Steve Hilton: The Choice Between Continuity or Change
Restoring political balance in Sacramento is the first step to reviving the California Dream
Image credit: Ruth Finch/CapRadio, Jasper Langley-Hawthorne
We are quickly approaching the November general election matchup between Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton, but the real choice on the ballot is continuity or change. Fulfilling our civic duty requires us to look beyond partisan loyalty and instead confront the real outcomes produced by 15 years of single-party control of the governor’s mansion and 30 years of control of the state legislature. Steve Hilton represents the shift our state urgently needs. When one party holds total control for long enough ideological dogma consistently overrules individual realities. Ideology replaces pragmatism, interest groups infiltrate the regulatory sphere, and public policy caters to party insiders rather than the everyday citizen. The clearest evidence of this is the issue that defines this election: the cost of living. It is no coincidence that–according to a recent Public Policy Institute of California poll — roughly half of all California voters cite cost of living, housing, and inflation as the single most urgent issue facing the state — ranking it far above any other policy issue heading into November.
According to the California Association of Realtors, the median priced single family home in California currently sits just below $850,000, nearly double the national median. Some may cite California’s higher minimum wage in an attempt to minimize this policy failure, but it is impossible to ignore the decades of regulatory accumulation that factor into California’s unaffordable homes.
California’s overregulation prevents the construction of more housing which is the only real solution to the state’s supply and demand problem. The primary driver of this is CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act). While CEQA’s stated intention–to maintain California’s environmental quality–sounds honorable, in practice, the legislation has failed Californians. Roughly 60 percent of lawsuits towards private developments allowed under the act were targeted at residential projects. Not to mention, exactly 70 percent of these lawsuits in Southern California were targeted at residential developments within half a mile of public transportation. Critics often blame NIMBY groups and environmental activists for abusing the law, but those groups are simply taking advantage of a broken system. The real issue is a political monopoly in Sacramento that lacks the accountability and political will to make necessary changes to CEQA — likely because lawmakers rely on those same special interest groups for campaign contributions. As a result, CEQA abuse actively drives up rent, restricts home ownership, and obstructs the very housing and climate priorities it was meant to serve.
The housing crisis is only one example among many. Right now, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, California’s average residential electricity rate is just under 35 cents per kWh — over 85 percent higher than the national average. This is largely due to California’s greenhouse gas mandates and procurement rules. To be clear: The issue is not green energy itself, but the top-down mandates used to enforce it. Currently, the legislative guidelines that dictate California’s Renewables Portfolio Standard do not treat all sources of zero-carbon energy equally. Any hydroelectric facility producing over 30 megawatts is arbitrarily classified as a “large hydro” and excluded from counting toward the state's 60 percent clean energy quota. This means zero-emmissions power already being generated right here in California — by the Shasta Dam, Oroville Dam, Folsom Dam, and others — doesn’t count toward the state’s clean energy targets, so utility companies are required to build new solar and wind capacity on top of it. Consumers are paying twice: once for hydroelectric power that’s already flowing — but doesn't count — and again for new generation that the RPS rules make mandatory.
Yet another factor that puts California in the top 3 most expensive states to live is gas prices. As of September 14th of this year, Californians pay, on average, about $5.90 per gallon of gas, as compared to the national average of about $4.45. While some may point to global conflicts as the broad cause of temporarily increased prices, one thing is impossible to ignore: on July 1st, 2026, California automatically increased its fuel excise tax to 63.4 cents per gallon. Once state sales tax, underground storage fees, and mandatory compliance costs from Cap-and-Trade and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard are tacked on, California’s tax and fee burden is estimated to be at least 73 cents per gallon — the highest in the nation. On top of that, in-state refineraries are leaving as a result of overregulation and 75 percent of our crude oil is being imported, driving the price at the pump even higher.
The cost of living is hollowing out California’s middle class. At the same time, the departure of the oil industry from California–a direct result of single-party energy regulations–is devastating working families and communities by wiping out thousands of high-wage blue collar jobs. A 2023 study by UC Irvine and the UC Berkeley Labor Center tracking the closure of the Marathon refinery in Martinez found that a year after being laid off, over 25 percent remained unemployed, and those that could find jobs suffered an average pay cut of $12 an hour. When you factor in the economic assessment from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, losing thousands of refinery jobs pulls the rug from underneath tens of thousands of local contractors, suppliers, and unionized tradesmen who keep California’s industrial backbone running; refining has one of the highest job-multiplier effects in the state.
The systemic degeneration seen in California is not fundamentally an indictment of a single political party or even California itself; it is the predictable outcome of an unopposed political monopoly. Whether the state be deep-blue or deep-red, when one party goes without competitive threat to its power, accountability naturally dissolves and ideas go without compromise or push back leading to economic reality we see in California. Breaking this single-party cycle requires an electorate that is open to change and political diversity, which is the core thesis of Republican Steve Hilton’s campaign.
Born to Hungarian refugees who fled Communism, Hilton’s childhood was marked by hardship. His father tragically died when he was young and he was raised by a single mother who worked in a shoe store to support him, until she remarried to a construction worker. Living in a damp apartment and receiving state benefits, he worked for the success we now know him for. In 2012, he moved to California and became a naturalized U.S. citizen and renounced his original citizenship to fully commit to our state; his love for California comes from the perspective of an immigrant who came to the state for its promise of economic mobility and opportunity. Although we see him on TV and assume he’s removed from reality, his presence didn’t come until after decades of working-class struggle, business building, and raising a family. From this basis, his platform is built on restoring the ladder of opportunity that California’s current regulatory overreach is pulling away from working-class families.
To translate his economic vision into reality, Hilton’s platform directly targets the regulatory levers that are driving up costs for Californians without relying on an opposing legislative supermajority. Critics often claim that a Republican governor would be simply unable to act without the legislature in support, but this ignores the executive power inherent to Sacramento's bureaucratic systems. To address housing, he plans on using executive authority to officially declare California in a housing crisis. Under emergency administrative rules, state-level bureaucracies would streamline building permits, and local agencies penalized for noncompliance. This would lead to more houses being built, directly targeting the root of California’s housing crisis. To lower gas prices to $3 a gallon, he has pledged a day one executive action to eliminate the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) and put a freeze on compliance fees. This alone would provide an immediate 17 to 20 cent drop per gallon according to California Energy Commission price breakdown data, while blocking an impending CARB regulatory hike that will cost Californians up to an estimated 65 cents per gallon by Upenn energy policy researcher Dr. Danny Cullenward. Finally, to lower electricity bills, Hilton proposes to restructure overlapping agencies, freeze mandates, and re-integrate large hydro and nuclear power into baseline zero-carbon quotas. These structural changes directly target the non-generation costs that now dominate consumer bills. In Southern California for example, actual power generation accounts for only about 30 percent of residential utility bills. In places like Silicon Valley, actual power generation is a mere 20 percent of the bill.
By forcing the Legislature to either negotiate or attempt veto-overrides, a Republican governor fundamentally disrupts the legislative status quo of the past 16 years. Standing in contrast to Hilton is Xavier Bacerra, whose candidacy represents the continuity of California’s single-party monopoly. Having spent decades as a career politician in both Washington and Sacramento as a Congressman, state Attorney General, and federal HHS Secretary, Becerra approaches state governance through the lens of national political theatre. Rather than directly confronting the structural and administrative bottlenecks crippling the state, his platform relies heavily on national progressive talking points and top-down price interventions. He proposes temporary and superficial fixes like mandated utility rate freezes, a gimmicky “free power hour,” price-gouging directives, and expanded bureaucracy. Rising to the spotlight through mere rhetorical Trump opposition, Becerra aims to treat California’s affordability crisis with administrative Band-Aids that protect Sacramento’s entrenched regulatory bureaucracy, failing to address the structural causes and offering little long-term solutions for struggling California families.
At the end of the day, California’s path forward comes down to whether we the voters believe that a political monopoly can resolve the very crises its own policies created. Restoring affordability requires more than timely talking points or short-term bureaucratic Band-Aids; it requires a counterweight willing to dismantle overreach and force legislative compromise. On November 3rd, California will have the opportunity to decide whether to double-down on single-party continuity or to take the first step toward rebuilding the California Dream by restoring the political balance that a healthy democracy requires for true accountability.
