My dad howled with laughter when I told him we were going to eat tacos with Steve Hilton.
“Isn’t he with Trump?” he said in Spanish.
Indeed! But the former Fox News host has also staked his chances of becoming California’s next governor on courting Latinos with a gospel of affordability, lower taxes and the California Dream. He even took out full-page newspaper ads arguing that haters of President Trump could choose him over his Democratic opponent, Xavier Becerra, and still be able to sleep at night.
“He’s going to say whatever suits him,” Papi cracked as we waited for Hilton at King Taco’s flagship restaurant in East Los Angeles on Thursday. We were dressed in our rancho libertarian best: jeans, embroidered leather belts, pearl snap shirts. Suavecito pomade for me, alligator boots and a 100X gray Stetson for my dad.
Hilton arrived like he was ready to party in Hermosa Beach, in a black open-collar shirt that was either seersucker or unironed, dark blue slacks and white Adidas with orange ombre stripes. He wore a “Charlie Kirk” wristband and another reading “Save Girls.”
In May, I challenged him to have tacos with my dad and me after the internet mocked him for declaring that the hard-shell tacos at a Del Taco in Barstow were “street.” An undeterred Hilton doubled down on courting Latinos after that faux pas, visiting East L.A. multiple times and even serving tacos after a lowrider cruise.
“Things haven’t got a lot better [here], with a lot of poverty and crime and concern about, you know, just the daily things that are just a hassle for everybody,” Hilton said as we waited in King Taco’s lunchtime line. “The cost of everything. And [Democrats] expect that [Latinos] will vote for them forever and ever because that’s the way it goes.”
I credited him for courting Latinos. They’re the “past and future” of California, he told my father and me after we sat down.
Becerra, on the other hand, has campaigned like he has it as easy as the guy who accompanies the quinceañera girl during her showcase waltz.
I commended Hilton for his cheery, aspirational messaging, which is what Latinos want to hear. I added that my father, uncles, cousins and even myself might have been inclined to give him a chance after years of Democrats running the state into its current stasis — except for one pesky detail.
The British expat has repeatedly boasted that he’s the candidate of legal immigrants. My dad and so many of my loved ones came to this country without papers before attaining citizenship. Others remain without legal status. So why on earth would we vote for someone who doesn’t respect us?
Hilton turned to my father as we dug into our lunch.
“How do you think of yourself?” Hilton asked. Immigrant? Legal? American?
“I’m a poor, humble man who wants peace,” Papi joked in Spanish as I interpreted. But he didn’t appreciate the “legal” immigrant distinction.
Hilton tried to clarify that he meant people who aspired to stay in this country without papers, not people like my dad who are now legalized. I scoffed.
“Do illegal immigrants want to stay [like that]?” I asked Papi in Spanish.
“No!” he replied. “That’s why they’re asking for reform!”
Hilton bit into of one of his three al pastor tacos with gusto. In his Barstow video, he hadn’t bothered to chomp into the Del Taco ones.
“So correct me if I’m wrong. There’s also people who don’t want to” become citizens, Hilton asserted. “If they’re working with a cartel. Like, the criminal aspect of it.”
And that’s how it went for the rest of our hourlong meal.
I don’t think Hilton is the racist that Becerra made him out to be in Wednesday’s CNN debate, accusing him of “welcom[ing] immigrants who look like you, but deport[ing] immigrants who look like me.”
I told Hilton I thought that was a cheap shot. But as our conversation continued, it was painfully obvious that the GOP hopeful, for all of his Latino outreach, has stayed in a MAGA echo chamber.
That might play well in some sections of California, but it has no chance of carrying him to Sacramento.
No wonder Hilton look befuddled when my dad regaled him with the tale of entering the U.S. for the first time in the trunk of a Chevy in 1968. Papi said he doesn’t regret coming illegally, because he needed a job and sneaking in wasn’t frowned on at the time.
“Why would I be ashamed of that?” he asked, adding that he doesn’t look down on immigrants who are now making the same choice.
“I think most people don’t agree with that,” Hilton responded, adding that the Latinos he’s talked to are proud that they or their families did it “the right way.”
I acknowledged that some California Latinos have become less sympathetic toward illegal immigrants — but that was before Trump’s cruel immigration sweeps crashed into our daily lives and motivated nearly all the Latinos I know to walk around with their U.S. passports, if they’re lucky enough to have one.
I asked Hilton what he would do for undocumented Californians if he’s elected governor.
“First of all, I just want to be really clear: It’s not my priority,” Hilton said as my father silently scarfed down his al pastor burrito. “My priority is reducing the cost of living for, like, everybody. … One thing I learned in government is you can’t do too many things — otherwise you don’t get anything done properly.”
He correctly pointed out that a governor doesn’t have the power to legalize immigrants. I retorted that California governors going back to Gray Davis have stood by undocumented residents, signing bills that allowed them to obtain driver’s licenses and in-state college tuition, as well as going to court against Trump to protect those rights and many more.
So would Hilton at least be an advocate for undocumented immigrants?
“Well, I don’t know,” he replied.
“You’ve had all this time to get to this point to not know?” I said.
“Because I don’t know what I’m advocating for,” was all he could come up with.
I asked my dad if he thinks Trump — whose endorsement Hilton sought and secured — is a racist.
“I don’t want to say things that will get me in trouble,” Papi said, which drew a giggle from Hilton.
I rephrased what I was trying to get at: Have the actions of immigration agents been racist?
“Of course!” Papi exclaimed in English. He told Hilton about the many times la migra nabbed him during the 1970s — “they nice, talking with respect. Now the ICE, they killing people. They hitting people.”
“I don’t like that as well,” Hilton admitted.
So does he think racism motivates Trump’s deportation deluge?
“I really don’t,” Hilton replied.
He acknowledged that immigration agents can get “too heavy-handed” — and that’s why one of his first phone calls as governor would be to border czar Tom Homan to discuss how la migra could act in a “humane way.”
Raids “affect our communities,” Hilton continued. “I hear about it from businesses, people not coming in.”
I asked again if he thought racism fueled Trump, bringing up White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has long railed against immigrants, once tweeting, “If you import the Third World, you become the Third World.”
“I don’t know — I mean, I don’t want to judge people like that,” Hilton replied. “I don’t think so. I think it’s based on, you know, a sense that things got out of control, and we need some order to the chaos, and we’ve got to have an orderly process for deciding who comes into the country, and that’s, I think, reasonable, obviously.”
Really, no racism?
“I don’t know [Miller]. I’ve never met him, actually. So I don’t know,” he said with a nervous chuckle.
We were almost out of time, so I asked him to pitch my dad one final time on voting for him.
It wasn’t all loggerheads between the two. After all, both are immigrants who chose to put down roots in California.
While Papi didn’t agree with Hilton’s suggestion that undocumented immigrants should return to their home countries with a guarantee that they can apply for expedited amnesty, he conceded that it might be the most plausible way to legalize millions, as long as Republicans are in charge in Washington.
Papi liked that Hilton said “gasolina” instead of “gasoline.” We respected that Hilton handled King Taco’s legendary red salsa with ease, even as he admitted it was “spicier” than he expected. Hilton appreciated Papi’s pluck and his life story as the proud father of four college-educated children — none of whom plan to vote for Hilton.
“I love California,” Hilton said, taking one last sip of his horchata. “It’s the best place anywhere. And we just got too much — everything’s too difficult. Everything’s too expensive. Everything is like a hassle, too much red tape and bureaucracy.”
He rhapsodized about a California of possibility and freedom and “rebel spirit” and doing what you want, points that I translated to my father.
“It would be great if there was liberty,” my dad agreed in Spanish.
“Entonces, ¿va votar por él?”
“No,” my dad said as Hilton and I laughed.
“What about a split?” Hilton suggested — vote Democrat in every other race except “for me, por governador.”
No.
Papi liked Hilton’s overall platform and vision, but he wanted Hilton to be more bothered by Trump’s deportation deluge.
“I wish some day better, everything better,” Papi said in English.
“I think I can help with that, I really do,” Hilton replied.
“We’ll see,” Papi shot back.
Hilton shook my father’s hand and thanked us for the tacos. Maybe he was just in a hurry to get to his next destination, which was recording a podcast, or maybe he thought there would be table service, but he left his trash on the table.
I asked my father what he thought.
“What am I supposed to do — I can’t vote for him,” Papi said in Spanish. “From what I understand, the Republican politicians are a bunch of rich people. Let’s vote for the poor.”
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