Better know a CA gubernatorial candidate: Steve Hilton

In the fifth installment of our ongoing look at candidates to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom when he terms out next year, we look at Republican candidate Steve Hilton. 

Former Fox News host Steve Hilton, a Republican, seemingly knows the difficulty members of his own party have had in winning the California governor’s race. He told KCRA in April that his campaign is “non-partisan.”

Hilton, a British native, is a former advertising executive who served as a top advisor to former British Prime Minister David Cameron. But he became more familiar to Americans in his role hosting a show on Fox for six years.

Hilton’s run will inevitably spark comparisons to Larry Elder’s; he even has a new book with a title (Califailure: Reversing The Ruin Of America’s Worst-Run State) that sounds like it could come from Elder (who authored several books of his own, by the way).

Unlike Elder, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, Hilton was born in the United Kingdom, to Hungarian parents on the run from Communism. He attended Oxford University, then briefly got into politics before joining the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency. Later, he co-founded the Good Business consulting firm and the London restaurant The Good Cook.

In 2005, Hilton returned to politics as Cameron’s Head of Strategy.

Seven years later, he and his family moved to Silicon Valley, where he taught at Stanford University. He also co-founded a political crowdfunding platform called Crowdpac.

What’s going for him: He’s polished. He hosted a Fox show, after all. He talks a good talk and knows how to market himself. He seems equally comfortable on stage and on camera and has a sizable following on social media. Perhaps more importantly, he has close ties to Silicon Valley and its seemingly empty pockets. His stance on taxes – he doesn’t like them – should play very well with his tech industry friends. And his populist approach, including his allegedly non-partisan campaign, acknowledges the obvious, that Republicans have not been competitive in California for some time.

What’s going against him: How likely is it that a former Fox News host is going to be elected the governor of California? In most years the answer would be not much, but in the age of Trump 2.0 anything is possible.