By admin 
The June primary for governor was a chaotic slugfest. Big name candidates like former Vice President Kamala Harris opted against a run and Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose term ends in January, chose not to endorse, leaving the field wide open for most of the race.
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Now that the dust has settled, voters will see what’s shaping up to be a more traditional general election fight between Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton.
Voters face a stark choice between Becerra, a longtime Democratic politician who is casting himself as a seasoned leader in crisis, or Hilton, a former Fox News host who has promised to take on a Sacramento establishment he argues is embodied by his rival.
Becerra enjoys large leads in early polling, has raised more money than Hilton, and has a huge structural advantage in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans roughly two-to-one. And Hilton has been endorsed by President Donald Trump — a major liability in a state where less than a third of the state approves of the president.
Still, the primary showed that no election is a foregone conclusion.
Who is Xavier Becerra?
Becerra’s parents grew up in Mexico before winding up in Sacramento, where they raised Becerra and his three sisters. The 68-year-old has emphasized his working-class roots as the son of a union construction worker, and if he wins, he’d be the first Latino governor since 1875.
Becerra is a graduate of Stanford University for undergraduate and law school and has been in public office for more than three decades. Much of that was in Congress, where he served as chair of the Democratic Caucus from 2013 to 2017. He helped develop what eventually became the Affordable Care Act and unsuccessfully pushed for it to include a public option.
Becerra has focused much of his campaign pitch on his time as state attorney general from 2017 to 2021, when he repeatedly sued President Donald Trump’s first administration and won. He led coalitions of attorneys general to win lawsuits defending the Defense of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival, better known as DACA, and won a case striking down the Trump administration’s attempts to end ACA protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
Former President Joe Biden appointed Becerra as his secretary of health and human services in 2021, where Becerra oversaw the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, the expansion of ACA subsidies and negotiations that reduced the price of certain drugs.
But he came under fire after the New York Times published a Pulitzer-winning investigation that found Becerra’s agency rushed thousands of young migrants out of shelters, leading them to be trafficked into unsafe jobs. Becerra has argued his agency had limited ability to oversee the migrants and was not at fault.
Becerra’s primary rivals were quick to highlight reports that former colleagues in the Biden administration saw Becerra as passive and ineffective; Becerra’s defenders include Biden’s former chief of staff, Ron Klain, who praised his leadership of the agency.
Becerra also took primary heat after his former campaign adviser and chief of staff pleaded guilty in a scheme to siphon around $225,000 from Becerra’s dormant campaign account. Federal prosecutors have described Becerra as a victim in the episode, and the Democrat told The Sacramento Bee that the episode happened “completely outside of my vision.”
Becerra is married to Caroline Reyes, a maternal fetal medicine specialist who he met at Stanford, and who currently practices at UC Davis Health. Both Reyes and the couple’s three daughters campaigned with Becerra during the primary. Becerra and Reyes live in Sacramento.
Who is Steve Hilton?
Hilton, 57, was born to Hungarian parents in London. His parents divorced when he was young, and Hilton was largely raised by his mother, whom he says struggled financially. He excelled academically, went to Oxford University, and worked for the UK’s Conservative Party and in advertising.
He’s widely credited with helping to rebrand the party to be more appealing to moderate voters on social issues and the environment, helping the Tories return to power in 2010. He developed the concept of Big Society, which aspired to create a more decentralized and transparent government and promote free-market capitalism.
Hilton spent two years as an adviser to his friend, then-Prime Minister David Cameron, but says he grew frustrated as his biggest policy ideas — like steep cuts to the civil service — faced political headwinds. Some of the plans he reportedly floated, like acquiring cloud-bursting technology to cure London’s famously gray skies, inspired sarcasm in the British press and a character on a British political satire.
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In 2012, Hilton moved to the U.S. to be closer to his wife, Rachel Whetstone, then an executive at Google.
He launched a bipartisan political fundraising startup called Crowdpac and on the side, helped campaign for Brexit. Crowdpac gained some success with first-time candidates, especially Democrats. The startup fractured after Hilton accepted a job hosting a show on Fox News where he defended the president. Some former Crowdpac employees saw his embrace of Trump as a betrayal of the startup’s goal of strengthening democracy.
Hilton’s show, The Next Revolution, aired weekly from 2017 to 2023 and focused on global populism. It initially included Democratic guests like Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Fremont.
But as the show went on, Hilton increasingly aligned his rhetoric on the show to the broader MAGA movement. In 2020, he was an early critic of COVID-19 lockdown measures and called on Trump to end them.
Hilton became a U.S. citizen in 2021. He and Whetstone, who has not campaigned with him, live in Atherton and have two children.
Their pitch to voters
Becerra repeatedly connects Hilton to Trump. In debates during the spring primary, he exploited Trump’s unpopularity in the state, calling the president Hilton’s “daddy” and warning Hilton would bring MAGA policies to California.
Becerra argues he’s an experienced leader who is laser focused on bringing down the cost of living. He’s promised to freeze home insurance policy premiums and utility rates, although some experts have questioned whether he has the ability to do so. He’s also proposed a “power hour” where low-income households would have access to free electricity for a couple of hours. And the Democrat has signaled willingness to back away from some of California’s clean energy goals if he determines they hurt working-class families.
In addition, Becerra has vowed to protect immigrants from health insurance cuts, expand down-payment assistance programs for new homeowners, and add new guardrails for AI companies.
The former attorney general has taken traditional Democratic stances on issues like abortion and voting rights. But he has so far shied away from making sweeping campaign promises — wary, he says, of politicians’ tendencies to make pledges they can’t keep.
Hilton was endorsed by the president in April but has attempted to steer the race away from the White House, even running ads directly targeting anti-Trump voters. His target is the narrow majority of California voters who repeatedly tell pollsters that the state is on the wrong track.
He’s argued California’s high costs and issues like homelessness are a product of Democratic mismanagement in Sacramento, not Trump. He’s cast Becerra (sometimes literally, in ads produced by AI) as a puppet for Newsom and other establishment Democrats.
Hilton is making big campaign pitches, including no taxes on the first $150,000 of income and $3-a-gallon gas. The Republican says he’d pay for the plans by cutting $25 billion in state spending, including a 10% reduction in the state workforce and an end to all high-speed rail funding.
Hilton has called for expanding oil drilling and processing, saying the state’s current policies drive up prices without protecting the environment.
All of those moves would require cooperation from what’s likely to be a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature — a tall order for a Republican who has spent months attacking the party.
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