Steve Hilton, who has been endorsed by President Trump for governor in California, is one of the leading contenders to advance beyond the June 2 Republican primary. The top two performers in the election, regardless of party, will meet in November.
Here are five things to know about Mr. Hilton, 56.
1. He is a native of Britain who was once the right-hand man of Prime Minister David Cameron. He was a close friend and aide of Mr. Cameron’s and advised him for the first couple years of his tenure, before leaving the government in 2012. Mr. Hilton was a larger-than-life figure, known among colleagues for walking the corridors of Downing Street shoeless and in shorts and proposing idiosyncratic ideas that made headlines. He and Mr. Cameron would later have a falling out over the “Brexit” vote, which led Britain to leave the European Union. Mr. Hilton supported Brexit, while Mr. Cameron staked his political career against it.
2. He was caricatured on a popular British TV show by the creator of “Veep.” The show “The Thick of It” is an acerbic British satire that preceded “Veep.” One of the characters on the show, Stewart Pearson, inspired by Mr. Hilton, was portrayed as an exasperating strategist who tries to push “thought circles” on bewildered Tories, drops pearls of wisdom like “knowledge is porridge” and has a running battle with an aggrieved government minister over whether he should wear a tie.
3. His wife has been a top tech industry executive. Mr. Hilton followed his wife, Rachel Whetstone, to the United States in 2012. By then, Ms. Whetstone, another former Tory strategist, was already a senior executive in the tech industry. She has worked for Google and Netflix, where she was the top communications officer; she left Netflix in 2024. Is Mr. Hilton Silicon Valley’s candidate? “I’m the candidate of and for business, of all kinds and in all sectors,” he said in an interview. “So I definitely don’t run away from the tech industry, I’m a huge supporter of it.” But, he said, as governor his focus would be on bolstering “entertainment and agriculture, and small business.”
4. He is President Trump’s pick for the job. After Mr. Hilton came to the United States, he became a pundit at Fox News, a network that Mr. Trump likes to monitor for potential staff members and candidates to endorse. Mr. Hilton has made his campaign MAGA-friendly and hopes to bring a version of the Department of Government Efficiency to California. He has also traveled to the state track and field championships to speak out against a transgender athlete’s participation. But even the other prominent Republican in the race, Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff, has expressed doubt that such a strategy can succeed in a general election in a heavily Democratic state.
5. He wants to cut taxes across the board and opposes a ballot initiative targeting billionaire wealth. Mr. Hilton is proposing to eliminate California income taxes on the first $100,000 of earnings. He is also proposing a flat tax that will significantly reduce what the richest residents pay. All of these promises would be expensive: By his campaign’s own math, tax revenue would fall by as much as $65 billion per year. He also opposes a ballot initiative that targets billionaire wealth, and has drawn support from several billionaires. So how would he pay for his tax cuts? Mr. Hilton and his campaign have said he would seek to shrink the state work force and take “every opportunity to reduce or eliminate the size and scope of state agencies.”
Danny Hakim is a reporter on the Investigations team at The Times, focused primarily on politics.
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