Steve Hilton’s Rise Won’t Kill California Progressivism

California, a place not known for its psychological normality, went crazy last night. Two separate elections show the political direction of travel for the state, with many of the details still far from certain. In a gubernatorial race that was always slated to be close, overnight results point to Republican Steve Hilton narrowly leading Democrat Xavier Becerra, while Left-wing billionaire Tom Steyer trails in third. Meanwhile, in LA, Mayor Karen Bass looks set to go into a run-off election with Trump-backed former reality TV star Spencer Pratt. Unfortunately, despite much hype around the candidates on the Right, their prospects of winning are slim, a sign of how entrenched the state’s ideological views are.

In the gubernatorial race, the Democrats have overwhelmingly stumped for a disastrous candidate. Becerra is bland, uninspiring and has hardly rallied the party base. Instead, he found late support from the Democratic establishment and union machines after Eric Swalwell was forced to drop out amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Fellow Democratic candidate Steyer may be obscenely wealthy, but he ran a campaign like he was running for the old Supreme Soviet. He was never expected to win, but he has clearly split the Left vote. Sadly, Democrats overwhelmingly rejected the only two candidates offering real reforms, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

GOP candidate Steve Hilton, an ex-advisor to former British prime minister David Cameron, has performed admirably and could perhaps still take the Governor’s Mansion. He has emerged as the candidate for those who are fed up with Democratic rule and want a reasonable change from the other side of the political aisle.

LA voters followed the same split-screen approach. Bass has taken a convincing lead but was challenged by a far-Left opponent in the form of councilwoman Nithya Raman. This split has paved the way for the GOP’s Pratt to come in a convincing second. The celebrity Republican ran a clever, if sometimes tasteless, campaign, exemplified by his use of AI for promotional materials. In a run-off between him and Bass, he’s unlikely to win over Raman’s more radical backers, so it’s hard to see him winning.

Unfortunately for the media class, this seemingly inevitable Pratt loss means the November run-off will prove less interesting. People will remain upset about homelessness, crime and general deterioration, but not enough to hand over the state to a man endorsed by Donald Trump.

LA and California more broadly are so overwhelmingly Democratic, with party registrations twice that of the GOP, that it is almost impossible for a Republican to win outside a few pockets, mostly in the interior and the rural north. Unless a scandal hits, or in Bass’s case, another disaster like the 2025 Palisades Fire, the results are all too predictable. The kind of people who might vote Republican, such as young working- or middle-class families, are heading elsewhere. LA leads the nation in population loss, including young families. Those most likely to stay tend to be young, educated professionals and public-sector workers, and it is these groups which find themselves well-served by California’s government. Those more likely to vote Republican or for a private sector-minded Democrat — like construction and factory workers, truckers and small businesspeople — have not fared so well.

These economic realities are what shape politics in California. The state’s ideological views and demographic patterns are so entrenched that the Democratic base will likely remain for years to come, while California’s problems get worse and worse.

This piece first appeared at UnHerd.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr under CC-By-SA 2.0 license.