After years of leadership failures, California voters may flip the state Republican in 2026. Entrepreneur and author Steve Hilton reveals his road map for saving the state. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.You can find Steve Hilton’s book here: Califailure: Reversing the Ruin of America’s Worst-Run State
Chapter 1: Is California ready to vote Republican in 2026?
A recent poll showed 48% of Californians are considering voting Republican in the next gubernatorial election. In this episode, we speak to entrepreneur and bestselling author Steve Hilton about what went wrong in California and why it's ripe for political change. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Sunday, March 30th, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
Joining us now to discuss the pent-up frustrations fueling the California political shift is entrepreneur, author, and podcast host Steve Hilton. Steve, thanks so much for coming on.
Thank you very much.
Good to be with you. So, Steve, a variety of polls right now are showing that voters are not happy with Democrats, including in deep blue California. Do you think there's a chance a conservative candidate could actually win in 2026 for the governor's race?
Yes, 100%. The poll you're talking about, there's been a couple, actually, in the last few days. One had 50% of Californians open to voting for a Republican candidate for governor. Another one had 48%. And the feeling that we can't go on like this in California has been building now for such a long time.
You saw a real move forward in the right direction, as I would see it, in the elections last year, in November. Ten counties flipped. from blue to red, including major counties like Fresno County in the Central Valley, the fifth biggest city in California. So 10 counties shifting from Democrat to Republican. We actually only don't have that many counties in California. It's 58.
So that's nearly a fifth. That's a big deal. We saw a massive positive vote for Proposition 36. which was the one that, as its supporters, including me, we used to talk about it as making crime illegal again. Prop 36 was undoing the terrible damage of the Prop 47 that Kamala Harris pushed many years back, which basically legalized theft under $950 a day.
You saw defeats for George Gascon, the Soros-backed DA in Los Angeles County, the recall of the mayor in Oakland and the DA there. You saw the defeat of the mayor of San Francisco. So actually, there really is change building.
And all of that was before the terrible wildfire catastrophe in Los Angeles, which really woke people up to the scale of the Democrat extremism and incompetence that has just given us such terrible outcomes on every measure. That's what I've written about In my book, Califalia, which is based on every measure that matters, every single one.
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Chapter 2: What factors are contributing to the political shift in California?
I mean, I used to back in the day in England, I ran restaurants and I love talking to restaurant owners because it's such a good kind of barometer of what's actually going on at the community level. I just don't know how anyone does it in California.
Just the endless regulations and the labor regulations, the minimum wage going up, the harassment from the tax authorities, the environmental regulations I mentioned, the permits and the endless bureaucracy. So I think that is the number one problem. factor that's causing a problem.
And therefore, the number one place to start with reform is just, I mean, a simple way of putting it would be Doge California. Because actually, the scale of government attacks on people just trying to live their lives, run a business, raise a family, at the state level in California, I think is much, much worse, even than what you see with the federal government in Washington.
Because of course, at least at the federal level, you've had Republican administrations alternating with Democrat ones. And so you've had the injection of conservative ideas to a certain extent. That's not happened in Sacramento. It's just been all left, left, left for decades. And so you've got this enormous bloated government and bureaucracy.
I think that's what needs to be addressed, top of the list.
Now, feel free to punt on this, but if you were to make a short list of people who you think get the job done could get into office in California, so both get the job done in terms of turning the state around, but also appeal to a purple to blue electorate, who would you say those candidates are that you'd recommend?
Well, I mean, first of all, we should be clear. I'm strongly considering running for governor myself in 2026. So we'll see. Kamala Harris has said that she's going to make a decision as to whether she would run in 2026 by the end of the summer. And I'm going to make my decision much sooner than that. So I probably should leave it there.
All right. Well, Steve, thank you so much for coming on.
Of course. Great to be with you. Thank you.
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