A Fox News Host vs. a Cabinet Secretary: Inside California's Wild Governor Primary and the General Election Math That Follows

California's top-two primary has produced exactly the general election matchup that will test whether the nation's most populous state — and its most reliably Democratic one — can elect a Republican governor for the first time in two decades.

With 57% of the expected vote counted as of Wednesday morning, Republican Steve Hilton leads the crowded gubernatorial field at 27.7%, followed by Democrat Xavier Becerra at 25.4% [1]. Democrat Tom Steyer, who poured a record $213 million of his own fortune into the race, sits in third at 19.6% — enough to claim a moral victory for progressive energy but not enough for a spot on the November ballot [2]. Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco trails at roughly 11% [1].

Roughly 3.7 million ballots remain uncounted statewide, with L.A. County alone expected to continue processing votes through June 26 and the California Secretary of State required to certify final tallies by July 10 [3]. That margin — just 2.3 percentage points separating first from second — means the final order could still shift, though both Hilton and Becerra appear overwhelmingly likely to claim the two general election spots.

Source: NBC News / AP

Data as of Jun 3, 2026CSV

The Candidates: Two Radically Different Resumes

Steve Hilton is a British-born former senior adviser to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron who moved to California's Bay Area and became a Fox News host, running The Next Revolution from 2017 to 2023 before remaining as a network contributor [4]. He has never held elected office. He co-founded the crowdfunding platform Crowdpac but resigned as CEO in 2018 [4]. On April 21, 2025, he launched his gubernatorial campaign; on April 6, 2026, he received Donald Trump's endorsement [5].

Xavier Becerra was born and raised in Sacramento, the son of Mexican immigrants, and holds a law degree from Stanford [6]. He served 24 years in the U.S. House of Representatives, was appointed California Attorney General by Governor Jerry Brown in 2017 — becoming the first Latino to hold that office — and won election in his own right in 2018 [6]. President Biden nominated him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in December 2020, where he served until January 2025 [7]. He declared his gubernatorial candidacy on April 2, 2025 [6].

The Votes Still Being Counted

California's ballot-counting process is notoriously slow. Vote-by-mail, provisional, and conditional ballots will continue to be processed throughout the canvass period [3]. The outstanding ballots tend to skew toward later-arriving mail-in votes, which in California historically lean Democratic. In Alameda County, for instance, with 43.7% reported, Becerra held 29.7% and Steyer 27.5%, while Hilton trailed at 17.1% [1].

The counties with the most ballots still outstanding — Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange — represent a mix of political leanings. L.A. County is heavily Democratic, San Diego is competitive, and Orange County has trended blue in recent cycles but retains a significant Republican base. If late-counted ballots follow typical patterns, Becerra's percentage could climb relative to Hilton's in the final certified results, though both candidates' positions in the top two appear secure.

Follow the Money: A Record-Shattering Primary

This primary became the most expensive gubernatorial campaign in California history, and the money flows reveal the coalitions each candidate assembled [8].

Tom Steyer's $213 million self-funded campaign dwarfed all competitors, exceeding Republican Meg Whitman's $94 million primary spend in 2010 [8]. Despite that investment, Steyer finished third — a result that underscores the limits of personal wealth in a fragmented field.

Hilton's $4.1 million fundraising haul led all non-self-funding candidates in what CalMatters described as a "tepid fundraising cycle" [9]. His campaign relied on grassroots conservative enthusiasm and the Trump endorsement rather than major institutional donors.

Becerra's campaign donations started slowly — just over $500,000 in the first quarter of 2025 — but accelerated sharply after Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out on April 12, bringing in at least $2.3 million [9]. More significant were the outside groups backing him: $13 million in PAC expenditures, with major corporate contributions including $500,000 each from Chevron, McDonald's, DaVita, and California Resources Corp., plus roughly $1 million apiece from Meta and Airbnb [8].

Outside groups reported $79 million in total spending — more than double the outside spending through the November 2018 general election [8]. The most active single entity, "California Is Not For Sale," funded by the state Realtors association, the California Chamber of Commerce, PG&E, and the electrical workers' union, spent $32 million opposing Steyer [8].

Source: CalMatters

Data as of May 28, 2026CSV

The Registration Gap: Can a Republican Win California?

California has not elected a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger won reelection in 2006. The structural math since then has only gotten worse for the GOP.

As of April 2026, California had 10.38 million registered Democrats (44.92%), 5.78 million registered Republicans (25.03%), 5.26 million voters with no party preference (22.76%), and 1.69 million in other parties (7.30%) [10]. Democrats hold a nearly 4.6-million-voter registration advantage.

Source: California Secretary of State

Data as of Apr 3, 2026CSV

Since 2022, the Democratic registration share has slipped from 46.75% to 44.92%, while Republican registration has ticked up from 23.92% to 25.03% [10]. Total registration increased from 22 million to 23.1 million, with the share of eligible Californians registered rising to 84.83% [10]. These shifts are marginal — not the kind of realignment that rewrites statewide math.

The demographic composition of the likely electorate adds another layer. Whites make up 36% of California's adult population but 50% of likely voters. Latinos are 38% of adults but only 29% of likely voters. Asian Americans are 16% of adults and 12% of likely voters [11]. Hilton's path to victory would require consolidating nearly all Republican voters, winning a majority of no-party-preference voters, and peeling off a meaningful share of conservative and moderate Democrats — particularly Latino voters frustrated by housing costs and Democratic governance.

Schwarzenegger managed a version of this coalition in 2003 and 2006, but he ran as an explicitly moderate Republican who supported environmental regulation and gun control. Hilton, by contrast, carries a Trump endorsement, pitches expanded oil production, and has built his media brand on Fox News — a profile that complicates outreach to the crossover voters he would need.

The Third-Place Finishers and Where Their Voters Go

Steyer's 19.6% represents the race's most consequential pool of persuadable voters. As a progressive Democrat who ran on climate action, his supporters are far more likely to migrate to Becerra than to Hilton in November [1]. Former Rep. Katie Porter, at roughly 4.5%, and state Superintendent Tony Thurmond, at approximately 3.2%, drew from similar progressive and institutional Democratic bases [1].

Chad Bianco's 11% represents a law-enforcement-aligned conservative bloc that will overwhelmingly support Hilton [1]. Combined, the two Republicans captured roughly 38.7% of the early vote, while Democratic candidates collectively held approximately 53% — a ratio that mirrors the broader registration gap.

Under California's top-two system, there was a theoretical scenario Democrats feared: if the Democratic vote had splintered more evenly among Becerra, Steyer, Porter, and Thurmond while Republicans consolidated behind Hilton, a second Republican could have claimed the number-two spot, producing a Republican-vs.-Republican general election. That scenario did not materialize. Becerra's consolidation of moderate Democratic support after Swalwell's exit and other dropouts proved sufficient to secure his position.

Becerra's Record: Housing, Homelessness, and the Establishment Question

Becerra's supporters point to a long record of public service and a willingness to fight — he sued the Trump administration 122 times as Attorney General on issues ranging from the Affordable Care Act to immigration enforcement [6]. At HHS, he chaired the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and led federal health policy through the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic [12].

But the uncomfortable question for Becerra is one of outcomes. California is home to nearly 25% of America's homeless population despite representing only 11% of the U.S. population [13]. State homelessness spending peaked at $6.9 billion in fiscal year 2022-23 and has since dropped sharply to $1.5 billion in 2025-26 [14]. During Becerra's time at HHS, the federal government's annual Point-in-Time Count showed national homelessness reaching record levels.

Becerra's campaign has responded with specificity: he has promised to declare a state of emergency over California's housing shortage as one of his first actions as governor, with a goal of building 1.5 to 2 million new homes during a first term — a rate that would far exceed the roughly 106,000-per-year average under Newsom [13]. He has pledged to "unstick" 40,000 homes currently in permitting limbo and establish the state's first continuous funding stream for homelessness prevention, including rental assistance [13].

"I believe that someone who's sleeping outside shouldn't be treated as a criminal," Becerra told CalMatters, while avoiding an explicit endorsement of arresting those who refuse available shelter [13].

Critics, including Hilton, argue that another Democrat from the party's establishment wing is unlikely to produce different outcomes after more than a decade of unified Democratic control in Sacramento. The counterargument from Becerra allies is that his federal experience gives him tools — particularly in coordinating federal and state resources — that previous governors lacked, and that his specific housing targets represent a concrete break from the Newsom era's more diffuse approach.

Hilton's Platform: "Califordable" and Its Costs

Hilton's campaign centers on a brand he calls "Califordable" [15]. The headline proposals: no state income tax on the first $100,000 of earnings, paired with a 7.5% flat tax above that threshold; $3-a-gallon gasoline through expanded oil production and refinery capacity; electric bills cut in half; and reduced small-business taxes [15].

On housing, Hilton has criticized restrictions on building outside existing urban areas and proposed allowing new developments of smaller, more affordable homes on city outskirts [15]. On homelessness and crime, he has pledged to "enforce the law" on open-air drug markets, shoplifting, and encampments, with full support for law enforcement [15].

His "Cal DOGE" initiative — modeled after the federal Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk at the start of Trump's second term — claims to have identified $250 billion in "corruption, fraud and waste" in state government [16]. The proposal includes cuts to the state's energy regulators, limiting CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) lawsuits, and capping builder fees [16].

The questions Hilton has not fully answered: how many state jobs would his proposals eliminate, and what would the economic impact be on communities — particularly Sacramento, where state government is the dominant employer? Hilton's campaign has framed these as cuts to "waste and bureaucracy" rather than providing specific workforce reduction numbers [16]. Historical comparisons to state-level austerity experiments — Kansas's tax cuts under Governor Sam Brownback in 2012, for example — suggest that aggressive revenue reductions without commensurate spending specificity can produce budget shortfalls rather than the promised growth [17].

The Celebrity Candidate Question

Hilton fits a recognizable archetype: the media personality who translates name recognition and communication skills into a political campaign. The track record of such candidates in major-state primaries is mixed.

Schwarzenegger remains the clearest success case, winning the 2003 recall and 2006 reelection. But Schwarzenegger ran in a unique recall environment, positioned himself as a centrist, and already had crossover appeal from decades of bipartisan Hollywood celebrity. Other media-to-politics crossovers have fared less well in general elections: Republican Caitlyn Jenner received 1.1% in the 2021 California recall, and conservative commentator Larry Elder, while leading the replacement field in that recall, lost the overall recall question by a wide margin.

California's top-two primary system structurally advantages candidates who can consolidate a minority partisan base. In a crowded field, 27.7% is enough to finish first. In a two-person general election, it is not. Hilton's challenge is that the system that helped him advance is the same system that guarantees he will face a single Democratic opponent in November — concentrating the opposition rather than splitting it.

What Happens Next

The vote count will continue for weeks. Final certification is due July 10. The general election is November 3, 2026.

Both campaigns are already repositioning. Becerra, who told supporters on election night that "the underdog stayed in the fight," will seek to consolidate the progressive wing behind him — no small task given that Steyer's $213 million campaign generated real enthusiasm among climate-focused and younger voters [2]. Hilton, who declared "change is coming to California, and it's long overdue," will attempt to broaden his coalition beyond the conservative base while keeping Trump's endorsement central to his fundraising apparatus [2].

The structural math favors Becerra. But the animating issue — that Californians are frustrated by housing costs, homelessness, and the cost of living under prolonged Democratic governance — gives Hilton a message, if not yet the coalition, to compete. Whether frustration translates to a willingness to cross party lines in sufficient numbers is the question that will define this race through November.

The contest was marked by voter anger over affordability, and no candidate managed to dominate the field despite months of campaigning [3]. That discontent is real, bipartisan, and unlikely to dissipate before November. The question is whether it serves as a catalyst for the kind of partisan realignment California hasn't seen in 20 years — or whether, as in every gubernatorial race since 2010, the state's Democratic registration advantage proves insurmountable.