Steve Hilton, a transplanted Brit and former host, is running neck and neck with a fractured field of Democrats in the race to succeed Gavin Newsom as governor of California, with most polls putting him narrowly ahead less than six weeks before the primary election. The former business entrepreneur and Downing Street adviser to David Cameron has spent the campaign crisscrossing the state, from one corner of California to another, trying to turn an unlikely bid into something more real.
At a recent crowd in Huntington Beach, Hilton told supporters, “Each day that goes by, I believe more and more that we can pull this off. There is a majority for change in California.” That confidence has been backed by numbers that matter: he has the largest number of individual campaign donors, though he ranks third in fundraising behind Tom Steyer and Matt Mahan.
Some of Mahan’s donors, including Google founder Sergey Brin, are now moving over to Hilton, a shift that signals his campaign is drawing interest beyond the Republican base. He also says he is friends with half of Donald Trump’s cabinet, a line that may help him with some conservatives and complicate him with California’s broader electorate.
The race has widened after Eric Swalwell was drummed out of the contest and out of politics last month following sexual assault and misconduct allegations, which he has strongly denied. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco is the second Republican polling in the top tier, but the field is still badly split and no Democrat has yet consolidated the party’s vote.
That matters because California Democrats hold supermajorities in the state legislature and enjoy a two-to-one advantage over Republicans in voter registration. For the past two decades, Republicans running for statewide office have been treated as almost certain losers, and state party leaders are already fretting about the possibility of losing control of California for the first time since Arnold Schwarzenegger won the governor’s office in 2003.
Under a Schwarzenegger-era reform, California no longer sends one Democrat and one Republican automatically into the general election. That change is what gives Hilton any opening at all, even if victory in November still looks like a long shot. The question now is whether he can keep pulling support from a divided field long enough to turn that opening into something that lasts beyond the primary.