CA Governor Candidate Steve Hilton on Why California is Destroying Itself & How a Republican Can Win

TL;DR

Steve Hilton argues California mirrors 1970s Britain with union dominance, over-regulation, and climate dogma destroying affordability, and outlines how a Republican can win by fixing it.

Key Points

• 1.Hilton's background shapes his anti-statist politics. Born to Hungarian refugee parents who fled Soviet communism in 1956, he grew up working-class in Brighton, attended Oxford, advised UK Prime Minister David Cameron, then moved to Silicon Valley in 2012 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen, renouncing British citizenship.
• 2.California's economy masks deep poverty. Despite being the 4th largest economy globally, California has the highest unemployment and poverty rates in the U.S., with a United Way report finding over a third of Californians cannot afford basic needs.
• 3.Hilton's signature tax plan eliminates state income tax for those earning under $100K. Above that threshold, a flat 7.5% rate applies to all earners; roughly 7 million households — about a third of California — would pay zero state income tax.
• 4.The tax cuts require an ~18.5% spending reduction, roughly $60 billion. This only rolls the budget back to pre-pandemic levels; California's budget has nearly doubled in 10 years and grew ~75% in just 5 years, funding much of it through unsustainable deficit spending.
• 5.Hilton's Cal-DOGE estimates $425 billion in fraud, waste, and abuse over 5 years. Specific examples include $928M of a $1B climate fund diverted to Democrat-linked nonprofits instead of solar panels, $350M cannabis tax funds misused for voter registration, and $3.8B in Project Homekey funds enriching developers.
• 6.Three structural forces — union power, litigation, and climate dogma — explain California's housing crisis. CEQA's private right of action is exploited by unions in 70% of lawsuits to force project labor agreements with union-only labor at 2–3x prevailing wages; impact fees reach $30,000 per door vs. under $1,000 in Texas.
• 7.California imports nearly 80% of its oil, mostly from Iraq, due to regulatory permit denials. The state went from producing most of its own oil to near-total import dependency since 2006's Global Warming Solutions Act, raising gas prices $2+ above national average; ironically, this expands Amazon drilling and uses the most polluting tanker fuel.
• 8.California spends ~$27,000 per student annually but ranks near the bottom nationally. Only 47% meet basic English standards and 35% meet math standards; Hilton advocates Mississippi's phonics-based reading instruction and a mandatory third-grade reading benchmark that transformed Mississippi's results at one-third the per-student cost.
• 9.A Republican can win California because the structural conditions mirror Thatcher's Britain and prior GOP governors succeeded. Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger each served two terms — 16 of the last 36 years were Republican — and even Democrat rival Katie Porter publicly endorsed Hilton's under-$100K tax-free proposal during a Fresno debate.
• 10.Hilton argues the corruption loop — not ideology — is why nothing changes. Newsom's top donor category over 16 years is government unions, followed by trial lawyers and non-government unions; housing reform bills like AB130/AB131 quietly re-insert union closed-shop requirements, ensuring the same cost drivers CEQA creates remain intact.