Steve Hilton advances to California governor runoff

Republican Steve Hilton, the former Fox News host and onetime adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron, has advanced to California’s November election for governor, setting up a contest with Democrat Xavier Becerra in a state where Republicans have not won the office in two decades.

NBC News, CBS News and The Associated Press projected Hilton would secure one of the two spots in California’s top-two primary, where candidates from all parties appear on the same ballot and the two leading vote-getters move on to the general election. Becerra, a former U.S. health and human services secretary, California attorney general and congressman, had already been projected to advance.

With 88% of the expected vote counted one week after polls closed, Becerra had about 28% support, compared with 25% for Hilton, according to NBC News. Billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer was third with roughly 23%, while Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco had 10%.

California’s vote count can take weeks because of the state’s heavy use of mail ballots. Ballots postmarked by Election Day and received up to a week later may be counted. The delay has fueled unfounded claims from President Donald Trump and some Republicans that the election was “rigged.” The Guardian reported that Trump prematurely declared Hilton the winner after early returns showed him leading, then accused the state of election rigging without evidence as Becerra gained ground in later-counted ballots.

Hilton has criticized the state’s ballot-counting timeline. At a Friday news conference in San Mateo County, he pledged that, if elected, he would “make sure all votes are counted within 48 hours of the mail-in deadline,” CBS News reported.

Hilton’s campaign has not released an official statement, CBS News reported, but he posted an image of himself on social media with the words: “Change is coming!” As early results came in Tuesday, he said, “It looks very much like Californians really will have the chance to vote for change in November and take our state in a new direction.”

Steyer acknowledged Tuesday that he would not advance and urged Californians to support Becerra. “For now, we must stay focused. Donald Trump is the embodiment of the corporations’ craven, soulless, profit-first model of politics, and it is absolutely essential that his handpicked candidate does not hold the keys to California,” Steyer said. “It would be a travesty for Steve Hilton to win the governorship, and Californians must unite behind Xavier Becerra to ensure he does not.”

Hilton was born in the United Kingdom and moved to California in 2012. He became a U.S. citizen in 2021. He served as Cameron’s director of strategy from May 2010 to May 2012 and unsuccessfully ran for a U.K. parliamentary seat as a Conservative Party candidate in 2005. Trump endorsed Hilton in April, helping him consolidate Republican support and pull away from Bianco, who had polled near him for much of the campaign.

Becerra’s rise came late. After former Rep. Eric Swalwell, one of the top-polling Democrats, dropped out in April while denying sexual assault and misconduct allegations, Becerra began gaining support after spending much of the campaign in the low single digits. Steyer ran as a progressive, advocating single-payer health care and a billionaire tax, and spent more than $215 million of his own money on the race.

Hilton faces a difficult November contest. Democrats outnumber Republicans in California voter registration by nearly 2-to-1, and Trump lost the state by 20 points in 2024. If elected, Hilton would be California’s first Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger left office in 2011.

The general election may extend themes from the primary debates. Hilton argued Democrats bear responsibility for the state’s problems after years in power. “Some of these Democrats on the stage, they talk as if we’re in some parallel universe where Democrats haven’t been running the state for the last 16 years of one-party rule,” he said in May. “I mean, you look at Xavier — 36 years he’s been a career politician for Democrats.”

Becerra challenged Hilton’s experience. “What does a Fox News talking head know about running government?” he said. “You’ve never balanced a budget the size of California’s.”