Steve Hilton is convinced he’s going to win. Hahahaha.

There’s a midterm election coming on Nov. 3, which includes a race here in California to determine who will replace Gov. Gavin Newsom. On the blue side of the ticket is unremarkable Democrat Xavier Becerra, whose chief positive attribute is that he is not a Republican. On the red side is Steve Hilton, an immigrant from the U.K. who gained U.S. citizenship in 2021. Hilton’s most high-profile political experience came back in the early 2010s, when he served as an adviser to then-U.K. prime minister and alleged porcine enthusiast David Cameron. But that experience, plus a lengthy stint as a commentator for Fox News, was enough to convince Hilton that he not only should run for governor, but that he WILL be the state’s next governor.

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On the surface, he makes for an attractive candidate. Hilton is good company, and when I met him, he was as good at explaining the issues, as you would expect a seasoned broadcaster to be. He’s even reaching out to the gay community, albeit in somewhat awkward fashion. Listen to the man talk and you might come away thinking he’s a Democrat.

But Steve Hilton is not a Democrat. He’s a Republican, one who plans to give tax breaks to the wealthy, massively increase funding to the police and let artificial intelligence companies do basically whatever they want without fear of California regulation. Most importantly to me, he is backed by President and aspiring dictator Donald Trump. So, Hilton can’t run as a Republican, especially not in a state as firmly blue as California, without having to answer for that party’s standard-bearer. But God bless Hilton, he gave it a try, repeatedly, when I met with him in August. This was true right from my opening question, when I asked him why he wanted to run for governor here at all.

“I love California and it’s obviously not working,” he told me. “Sixteen years of one-party rule, it’s a disaster. So we’ve got to turn things around.”

“OK,” I shot back, “but why would I trust a Republican to change any of this, in this administration?”

At this, Hilton feigned ignorance. “In which administration?”

“The Trump 2 administration.”

“I don’t see the relevance of that to California.”

California’s voters will likely see the relevance, given that Trump recently just, you know, invited Iran to bomb the state’s two biggest cities. Trump has also sent the National Guard to LA (and tried to do the same thing in San Francisco), cut off vital healthcare funding to the state, and initiated both a global trade war and a literal war in Iran that have sent the cost of everything in this country, including in California, skyrocketing.  

Hilton acknowledged none of those things. Instead, he continually portrayed himself as a heroic outsider. “I’m not the president,” he insisted, with a showman’s vigor. “I’m not him. I’m me.”

When I brought up the president later in our conversation, he complained to me, “I don’t know why you keep talking about Trump.”

“That’s why I’m here,” I told him. “Because you’re a Republican. I want you to explain to me how you could possibly exist as a functional Republican with the standard-bearer of that party exercising a ridiculous amount of influence over the party and being a general, omniscient presence over the entire country, California included.”

“Well, I think that description, it just doesn’t match the facts,” Hilton told me. The polls at the time implied that voters did not agree. When I met Hilton in August, he was trailing Becerra badly, so I asked him why he was running a campaign that was doomed to fail. 

“That gap [in the polls] is shrinking,” he said to me, with no lack of confidence. “The gap went from 25 to 18 in the Berkeley poll. What was the next one? Our own internal poll, down to 14 points. There’s a poll that we’re hearing about next week where the gap will be under 10%.” 

Hilton didn’t mention that he was quoting polls from before and after the primary, and the gap fell from 21 not 25, which is VERY much a Republican thing for him to do, but I still gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“Let’s say the poll numbers hold and you don’t win the election,” I said to him. “Where would you go after this?”

At this, he laughed. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it. I’m planning to win. I do believe that I’m going to be the next governor. I can see it. I believe it.”

“Is that your ego talking? Have you convinced yourself?”

“No, it’s California talking. It’s the conditions in our state.”

“It’s not the polls talking.”

“Yes, but we’re just at the start of the campaign. No one really pays attention until after Labor Day anyway. Everything points to this being a change election in California. That means that I will win the election. That is my strong expectation.”

But that confidence only holds if Hilton pretends the Trump factor in this race isn’t significant. Surely the voters he’d met along the trail had told him as much. That’s why I asked him, “Have you not had voters talk to you specifically about what the president is doing?”

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“Never comes up.”

That answer floored me. “Never?”

“Literally never comes up,” Hilton boasted. “It’s ‘What are we going to do about the gas prices?’ Right now in California, you’ll see gas prices in the $5 to $6 range. If you go to Texas today, they’re in the $3 range. Same country, same president, same Iran war going on, vastly different gas prices. That’s entirely due to the policies that Democrats have pursued in California.”

He’s partially correct, given that California’s gas prices are high partially because the state has the highest gas tax in the country, and its fuel standards increase costs for producers. But he again fails to acknowledge the role the Trump administration has played in driving up prices nationwide. It’s a form of denial that he’s shown many times over, from asking voters to ignore Trump’s endorsement of him after he accepted it, to attempting to soften his affection for other members of the MAGA herd, including the late Charlie Kirk. Hilton came to our meeting sporting a wristband honoring the fallen white supremacist. I asked him why he had it.

“He was a good friend of mine, and someone gave it to me,” Hilton said about that. “So I just kept it.”

“Did you like his way of going about things, because he was rather open about his views on race.”

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

“That he was a bigot.”

“Well, he was a friend of mine. I’m sure we all agree that we are friends with many people. That doesn’t mean we agree with 100% of everything they’ve ever said or done. You can still be friends with someone, just as I am with many Democrats. Don’t agree with them, but we’re friends.”

Do not count Becerra, the Democratic candidate, as one such friend. Hilton made sure to get in his jabs at Becerra in between all of my nagging questions. “We haven’t even talked about all the disqualifying factors for my opponent, who, in the words of [former Biden official] Susan Rice is ‘an idiot.’ You can’t have an idiot as governor of California.” 

I asked if he thought Becerra was especially idiotic given the current level of stupidity in the Trump administration, but he quickly sidestepped. 

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Susan Rice. I don’t know why she called him an idiot.”

“Well, you just said it was a great quote about him, so you must think he’s an idiot, too.”

“I’m just telling you what people who have experience of working with him say. She also called him a ‘bitch-ass,’ whatever that means exactly.”

“I think you know what a bitch-ass means.”

“I actually, truly don’t know exactly what that means.”

He must have learned in the interim. Because one week ago, Hilton faced off against Becerra in the only televised gubernatorial debate prior to the election. There, he brought up the “bitch-ass” comment from Rice directly to his opponent. He also constantly took umbrage anytime Becerra tried to link him to the president.

“All you ever say is ‘Trump, Trump, Trump,’” he admonished Becerra. “That’s nothing but an insult to every Californian who is desperate for something to change in this state.”

If voters here are desperate for a change, they’re not buying Hilton as the face of it. Two weeks after Labor Day, he is now down against Becerra by 25 points. I don’t think he’s going to win this election. Because when you’re a Republican, there’s no hiding it.