In a campaign season filled with surprises, Steve Hilton may be the biggest shock of them all. A conservative policy-meister born and bred in England who has never held elected office, Hilton has surged to the top of a splintered California gubernatorial primary field with a brand of what he calls “positive populism” — a movement that purports to downplay populist outrage in favor of practical solutions and that comes with (small) hints of social progressivism.
As a policy architect and comms advisor to a host of British politicians — including, eventually, former British PM David Cameron — Hilton in England carved out a reputation as an idea-driven pragmatist who shaped that same image for his boss. Later in the 2010’s he would move to Silicon Valley, starting a crowdfunding company called Crowdpac.
For his 2026 gubernatorial campaign Hilton has drawn on plenty of media and entertainment experience. He hosted The Next Revolution on Fox News on Sunday nights for six years beginning in the spring of 2017, where he offered extended debates and commentary from a conservative standpoint, albeit with slightly less trolling than some of the network’s other opinion precincts. Fans of the British satire In The Thick of It may also find some commonalities between Hilton and the show’s buzzword-happy political operative Stewart Pearson, said to be partly based on him. And Hilton is married to Rachel Whetstone, who served for years as the chief communications officer of Netflix.
The 56-year-old has used his communications skills and the public’s disenchantment with the state’s high cost of living to offer an alternative; experience on the Democratic side of the ledger has become, in his campaign’s messaging, a decided disadvantage. The strategy seems to be working: Hilton currently leads all candidates with 16 percent of the vote in the latest polling; Republican sheriff Chad Bianco (14 percent), Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer (13 percent) and Democratic former California AG Xavier Becerra (13 percent) sit behind him. The top two vote-getters in a June 2 primary regardless of party will enter the general in November.
As the candidates in the sprawling, messy race — Eric Swalwell’s departure amid an alleged sexual-misconduct scandal is just the latest crazy turn — get set to debate at the Nexstar debate on NewsNation Wednesday night, The Hollywood Reporter took time to talk to Hilton about why the navy-blue entertainment industry should consider an FNC Republican. The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Your six years on Fox would put you in good company as a Republican seeking the governorship, what with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan’s own pre-politics claim to fame. How much do you think that experience helps?
I can see where that thought is coming from since they were such prominent Republican governors. But I really don’t see myself as part of that or really part of the media at all. My time on Fox was a major detour. The pathway to it was very unusual since I spent most of my career in business and spent years as a policy advisor.
The bona fides do seem help you with President Trump, who recently endorsed you. Is that an endorsement you want to lean into or play down? I mean, three-quarters of the voters in the state are Democrats and most of them do not hold a high opinion of the president.
I appreciate the president’s endorsement and help.
And you aren’t concerned it will hurt you?
I think it will help mobilize Republicans to come out and vote, both for me and in the midterm races. And mobilizing Republicans is key to winning in California.
What made you decide to make the jump from cable news to campaigning?
I really enjoyed building businesses and advocating for other businesses. And then I really enjoyed being on Fox. It had never occurred to me I would one day be doing something like this. But as the years went by on my show it did feel that there was more I wanted to do. I wanted to go back to solving problems instead of just describing them. So in 2023 I set up an organization called Golden Together and traveled around the state talking about solutions. I began to see how truly broken it all was. I was talking to a legislator and told him about an idea and he said it was “transformational.” I said “great, let’s do it then!” And he said “No, I can’t support it publicly because the unions would hate it.” I suppose I shouldn’t have been shocked but I was.
Speaking of problems, California has no shortage of them, whether it’s unemployment, housing, education or a host of others. What’s your pitch for why you can solve them?
We need a massive shakeup to our system. We have the highest poverty rate of any state, tied with Louisiana. We have the highest unemployment of all 50 states. We are 50th out of 50th in “opportunity.” California sees itself relative to the rest of the United States the way the United States sees itself relative to Europe: as the land of opportunity. And we are 50th.
So what you think can be done?
I think massive over-regulation is the problem.
All of these problems are caused by regulation?
Many of them. By the cost and hassle of running a business. Look at all the environmental regulations. There’s not a single advocate who can explain what they do for the climate — they do nothing. They have zero impact. The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 did nothing but make life hard for Californians. And then you have the union power. And the power of trial lawyers. All three come together to give us the crisis we have today, on housing and so many other issues. This is what Gavin Newsom has been about, these three things. And of course it’s not just him. It’s what I call the Democrat-Industrial Complex. It’s taxing like crazy with nothing to show for it.
I think you touch a pretty broad nerve when you talk about affordability. But if you look at others who’ve talked about it — like Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York — they have programs to try to address them. What are your programs?
I don’t look at it that way. I don’t think we should be taxing people more. How does taxing people more make things more affordable?
Well it depends who’s being taxed and what it’s being used for.
Well, someone is paying for it.
I think most Californians would say that’s OK if it’s the billionaires up in Silicon Valley who’re paying for it.
Everyone is paying for it. The average Californian spends $35,000 more in taxes than the rest of the country. The governor wants to spend more than $27,000 per student and what do you get for it? It’s a calamity. I call it the Democratic Doom Loop. You institute policies that make everything more expensive and cause an affordability crisis. Then to solve that you raise taxes so you can spend more and then things become even more unaffordable. Newsom likes to talk about us as the fourth-biggest economy in the world. And I’m proud of that. But a lot of that is generated by tech companies so it skews the picture; the statistic sits side by side with the highest unemployment in the country. That’s not a healthy economy.
But your pro-business policies would just shift even more power and revenue to the biggest tech companies, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t address working people’s problems.
It would make it easier to do business here, which would help everyone. The fourth-largest economy statistic also includes government by the way. Government shouldn’t be one of the biggest employers. It should be creating the conditions for business instead of doing that job poorly. The endless bossiness of government in California is a big problem. Unfortunately all the horror stories you hear about this are true.
One industry that would certainly welcome some ideas to help it flourish and hire more people is Hollywood. I know some of your opponents talk about raising the $750 million cap on film subsidies for California productions — a number that Newsom already more than doubled to get to that point. What would be your solution to the jobs crisis in Hollywood?
There’s no question we have to revive the entertainment industry before it slips further into decline. I’m working on a plan to do just that that you’ll be hearing about soon.
Can you offer any details?
Not yet, but I will. Tax incentives have to be a part of the story — no question. But it has to be more than that.
How do you plan on handling the potential AI job dislocation — in Hollywood and also beyond. You even have some of the biggest tech CEOs admitting this will be an issue, never mind all the creative and tech workers who are already seeing the impact.
First, I want to say I’m really so skeptical of politicians who talk about this and don’t know what they’re talking about. The focus has to be on retraining people for AI, on a well-trained workforce, and right now we’re so lamentably far from that. We need a way to prepare people to flourish in an uncertain future. We need to restore a lot of vocational training, because these are the jobs that will be more resistant to AI.
I think a lot of people would agree with you on the last point — the focus on the jobs that AI can’t touch should be a priority. But shouldn’t caring about workers also mean limits on what AI companies can do that displaces people from jobs?
No one really know the truth of how this will turn out, including the people running the companies. But the right approach is not to stop it. Our response should be creative and flexible. That’s what I bring: an approach that isn’t clamping down. California has what I call a rebel spirit. It’s what created Hollywood; it’s what created the tech industry. And I see that being crushed. As a Californian who loves this state it breaks my heart. We need to restore that rebel spirit.
Finally, what would you say to the many readers in Hollywood and Los Angeles to persuade them to vote for a small-government conservative, which is, to say the least, not historically who they vote for.
That I’m not an ideologue. I’m problem-solving pragmatist at heart. California is the best place to run a business or to live if we just stop doing stupid things. A lot of these regulations start in a good place. But taken to extremes we see what happens. I want to bring it back into balance. I want to bring government back into balance. We see what one-party rule brings us for 15 years. When I take office in January 2027 Democrats will still have a supermajority in the legislature; a lot of cities will still be run by Democrats. It’s just about balance. We’ve seen what happens when we don’t have it.
