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Our verdict

an endorsement, with eyes open

Election Day is November 3. Every active registered voter in California was mailed a ballot, with counties sending them out by October 5; you can register and vote the same day through Election Day. This is the whole race — the platforms, the records, the worst claims against each man, and what the sources actually show. Read the research, and decide which flaw you can live with.

How California got here

For the first time in sixteen years, California is choosing a direction instead of ratifying one. Gavin Newsom, governor since 2019, is barred by term limits from running again, and the seat is open. Democrats have held every statewide office in California since 2011, and no Republican has won the governorship since Arnold Schwarzenegger's re-election in 2006.

California's top-two primary put 61 names on a June 2 ballot and sent the two survivors to November. Xavier Becerra finished first with 28.0% — 2.59 million votes. Steve Hilton finished second with 24.6% — 2.28 million. Between them in spirit, if not on the November ballot, stood billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer at 22.8%, who nearly pushed Hilton out of the runoff. Add the primary up by party and the structure of this race is plain: Democratic candidates took 62.3% of the vote, Republicans 36.2%.

The raters reflect that math. The Cook Political Report calls the race Solid D; Inside Elections calls it Solid Democrat. The polling average in mid-October has Becerra at 59.3% and Hilton at 35.1% — Emerson's October survey had it 60 to 33. The governor of California signs or vetoes every state law, appoints judges and agency heads, and proposes a budget of $321.1 billion in state funds for 39 million people. This is an uphill race for the Republican, and this article will not pretend otherwise. Uphill is not the same as unexamined — and neither man has been examined the way we're about to examine them.

Why this race matters: sixteen years, one ledger

The argument in California is not really between two men. It is between two readings of the same sixteen years.

On one side: the world's fourth-largest economy, a state that runs budget surpluses in good years, sets national policy on vehicles and privacy, and treats its government as an instrument that can be aimed at problems. On the other: the state auditor's own findings. In April 2024, the California State Auditor reported that the state spent roughly $24 billion on homelessness programs over five fiscal years — 2018–19 through 2022–23 — while the California Interagency Council on Homelessness, the body created to coordinate the work, had not tracked spending or outcomes since 2021. For three of the five programs the auditor examined closely, cost-effectiveness could not be determined at all, because the results were never collected. Over the same span, California's homeless population rose — past 180,000 people, roughly 30% of the nation's total, the largest of any state. The Legislative Analyst's Office records that the 2025–26 budget spends $321.1 billion in state funds, $228.4 billion of it from the General Fund. In 2015–16, those figures were $161.1 billion and $115.4 billion. California's government spends almost exactly twice what it spent a decade ago. Its population is essentially unchanged — about 39.4 million people then and now.

That doubling is the fact of this election. Becerra's task is to convince voters the doubling bought something. Hilton's task is to convince them it didn't — and that he, a man who has never run anything larger than a television program and a policy shop, can run the largest state government in America.

Xavier Becerra (Democratic)

His platform: Continuity, defended as compassion. Becerra — Sacramento-born, a state assemblyman, then 24 years in Congress, California attorney general from 2017 to 2021, and President Biden's secretary of Health and Human Services — campaigns as "California's Health Care Governor": strengthen Medi-Cal, lower drug prices, and, in his campaign's own words, "build toward a universal single-payer system that puts people before profits." On affordability, he would declare a state of emergency to freeze utility rates and home-insurance premiums, fight "price gouging," and extend the higher tax rate on high earners to pay for schools — though he has declined to back a proposed one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires. On housing, he would finance roughly 40,000 units he describes as shovel-ready, expand down-payment assistance, and give builders incentives. On homelessness, his emphasis is prevention and accountability: keep people housed before they fall, clear encampments while connecting people to shelter and treatment, and, of providers who take state money, "if you got money and you didn't do anything, we'll have to close you down." And over everything, the fight with Washington: his campaign's signature boast is that as attorney general he faced Donald Trump in court and won — "122 times in fact."

The record — and the claims tested:

The 122 lawsuits. Becerra's attorney general tenure filed roughly 120 lawsuits against the first Trump administration; his campaign counts 122 victories. Even taking the campaign's number, notice what it measures: not houses built, not costs lowered, not encampments cleared — litigation, the one output Sacramento produces without limit. As HHS secretary he ran the federal health bureaucracy through the pandemic's second half and defended the Affordable Care Act. His governing record is a record of defending programs. California's live question is whether its programs work, and on that question his résumé is silent.

Single-payer, stated plainly. Most candidates bury their endgame. Becerra prints his: a universal single-payer system for 39 million people, run by the state whose auditor cannot currently say what its homelessness billions achieved. We report this not as an attack but as his platform, in his campaign's words. Voters are entitled to weigh it as written.

The scandal in his own house. This one is not allegation; it is three guilty pleas. Dana Williamson — a former Becerra campaign adviser who later served as Governor Newsom's chief of staff — pleaded guilty in May 2026 to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, false statements, and a false tax filing. Sean McCluskie, Becerra's longtime chief of staff, and lobbyist Greg Campbell also pleaded guilty. Prosecutors say the scheme siphoned roughly $225,000 from a dormant Becerra campaign account between 2022 and 2024, in increments of $7,500 to $10,000, routed through sham consulting arrangements to pay McCluskie's wife for a no-show job. Prosecutors have said Becerra was deceived and is not implicated, and Becerra says the record confirms he did nothing wrong. We believe the prosecutors: there is no evidence Becerra took a dollar or knew. But sit with the shape of it. A man asking to administer a $321 billion state did not notice $225,000 leaving his own campaign account, in small pieces, for two years, taken by the two people closest to him. Hilton has demanded the FBI re-interview him under oath. That demand is politics. The underlying fact pattern is not: it is a judgment-and-oversight failure in the only organization Becerra has personally run lately — his own campaign.

The moderation tells — give them their weight. Becerra is not running as a maximalist. He has backed away from traditional environmental positions as fuel prices rose, says he is open to revising the state's climate goals to keep fuel affordable, and refused the billionaire wealth tax his party's left wanted. In the June primary he won just 28% of the vote in a field his party dominated — he is the establishment's choice more than the electorate's enthusiasm. His emergency rate freeze is a genuine attempt to speak to the cost of living. Freezing prices by emergency declaration, however, is the economics of decree: it treats the invoice as the disease, in a state whose prices are high because supply — of homes, energy, and insurance capacity — has been regulated thin.

The flaw, plainly: Becerra's platform is the governing philosophy of the last sixteen years, stated honestly: government as the answer, litigation as the method, single-payer as the destination. His personal flaw compounds it: the fraud happened in his house, under his name, undetected by him. For voters who hold that California's problem is too much government doing too many things badly, he is not a safer pair of hands. He is the pair of hands that has been on the wheel.

Steve Hilton (Republican)

His platform, in his own terms: "Califordable." Hilton — British-born, the son of Hungarian immigrants, a former director of strategy to Prime Minister David Cameron and a Fox News host, now an American citizen running with President Trump's endorsement — proposes the sharpest tax cut in California history: no state income tax on the first $150,000 of earnings, a flat rate above that (he has described 7.5% in earlier versions of the plan). Gas at $3 a gallon, achieved by halving the gas tax, suspending environmental regulations, and expanding production. Electric bills cut in half. A construction boom aimed outward — ten new cities, capped government fees on new homes, an end to enforcing state housing-production mandates on communities that don't want them. Kill the high-speed rail project. An "Operation Zero Waste" audit of the budget. On homelessness: enforce the law — "it is illegal to live and camp on the streets" — paired with mental-health and addiction treatment and hard accountability for spending. On immigration, a distinction he draws as an immigrant himself: legal immigration, yes; obstruction of federal law, no — "all the laws must be peacefully enforced." Every student reading by third grade. No state franchise tax on small businesses.

The worst claims — and the record:

Claim: The state budget has "more than doubled in the last 10 years." This is the rare campaign superlative that survives the ledger — with one refinement. Per the Legislative Analyst's Office, total state spending was $161.1 billion in 2015–16 and $321.1 billion in 2025–26: a doubling, essentially exact. General Fund spending rose from $115.4 billion to $228.4 billion — the same story. "More than" is a small overstatement, and federal pass-through money muddies any total you pick. The substance — Californians pay for a government twice the size of a decade ago, with a flat population and worse headline outcomes on homelessness and housing — is true, and Becerra's campaign has not seriously contested it.

Claim: His campaign's "CalDOGE" operation has found $425 billion in fraud over five years. This one does not survive. The $425 billion figure comes from Hilton's own campaign project, not from the State Auditor, the LAO, or any body that has published transaction-level evidence; reporting on the claim notes that neither side has produced itemized ledgers or audit findings to settle it. California does not need invented numbers — the auditor's real findings, $24 billion spent with outcomes untracked, are damning enough. A candidate running on honesty about waste should not pad the ledger, and we flag it in exactly the same spirit we flag the other side's numbers.

Claim: $3 gas. Hilton's own event sold gas at $3 a gallon to make the point. The point is a promise, and the arithmetic is hard. California's average price was $6.11 a gallon in mid-October, per AAA — the nation's highest. State taxes and climate-program costs account for a large share of the premium over other states, and cutting them is real money. But $3 requires closing a gap of more than three dollars, deeper than every state levy combined, in a market that also prices refinery capacity and a special fuel blend. File $3 the way we filed Blakeman's utility promise in New York: direction sound, number not deliverable on a governor's signature alone — and in California, tax changes need a Legislature that is two-thirds Democratic.

The capability question. Hilton has never held elected office or run a large organization. His career is advising (Cameron's Downing Street), media (Fox News), and a tech startup. His answer — that Sacramento's insiders are the problem and an outsider is the fix — is an argument, not a record, and his program needs the votes of the very supermajority he is running against. It is also true, and worth saying in a state that hasn't tried it since Schwarzenegger: the last Republican governor of California was also an outsider with no governing record, elected because voters decided experience at failing was not a qualification.

The flaw, plainly: Hilton's values point the way California's conservatives have pointed for a generation — lower taxes, enforced laws, building things, spending audited. His flaw is capability and arithmetic: no executive record, a legislature that will not follow him, and headline numbers — $3 gas, $425 billion in fraud — that outrun his own evidence. He is asking voters to buy a direction from a man who has not proven he can drive.

The verdict: an endorsement, with eyes open

Two men. Two different flaws.

Becerra's flaw is values compounded by oversight: he believes in the program that produced the last sixteen years, aims openly at single-payer, and presided unknowingly over a fraud run out of his own campaign account by his own closest aides.

Hilton's flaw is capability: the right direction, an unproven driver, and a salesman’s habit of rounding his best numbers up.

Neither flaw is small, and we erase neither. But weigh them for what they are. Hilton's is a risk about a man who has not governed. Becerra's is a record — not his alone, but the record of the governing philosophy he is running to continue, and he is its named continuity: a state budget doubled from $161 billion to $321 billion in a decade while the population stood still; roughly $24 billion spent on homelessness with the outcomes untracked since 2021, per the State Auditor; and, in the one organization he personally ran, $225,000 siphoned out from under him by the people closest to him, over two years, without his noticing. Sixteen years is not a promise to be evaluated. It is proof — of a direction that does not work and of leadership that does not watch. That is proven inability to lead.

Flawed beats proven inability to lead. Hilton offers a fight against that record, with worse arithmetic and no governing résumé; Becerra offers four more years of it, with better manners. LiberalMind endorses Steve Hilton. Vote early. Research your candidates. And in California, the research points one way.

Sources

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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