{"id":388976,"date":"2026-07-07T08:21:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T08:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/388976\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T08:21:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T08:21:53","slug":"who-is-steve-hilton-californias-gop-frontrunner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/388976\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Steve Hilton? California’s GOP frontrunner"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeanne Kuang<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\""A\"
\n\t\t\t\tRepublican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton on election night in Huntington Beach on June 2, 2026. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters<\/p>\n

This story was originally published by CalMatters<\/a>. Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n

When Steve Hilton first came to live in California, the political strategist had already gone through a few rebrands.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was 2008 and the British Conservative Party was ascendant after a decade of losses. Hilton, a top adviser to future Prime Minister David Cameron, was a source of great curiosity for the British press; he eschewed suits, rode a bike to work, sometimes went shoeless and avoided reporters. He was also at the center of the party\u2019s turnaround, widely credited with refreshing its image from stale and imperious to socially tolerant, environment-minded and diversity-conscious.<\/p>\n

While he was on a temporary stint in Silicon Valley, the British press couldn\u2019t help noticing a similarity between Cameron and Hilton and the Golden State\u2019s then-governor, moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mixture of free-market economics, social liberalism, high-technology growth and environmental awareness makes California instantly attractive\u201d to the Conservative Party\u2019s \u201cmodernizers,\u201d a commentator wrote in The Guardian.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was the last time a Republican was governor of California. Eighteen years later, Hilton is trying to pick up Schwarzenegger\u2019s mantle in a dramatically different moment for California and American politics.<\/p>\n

After finishing second in last month\u2019s top-two primary, he faces long odds in the November general election against Democratic former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Democrats have dominated the state since Schwarzenegger left office; a Republican hasn\u2019t won a statewide seat since before Cameron became prime minister. And though anti-tax sentiments still run deep, so too does hatred of President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Hilton.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\""Steve\"Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks to reporters at the state Capitol on June 3, 2026. Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr., CalMatters<\/p>\n

It could help Hilton that he cuts an unlikely figure for a MAGA man. A professional advertiser, Hilton spent the first half of his career softening the public images of the Conservatives, of multinational corporations accused of causing various social ills and of capitalism itself, in contrast to the bombastic politics of today. His beliefs, documented in decades of British press coverage and his own books, don\u2019t line up neatly on the political spectrum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But they also make him hard to pin down. Over the years he\u2019s praised several policy ideas that contradict the deregulatory campaign he\u2019s run today and in the past. In London, he was known as a fount of eccentric ideas who also pushed to slash welfare, loosen labor laws, cut government employment, privatize government services and even floated reducing maternity leave. In 2015, from Silicon Valley, he wrote a book endorsing a higher national living wage in the U.K., generous family leave policies and forcing factory farms to pay for the environmental and health costs of their operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s quite difficult to put in a box,\u201d said Giles Gibbons, a friend and former business partner at a firm the pair founded in the late 1990s to advise brands on social responsibility. \u201cHe challenges the orthodoxy and the process of doing things. He\u2019s a contrarian, in many ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hilton chafes at central authorities and regulation, saying his purest belief is in small-time entrepreneurs and his favorite word is \u201chustle.\u201d In the book More Human, he describes himself as anti-establishment, pro-immigration and \u201cperhaps Bernie Sanders meets John Kasich meets Rand Paul.\u201d A populist, he campaigned for Brexit and wrote about the ills of centralized institutions from big banks to monopolies to standardized testing.<\/p>\n

Turning to Trump<\/p>\n

Now, in his latest rebrand, Hilton has taken on a different tone. After moving to Silicon Valley permanently in 2012 and running a political tech startup, he landed a Fox News show, \u201cThe Next Revolution,\u201d in 2017. Over six years on the network, he aligned himself closely with the Trump circle, calling for an audit into the 2020 election that President Joe Biden won, promoting the conspiracy theory that Dr. Anthony Fauci was responsible for the pandemic and railing against American colleges for spreading \u201cthe woke mind virus.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also occasionally criticized key conservative figures and in 2019 endorsed \u201casset reparations\u201d in the form of business and home loans for African Americans to make up for the generational economic harm of racist policies, a position anathema to Republicans.<\/p>\n

On the campaign trail now, he\u2019s gregarious with reporters. He has ditched the ultracasual dress of his younger years \u2014 \u201cYou\u2019ve got to be respectful of the office, so I\u2019ve stepped up sartorially,\u201d he explained \u2014 and the talk of corporate social responsibility \u2014 \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s the priority\u201d \u2014 in favor of a campaign more aligned with a conventional American Republican in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He sports a \u201csave girls\u2019 sports\u201d bracelet and has a \u201cfamily first\u201d agenda to promote adoption, prenatal care and \u201cmarriage and family formation\u201d and discourage abortion. He\u2019s promising steep tax cuts and business deregulation. He has vowed to overturn many of the state\u2019s greenhouse gas reduction rules that he calls a product of the \u201cclimate agenda\u201d \u2014 more than a decade after he advised Cameron in the so-called \u201cgreenest government ever.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

But he denies being inconsistent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not an ideologue, I\u2019m very pragmatic in my approach,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t like being told what to do myself, and I don\u2019t want to tell anyone else what to do with their life either, and I think that\u2019s a very Californian attitude.\u201d<\/p>\n

A branding expert<\/p>\n

The son of Hungarian immigrants to the United Kingdom who grew up working class, Hilton got his start in politics straight out of Oxford University.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He worked for the Conservatives and their advertising firm, M&C Saatchi, on political messaging, and worked on a controversial 1996 ad depicting Labour Party leader Tony Blair with \u201cdemon eyes,\u201d<\/a> which advertising regulators banned<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There he met Gibbons when they both worked on an antiracism campaign for a government agency. During focus groups, Gibbons said, they learned if they slapped a Nike logo on the campaign, the message was better received \u2014 and it improved Nike\u2019s likability.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Convinced of the power of brands to do good, the pair founded the consulting firm Good Business, which helped corporations improve their images and their bottom lines through charity and PSAs on global health and environmentalism. Their clients included Nike, McDonald\u2019s and Coca-Cola. The firm\u2019s thinking ran counter to the traditional business mindset of focusing on profits, addressed rising anti-globalization sentiments and helped usher in a trend of corporate social responsibility.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCapitalism is a force for good, but it can become even better,\u201d Hilton wrote in a 2001 Guardian column. \u201cIt\u2019s time for Conservatives to wake up and smell the fair-trade coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n

He brought that free market centrism back to politics a few years later, eventually leaving the firm (which Gibbons still runs) to advise Cameron as he ascended to Conservative Party leadership. Hilton was godfather to Cameron\u2019s son; the pair were among a cadre of young, posh conservatives intent on revamping the party\u2019s \u201cnasty\u201d image for the 21st century.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under Hilton\u2019s strategy, there was less focus on restricting immigration and privatizing parts of the National Health Service, a greater embrace of civil unions for gay couples and an emphasis on helping the poor and standing up to big business. Cameron appeared frequently in web videos and emphasized fighting climate change. In one famous stunt, Hilton took Cameron to the Arctic Circle in Norway for a photoshoot with huskies and a melting glacier. He updated the Conservative Party logo, from a torch to a tree, and came up with the slogan \u201cvote blue, go green.\u201d There was talk of the responsibility companies bore for society.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Hilton credits much of his own success this year to his messaging: promising simple (and ambitious) goals like $3 a-gallon gas and affordable starter homes. But for all his expertise in branding, he said he hasn\u2019t thought about whether California Republicans should change their approach to appeal to more voters. Only a quarter of California\u2019s registered voters are Republican, and party leaders have failed to disassociate the party from the president, last year suffering a major defeat on gerrymandering that could strip the party of several seats in Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hilton characterized his work to modernize the Conservative Party in the U.K. less as an appeal to the center and more as an effort to shift the party from one associated with elites to one for ordinary citizens and the working class. In that vein, he said, he still calls himself an environmentalist, with a California policy proposal that calls for planting trees and preserving wetlands, but opposes California\u2019s greenhouse gas reduction rules because he says they are mandates that increase costs for consumers.<\/p>\n

If anything, he said, California itself needs rebranding as a friendlier place to do business. That\u2019s why he hasn\u2019t talked about corporate responsibility lately, he said, and instead has promised to loosen regulations across the board, characterizing the current state of business in California as \u201clife or death.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve just got to really focus on the fundamental economic conditions before we start worrying about all of that,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to restore the appeal of Brand California.\u201d<\/p>\n

One stance he has retained from his days with Cameron is the classically conservative focus on the family, though in a move of Hilton unorthodoxy, he\u2019s kept his own family absent from the \u201cgrueling process\u201d of the campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a marked contrast from Becerra, whose wife and adult daughters introduced him onstage the night of the primary election. The next day, Hilton told a reporter it was \u201cold-fashioned\u201d to ask whether his wife, prominent tech executive Rachel Whetstone, would be more involved in the race.<\/p>\n

\u2018Positive populism\u2019<\/p>\n

At the heart of Hilton\u2019s political philosophies is a populist devotion to decentralizing power.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was the brain behind Cameron\u2019s banner \u2018Big Society\u2019 policy to put decision-making power about schools, police, social services and other government services in the hands of local residents, nonprofits and often, the private sector.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pitch was that doing so would spur innovation and improve service delivery: One example Gibbons cited was an expansion of state-funded schools operated independently by local organizations, akin to American charter schools. Critics called the Big Society a backdoor way to cut social services spending and offload state responsibilities to charities and profit-seekers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gibbons said because the policies coincided with a period of austerity after the Great Recession, opponents succeeded in painting the idea as \u201ca way for government not to pay as much for things, and to get communities to sort of step up and do it for free or volunteer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Several of Hilton\u2019s former British political colleagues did not respond to inquiries from CalMatters, but some told the San Francisco Standard<\/a> the idea was a hard sell and impractical to implement. The outlet also quoted Cameron\u2019s memoir describing Hilton as a \u201cdisruptive force\u201d and someone more interested in \u201ctipping \u2026 over\u201d the political system than working within government.<\/p>\n

Hilton left the U.K. for good in 2012 to be closer to Google, where Whetstone was then senior vice president for communications and public policy. A former Conservative Party operative herself, Whetstone later held similar positions at Uber, Meta and Netflix before joining the AI company Sierra.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The couple settled with their sons in Atherton, a San Mateo County enclave that is the second-wealthiest zip code in the country. They raised chickens, took English visitors on bike rides across the Golden Gate Bridge and Hilton stopped using a smartphone<\/a>, which continues to this day.<\/p>\n

Hilton\u2019s departure from England sparked reports that he had left on bad terms, disillusioned with his colleagues at 10 Downing Street. He said in an interview he was \u201cfrustrated, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The coalition government he helped negotiate \u201chad a very radical promise in there of decentralizing power, reducing bureaucracy, and really changing the way the country was run,\u201d he said. \u201cThere really wasn’t the political will to drive that through, and so that was my frustration.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s said little about how he would similarly have to win over the dominant Democrats in the state Legislature if he were to be elected: \u201cI hope that we\u2019ll be able to work together on some things, and I think we all agree broadly on what the problems are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""Steve\"Gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks to reporters at The Waterfront Beach Resort in Huntington Beach on June 2, 2026. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters<\/p>\n

He held on to populism during his years in Silicon Valley and at the Stanford design thinking school, pouring his ideas into his 2015 book, which includes rare praise for outgoing Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom. Citing mayors and local governments as superior decision-makers to states and national governments, Hilton credited Newsom, the former San Francisco mayor, for helping spur the eventual legalization of same-sex marriage by performing those ceremonies before they were legal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decentralization of power is the best way to generate and test new ideas,\u201d Hilton wrote. \u201cThat incredible, liberating revolution (of the legalization of same-sex marriage) began in earnest with the conviction of an assertive mayor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the book is a treatise on making large, bureaucratic institutions friendlier to workers, consumers and citizens. In addition to calling for minimum pay and stricter working conditions, he approved of grocery co-operatives, a single-payer health system provided patients could still choose from a market of providers, a universal basic income-esque program to give poor families financial assistance but allow them to make their own decisions, a crackdown on money in politics and the benefits of children spending time in nature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Hilton calls on ordinary people to run for office with the help of his political tech startup.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While doing research for the book he was moved, he said, by a chart he saw showing the inflation-adjusted pay for top U.S. executives skyrocketing over the past several decades while workers\u2019 earnings flatlined.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve had Reaganism, Clinton, globalization, all this, and yet the basic economic position of most American workers was totally flat,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was like a massive call to action. Like, f\u2014, this system is really not working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seizing on a wave of populism across the West, he went on to campaign for Britain\u2019s exit from the European Union \u2014 breaking from his old boss and friend Cameron \u2014 and to endorse Trump in his first run for president.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet he\u2019s still critical of the right for instinctively blaming China and immigration for inequality, the left for blaming it on billionaires and both sides for increasing \u201chostility\u201d toward big business. He hasn\u2019t proposed any of the regulations he floated in his book (among them, he praised policies requiring companies to cap CEO pay relative to their workers) and is adamantly opposed to any tax proposals that would redistribute unequal wealth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His answer, instead, is what he calls \u201cpositive populism,\u201d which ultimately means relying on the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need businesses to be successful and the aim of every small business is to become a big business,\u201d he said. \u201cI like to be constructive \u2026 I think market-based solutions, less government, is the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton on election night in Huntington Beach on June 2,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,2926,9,8,4303,76068,3707],"class_list":["post-388976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-governor","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-california-republican-party","tag-governor-race-2026","tag-xavier-becerra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388976","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=388976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}