Republican Steve Hilton secured one of two tickets to California's November gubernatorial election, emerging from a field of 61 candidates in a state where no Republican has won the governor's mansion since Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2006 reelection. The Associated Press called the race on Tuesday, Fox News reported, confirming that President Donald Trump's endorsed candidate had cleared the state's jungle primary.
The result lands a GOP contender in the general election for the nation's most populous state, and the world's fourth-largest economy, at a moment when Democrats had every structural advantage. California's top-two primary puts all candidates on a single ballot regardless of party. In a heavily Democratic state with that many names on the ballot, the conventional expectation was that two Democrats would advance and lock Republicans out entirely.
That didn't happen. Hilton, a one-time British political strategist turned American conservative commentator and former Fox News Channel host, broke through. The question now is whether he can do it again in November against a Democratic opponent in a state where the party has dominated statewide elections for two decades.
The race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom drew a staggering 61 candidates. For the first time in more than a quarter century, California lacked a clear gubernatorial frontrunner, a vacuum created in part when former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla both announced last year that they would pass on a run.
Their absence left the Democratic side fragmented. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer, former Rep. Katie Porter, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond all competed for the same pool of Democratic voters.
Steyer, who unsuccessfully sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, spent more than $200 million of his own money on his gubernatorial bid, flooding the airwaves and internet with ads. More than $80 million in outside money also poured into the contest. Despite that spending, the Democratic field stayed split.
The fracture deepened earlier this year when Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out of the race and resigned from Congress. Swalwell faced multiple allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, which he continues to deny. Fox News described his departure as a "political implosion." His exit reshuffled the Democratic polls, lifting both Becerra and Steyer, but not enough to consolidate the left's vote behind a single candidate.
On the Republican side, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco had been building momentum since launching his campaign in April of last year. Bianco positioned himself as a law-and-order candidate in a state where crime and public safety have become persistent voter concerns.
But Trump's endorsement of Hilton in early April changed the trajectory. Fox News reported that the president's backing blunted Bianco's momentum, consolidating Republican support behind Hilton. In a jungle primary where vote-splitting is the central strategic problem, that consolidation proved decisive.
The endorsement fits a broader pattern. Trump has increasingly put his political weight behind candidates in blue-state contests, as seen in his recent political announcements across multiple races. Whether that strategy can flip a state like California remains an open question, but getting a Republican into the general election is the necessary first step, and Hilton cleared it.
California has been a one-party laboratory for nearly two decades. Democrats hold every statewide constitutional office, supermajorities in both legislative chambers, and a voter-registration advantage that dwarfs the GOP's. The last Republican to win a gubernatorial race was Schwarzenegger in 2006, and he governed as a centrist who frequently broke with his own party.
Hilton represents something different. He has outlined plans to set up a commission to investigate fraud in California, a proposal he detailed during a Fox News Digital interview in Los Angeles on June 1. That kind of agenda signals a willingness to challenge the state's governing establishment directly, not accommodate it.
The race was overshadowed for much of last year by the devastation from Los Angeles-area wildfires and President Trump's immigration enforcement operations in the state. Both issues cut against the Democratic establishment's record. The wildfires exposed failures in infrastructure and emergency preparedness under years of one-party rule. The immigration raids highlighted the gap between Sacramento's sanctuary policies and federal law.
For voters living with those consequences, higher insurance costs, rising crime, housing shortages, businesses leaving, the question is whether the status quo deserves another term. Even in Los Angeles, the Democratic establishment faces growing electoral pressure from challengers who argue the party has failed the people it claims to represent.
Fox News did not report which Democrat secured the second general-election slot. Becerra, the former Biden cabinet secretary, was among the top contenders heading into primary day. If he advances, the November matchup would pit a Trump-endorsed Republican against a figure closely tied to the Biden administration's record, a clean ideological contrast in a cycle where voters are still sorting through the consequences of Biden-era policy.
Becerra would also carry his own political baggage. His tenure at HHS coincided with some of the most contentious federal health policy decisions of the Biden years. And while Fox News noted he could become California's first Latino governor in modern history, identity milestones don't pay grocery bills or fix broken infrastructure.
Steyer's massive self-funded campaign makes him another possible finalist. But a billionaire hedge fund founder running as a man of the people in a state with a severe cost-of-living crisis presents its own contradictions. As the final results continue to be tallied, the identity of Hilton's opponent will shape the fall campaign.
No one should pretend California is easy territory for a Republican. The structural math is brutal. But structural math also said a Republican couldn't crack the top two in a 61-candidate jungle primary in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by millions of registered voters.
Hilton did it anyway. Trump's endorsement helped. Democratic fragmentation helped more. And the underlying conditions, a state where one-party governance has produced wildfires met with bureaucratic failure, streets marked by homelessness and disorder, and a cost of living that drives middle-class families to other states, created an opening that didn't exist four years ago.
Republican candidates across the country have shown that the right message in the right moment can break through even in hostile territory. California's November election will test whether that principle extends to the biggest blue state of all.
The gubernatorial debate at KRON Studios in San Francisco on April 22 put all the top contenders, Mahan, Becerra, Bianco, Hilton, Steyer, and Porter, on the same stage. That was the last time they shared a platform as equals. Now the field is down to two, and one of them is a Republican backed by a sitting president who has made bold moves on both the domestic and international stage.
The California governor's race is not just about one state. It is a referendum on whether the Democratic Party's grip on its deepest-blue stronghold is as firm as the party assumes. If Hilton runs a competitive general election, even if he falls short, it signals that the one-party model Democrats have built in Sacramento is producing results voters are no longer willing to accept on faith.
More than $80 million in outside money flooded this primary. Steyer alone spent over $200 million. Democrats had every resource advantage imaginable. And a Republican still walked out of the jungle primary with a ticket to November.
Sometimes the most expensive campaigns lose because no amount of money can paper over a record that voters can see with their own eyes.
