Californians are choosing their next governor: a longtime liberal politician pitching his government experience or a Republican first-time candidate vowing to dramatically upend Democratic power structures.
The race between Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom is one of the most consequential on the ballot. Polls for months have put Becerra ahead of Hilton by double digits, a predictable lead in a state with nearly twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans and where a Republican hasn’t won a statewide office in nearly two decades.
Hilton, a former Fox News host who has urged voters to end “16 years of one-party rule,” is banking on frustration with the state’s high cost of living to drive undecided voters, independents and even some Democrats to support a Republican for a change.
He represents the best hope in years for a GOP victory. He has raised more than $33 million to Becerra’s $38 million and is running hard on a series of ambitious promises to lower costs by slashing regulations and taxes. He portrayed Becerra as the embodiment of the California political status quo, someone who would make decisions that benefit influential special interest groups like organized labor.
“It’s the people against the machine,” he said of his campaign in a virtual town hall last week.
His message of change, promises to slash gas prices and frequent invocations of Californians moving out-of-state resonated with Brad Gerig, who voted in Roseville last week. It was the first time Gerig, 34, could recall voting for a Republican, he said. The EMT and firefighter said he wants to be able to afford to stay and raise a family in California, so he was willing to “try something different.”
“I think it’s worth a shot,” Gerig said. “I think for everybody living in this area there’s an inherent angst for a little bit better. There’s no reason it should be as expensive as it is.”
But Hilton has struggled to rid himself of the baggage from President Donald Trump’s endorsement in a state Trump lost by 20 percentage points in 2024.
Becerra has reminded voters of Hilton’s link to Trump at every turn, and cast himself as a fighter who would, like Newsom, challenge decisions in Washington such as Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign.
He has dismissed Hilton as unserious and primarily campaigned on his longtime experience representing Los Angeles in Congress and serving as state attorney general and as U.S. health secretary. Those roles have earned him a wide swath of influential liberal allies.
“Xavier Becerra has stood with us for more than 30 years,” said Tony Hoang, executive director of the LGBTQ+ rights organization Equality California, at an event in San Francisco last week.
He highlighted Becerra’s role as one of the small minority of congressmembers who voted against the anti-gay marriage Defense of Marriage Act in 1996.
At the same event, Becerra touted his opposition to Trump.
“Donald Trump is on this ballot,” he said, without naming his opponent once. “We see right through you, Donald Trump. And we see through all those MAGA friends and relatives who are trying to push that agenda on us.”
Becerra’s comfortable standing is reflected in the relatively muted nature of his campaign: Becerra agreed to meet for only one debate with Hilton this fall. He has spent much of his time campaigning not for himself but against a Republican-backed voter ID measure and on behalf of other California Democrats.
The election comes at a particularly delicate time for California.
Street homelessness rose for years and only began to decline again in 2025. Wildfires have made it harder to buy homeowners insurance. Inflation, much of it attributable to Trump’s warin Iran, tariffs and immigration crackdown, have added to the already-high cost of living.
The state budget, always subject to the boom and bust of the stock market, has become particularly dependent on the fortunes of the artificial intelligence industry. Under Newsom, the state has made aggressive regulatory moves to curb the use of climate-warming fossil fuels. But despite recent polling that shows a majority of Californians support the green transition, fewer are willing to pay higher prices for energy than were a decade ago.
And the state’s liberal politics have often put it in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, which has withheld federal funds, challenged California’s environmental policies and attempted to intervene in this election.
Both candidates agree the state has become unaffordable for working families. That’s about all they agree on.
Becerra has proposed mostly incremental changes to existing state policies, such as continuing recent efforts by Newsom and lawmakers to reduce the bureaucratic hurdles to approving new housing construction.
He wants to expand state mortgage assistance programs and said he’s committed to the clean energy transition, but open to delays or tweaks to trim costs. He has not endorsed any new taxes on residents, but wants the state to assess a fee on corporations whose employees make so little they qualify for public healthcare.
Hilton, a British American who was once a close adviser to former British Prime Minister David Cameron, ran on a deregulatory agenda, promising to slash environmental rules and the gas tax and allow more home construction on exurban, undeveloped land.
One of his signature campaign promises was to eliminate the income tax on residents’ first $150,000 in earnings and make the income tax flat above that — amounting to an expensive tax cut for the highest earners that he’s said he would pay for with spending cuts. It’s one of his many promises that would need legislative approval, and he has not said how he would get Democrats in the Capitol to support them.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
