GET READY TO VOTE

• What’s at stake in this race
• What does the governor do? 
• Follow the money

What’s at stake in this race

The California governor is the most powerful elected official in the nation’s most populous state, commanding a $300 billion budget. The governor shapes policy for 39 million residents, signs or vetoes legislation, appoints judges and members of regulatory agencies and leads crisis response from wildfires to pandemics. California’s governor wields outsized national influence, making the office a launching pad for presidential ambitions.

What does the governor do? 

The governor is the head of California’s executive branch. Their decisions shape how the state is run and the level of funding and support available to our cities and counties for services. Among their many powers, the governor can:

• Sign or veto legislation
• Create and balance budgets 
• Appoint people to run agencies or be on commissions
• Appoint judges
• Issue pardons or commute sentences for people in state prison
• Declare emergencies and use emergency powers (in 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom used his power as governor to issue a pandemic stay-at-home order, for example)

While the legislative and judicial branches are still there to keep the governor in check, the governor has enough influence to push forward a policy agenda. Plus, as we’ve seen during the pandemic, there’s a lot of room for them to exert power in times of emergency.

Things the governor can’t do: shut down borders (although they can issue travel restrictions, especially in cases like a pandemic), unilaterally force cities to build (or not build) housing, or raise taxes without legislative approval.

The candidates

Xavier Becerra

Party: Democratic
Former U.S. health secretary, former state attorney general

Becerra represented Los Angeles in Congress for more than two decades before being appointed California’s attorney general in 2017. He led the state’s numerous lawsuits against the first Trump administration and Republican states. He was U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services under Biden, steering the administration through the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and receiving criticism for the agency’s care of migrant children in its custody. Becerra says he’s open to revising the state’s climate goals to keep fuel affordable for middle-class Californians and wants to declare a state of emergency to freeze utility and insurance rates.

Key endorsements

• California Faculty Association
• Equality California
• Planned Parenthood California

More voter resources:

• Candidate website
• Full endorsements list here
• Xavier Becerra gets to play it safe in the race for governor, and he isn’t making promises

Editor's note: LAist has issued multiple invitations to Becerra to appear again on AirTalk, as well as at a forum co-hosted with the L.A. Times and through our statewide partnership with other public media newsrooms.

Steve Hilton

Party: Republican
Former adviser to UK prime minister, former Fox News host

Hilton, who is British American, was senior adviser for former conservative Prime Minister David Cameron from 2010 to 2012 before moving to California, where he co-founded a political crowdfunding platform in Silicon Valley. He has written books on decentralizing power in large, bureaucratic institutions from government to the food and health care systems. From 2017 to 2023, he hosted a weekly show on Fox News. Hilton wants to lower the price of gas by suspending environmental regulations, cut income taxes for middle-class earners and wealthier Californians and open natural spaces for housing, particularly suburban single-family homes.

Key endorsements

• President Donald Trump
• Nisei Farmers League
• Israeli-American Civic Action Network

More voter resources:

• Candidate website
• Hilton does not list endorsements on his site
• Who is Steve Hilton? Here’s how he has rebranded himself multiple times

How they compare on key policy areas

Business & economy

To address the high cost of living, Becerra’s platform focuses on trying to rein in housing and utility prices. He says he will declare a state of emergency to freeze insurance and utility rates and he wants to crack down on what he considers price gouging.

Hilton supports business deregulation and promises to end greenhouse gas reduction mandates that he says force utilities to buy more expensive green energy that drives up costs for businesses and consumers. He wants to curb labor and environmental laws that are often used to sue businesses and eliminate the $800 fee for registering a company.

Taxes

Becerra supports a progressive income tax system and the proposal to extend a higher tax rate on high earners to pay for schools. He opposes Proposition 40, the billionaire wealth tax proposal on the ballot. He has not ruled out raising taxes and says he wants to tax corporations with workers who are paid so little they qualify for public healthcare.

Hilton wants to eliminate state income tax on the first $150,000 of Californians’ earnings, and make the income tax a flat rate above that. He also wants to halve the gas tax and opposes Proposition 40, the ballot measure that would impose a one-time tax on billionaires’ assets.

Housing

Becerra would declare a state of emergency to use state resources to fund 40,000 units of already-approved affordable housing that need financing. He would push cities to zone more residential land to build apartments, duplexes and condos and crack down on cities that make it harder to build new housing. He supports expanding the state’s down payment assistance program for homebuyers. And he would pursue policies to prevent large corporations from buying up homes en masse.

Hilton wants to “bring back the starter home” by reducing fees and building regulations on the development of smaller single-family homes and creating a state loan program for first-time buyers. He also wants to prevent people, companies and unions from using the California Environmental Quality Act to sue to stop construction and favors building suburban developments over denser city apartment projects.

Homelessness

Becerra would create an ongoing state funding stream to pay for rental assistance and other services to keep people from becoming homeless and launch a public dashboard to track units paid for with state money. He says people should not be allowed to voluntarily stay on the street when offered shelter, but stopped short of saying they should face arrest.

Hilton believes that camping on the street, which some cities have banned, is categorically illegal and says police should be involved in clearing all encampments. He wants to use state funding to pay for sober housing, rather than only low-barrier shelters that accept people regardless of their sobriety, and overhaul the state’s spending on homelessness.

Climate

Becerra says he supports the state’s clean energy transition goals but is open to revising them if they make gas and energy unaffordable, particularly Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ban on selling new gas cars by 2035.

Hilton wants to roll back California’s climate rules that mandate a transition to clean energy and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in favor of more consumer-friendly policies. He would end rules that require utilities and businesses to purchase solar and wind power, allow more natural gas production and start a volunteer program to plant trees and restore forests to reduce carbon in the atmosphere.

Trump

Becerra has made fighting President Donald Trump a prominent part of his platform and often touts his record of suing Trump more than 100 times during his first presidency, when Becerra was state attorney general. He says he would adopt a similar stance with Trump as governor on such issues as immigration and environmental policy.

Hilton got an endorsement for governor from Trump, whom he backed during Trump’s first presidential run in 2016. He has said he expects to have a positive, cooperative relationship with the president and believes that relationship will help California secure more federal help.

Justice

Breaking with Newsom and the state Democratic Party, Becerra voted for Proposition 36, the tougher-on-crime 2024 measure that voters backed, and he says he would fully fund its provisions and make sure defendants are given court-mandated drug treatments to avoid jail time. But he has not backed longer or stricter criminal sentences in general, saying that decision should be left to judges. He supports California’s sanctuary law and defended it in court during the first Trump administration.

Hilton would reopen closed state prisons, reduce the practice of early release based on prisoners’ good conduct and boost rehabilitation programs in prisons. He is particularly focused on loosening restrictions in a state anti-discrimination law that prevent police from stopping people on the street. He wants to overturn California’s sanctuary law that limits police cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He supports reducing restrictions on owning and using firearms.

Healthcare

Becerra was a longtime supporter of single-payer healthcare but similar to Newsom, has amended his position to instead support expanding state coverage to as many residents as possible. He would try to lower costs by cutting insurance companies’ administrative spending, order insurers to cover more telehealth appointments and start a state fund to recruit and retain more healthcare workers by offering things like student loan repayment.

Hilton’s primary healthcare policy is to end California’s state-provided Medi-Cal coverage for undocumented immigrants and redirect that money to lower healthcare costs for legal residents. He has not proposed concrete policies to do that but says he wants to encourage more competition by allowing more insurers into the market and preventing consolidation among providers like clinics and hospitals.

Tech & AI

Becerra says he supports the state banning children under 16 from being on social media. He wants California to track the economic and workforce impacts of AI and says he will pursue policies requiring AI developers to be transparent about how the technology is used in employment decisions. He also wants to use AI to make the government more efficient.

Hilton, who uses a flip phone, has expressed concern about children using social media and the potential for AI to create wealth inequality. But he has declined to back any regulations or bans, and wants to reduce regulations to keep the AI industry growing in California. He also wants to encourage, without legislation, a society where no child under 16 uses a smartphone.

Education

Becerra has not released any major education policy proposals.

Hilton supports phonics instruction and would seek to hold back children in 3rd grade if they are not reading-proficient at grade level. He wants to make it easier for districts to fire teachers and for parents to petition for schools to be converted to charters. He supports using public funds to allow parents in underperforming districts to send their children to private schools or other districts. He opposes the state law allowing transgender youth to compete on school sports teams they choose.

Go deeper on policy

• In Becerra and Hilton’s only scheduled debate, Trump was the main character
• What will California’s next governor do about healthcare? Here are Becerra and Hilton’s plans

Follow the money

LAist's Brianna Lee contributed to this report. Background information about the governor's job was first published in our 2022 voter guide.