![\"Republican](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781148980_17_SAC_737_SteveHilton_HA_260603.JPG\" "\\"Republican")
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Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks during the California Republican Party’s launch of Victory ’26 after election day at the California Republican Party headquarters in Sacramento on Wednesday, June 3, 2026.<\/p>\n
HECTOR AMEZCUA<\/p>\n
hamezcua@sacbee.com<\/p>\n
Billionaire Tom Steyer is out and gubernatorial Republican Steve Hilton is headed for the November election, where he will face Democrat Xavier Becerra. Hilton\u2019s campaign mixes Trump-style promises with hardline positions on energy, housing and transgender athletes \u2014 and Californians deserve a clear-eyed look at what he\u2019s actually selling.<\/p>\n
Here are 10 key takeaways:<\/p>\n
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\u2019s \u201chug a husky\u201d 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.According to Transparency USA<\/a>, 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\u2019s \u201cwar on fossil fue<\/a>l\u201d as an ideology that\u2019s \u201ccrushing people\u2019s jobs.\u201d 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 \u201cinsane scheme\u201d<\/a> \u2014 even though offshore wind displaced nearly 21 million tons of carbon emissions in his native UK in 2025.His housing pitch, dubbed \u201chousing choice,\u201d would let communities opt out of state housing mandates and build entirely new towns and cities<\/a> rather than force development into places that don\u2019t want it, raising questions about who pays for the roads, schools and water systems.His \u201cstreet taco\u201d post on X from a Del Taco in Barstow was his biggest campaign gaffe, but is small potatoes<\/a> 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\u2019s approval sits around 30%. Hilton\u2019s best shot may depend less on his own appeal than on Democratic apathy and disillusionment with politics-as-usual.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Sacramento Bee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks during the California Republican Party’s launch of Victory ’26 after election day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-355695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}