People, or perhaps just Republicans, are fed up with California.
Steve Hilton is running for governor of a state that has not elected a Republican governor in well over a decade, nor had a Republican-controlled legislature since 1996. And yet the state’s trajectory has moved in only one direction: downhill. Election after election, year after year, California keeps returning the same people to power, the same people presiding over the same worsening problems. Broadly speaking, the electorate has become the very definition of insanity.
On Tuesday, Hilton, whose campaign message has been simple and direct: if you want change, vote for it, captured that argument more starkly than any speech could.
At a press conference in MacArthur Park, Hilton spoke as a visibly drug-addicted homeless man, someone clearly in need of serious help, wandered aimlessly behind him. But in that moment, he was not just a homeless man. He was living proof that California’s policies are failing, that they have been failing, that the state's government can spend billions on crisis after crisis, preside over its worsening, and somehow convince voters it actually has the solution this time.
To that, Hilton had a single question: “What the f**k are we doing California?”
MACARTHUR PARK: This is your tax money at work… Free crack pipes and needles being handed out to drug addicts. CEOs of these so-called “nonprofits” making millions a year. The smell, the squalor, the inhumanity. All of it is funded by YOU. WAKE UP CALIFORNIA!!! https://t.co/kKWoToRPmI
— Steve Hilton (@SteveHiltonx) October 13, 2026
What the FUCK are we doing, California? So-called “nonprofits” are getting rich by keeping people on the street and addicted to drugs. Becerra supports it. Bass supports it. Raman supports it. And YOU are paying for it! Wake up and VOTE!!! https://t.co/75yrzBdYoC
— Steve Hilton (@SteveHiltonx) October 14, 2026
"The richest state in the richest country on earth, and we see this everywhere," the California Republican said. "It's not just LA, it's not just Skid Row. I've been in every single one of our 58 counties. It is everywhere in California, thanks to the people who for years have been taking your money to fund this kind of chaos. It's in San Diego, it's in San Francisco, it's in Oakland, it's in Fresno, it's in Chico, it is everywhere."
"Your money is paying for this," Hilton said. "What the f**k are we doing California? Wake up. If you vote for Becerra, you'll have more years of this. If you vote for Karen Bass, Nithya Raman, nothing's going to change. The only way we end this scandal of taxpayer-funded drug addiction and homelessness is to vote for a new governor in our state."
If you thought the changes from electing a new president were stark, wait until that moment finally comes for California. The state has continued to bleed out loyal Californians, businesses, capital, credibility, all while its private sector, like Atlas himself, holds up the crushing weight of California’s bureaucracy. And yet, the state’s voters have yet to learn.
Hilton has promised to change that: to revive an economy slowly suffocated by regulation, to cut the rolls of red tape that turns everything from electricity to rent into luxury items, to root out the fraud draining the Golden State, and to rebuild public education, all while letting Californians keep more of what they earn.
California’s chance to change course comes in less than a month. Democrat Xavier Becerra still leads Hilton by several points, though that gap has continued to shrink. According to an internal poll from the Hilton campaign, Becerra leads 45.7 percent to 40.1 percent, as roughly 14.1 percent of the state remains undecided.