RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. — As Republicans vie for their best shot to win the California governor’s office in two decades, the fight between the most prominent candidates to win over the party of President Trump has switched from subdued to vicious.
Conservative commentator Steve Hilton, at their first one-on-one debate in Rancho Mirage earlier this month, accused rival Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco of coddling illegal immigrants and called him “wishy-washy.” The law enforcement chief called Hilton, a British immigrant, a “fraud” and heartless for denying others the same pathway to U.S. citizenship he received.
“What an outrageous and offensive insult that Chad just made to every legal immigrant in this state and in this country,” Hilton fumed.
The heated exchange took place days before the California Republican Party weighs making an endorsement in the 2026 race for California governor. Hundreds of party delegates will gather in San Diego this weekend to decide, though it’s unclear if either candidate will be able to win the 60% vote threshold to receive the official party nod.
Most polls have shown the two Republicans as the top candidates in the race, despite registered Democratic voters outnumbering Republicans nearly 2-to-1 in California.
Bianco and Hilton are competing against eight heavyweight Democrats who are splintering their party’s votes in the election to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom. Under California’s unique primary system, the two candidates who receive the most votes in the primary will move on to the November general election, regardless of party affiliation.
The prospect has alarmed state Democratic leaders, who unsuccessfully urged struggling candidates to drop out to avoid their party being shut out of the November election.
Still, a lot can happen before the June 2 primary to stir up the race. President Trump endorsed Hilton late Sunday, which could significantly influence the state’s GOP voters. More than 6 million Californians voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election, though he was trounced by Vice President Kamala Harris, one of the state’s top Democrats.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican candidate for governor, and Kate Monroe, chief executive of VETCOMM, talk with a woman lying on the sidewalk on Skid Row in Los Angeles in January.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
On the campaign trail, Bianco and Hilton have frequently raised the prospect of a Republican being elected governor as the result of failed Democratic rule of the nation’s most populous state and the world’s fourth-largest economy.
“For the first time in probably our lifetimes, really since Ronald Reagan … every legitimate poll has either shown me or Steve Hilton at the top two Republicans at the top of [every] statewide poll,” for the last six months, Bianco recently told about 100 attendees at a Valley Unity Republican Women luncheon at the Woodland Hills County Club overlooking verdant fairways.
Hilton, who has participated in more gubernatorial forums and debates than Bianco, said polling that shows him besting Democratic rivals proves that Californians are fed up with 15 years of one-party rule.
“I tell you right now, there is not a single one of them who represents to the slightest degree the change we need in California,” he told a few hundred people at Big Bear’s Calvary Chapel. “We are going to do it this year.”
From afar, Bianco appears to be out of central casting for a GOP candidate for governor: an armed lawman, with a salt-and-pepper mustache and close-cropped hair who has dedicated his life to protecting the vulnerable and locking up criminals.
Bianco, echoing independent pollsters as well as political strategists in both parties, said having “Riverside County Sheriff” next to his name on the official state ballot will be a major boon to his campaign.
“I will tell you this, if we took the names and the party off of the ballot and simply went up with resume — we made you all read a resume of who you’re going to put as your next governor — I would win this election 100% to nothing,” Bianco told the GOP women’s group.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton greets a member of the Big Bear Valley Republican Assembly before speaking at a town hall at Calvary Chapel in Big Bear in March.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
But Bianco’s badge hasn’t shielded him from Hilton’s blistering attacks about the sheriff’s past statements about immigration, pandemic mask mandates and Black Lives Matter protests — which is disqualifying for some GOP voters.
Bianco opposes “sanctuary city” laws, calls for the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and says the border must be secured. But he has also supported a pathway to citizenship for lawful, working undocumented people and told his constituents that his deputies were not taking part in ICE raids.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bianco ordered county residents to wear masks or face punishment, though he later pushed back at Newsom’s stay-at-home orders.
That same year, he and his deputies were photographed kneeling and speaking with protesters in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, an action he has since recast as praying.
Bianco’s wife, Denise, on Thursday accused Hilton of endangering her husband by sending mailers to voters that featured Bianco’s face surrounded by circles that she described as a “bullseye target.”
“We have all watched way too much political violence directed at law enforcement officers in recent years. I never imagined it would come from a political candidate directed at my husband,” she said in an Instagram post. “Steve, why on God’s earth would you think it’s acceptable to put my husband’s face, a dedicated sheriff, on a shooting target?”
Election security has also highlighted differences in the candidates’ views.
Hilton and Bianco echoed Trump’s call to make GOP voter turnout “too big to rig.” But their statements about alleged malfeasance differed.
Hilton decried “total corruption in the voting system in California.”
“I’ve said for the longest possible time that I don’t understand why we can’t do things the way that most places do it, which is vote on one day, count on one day, get the results on one day,” he said.
Asked by a voter about electoral fraud in California in March, Bianco replied that he was confident that law enforcement in California ensures that such fraud is “not happening here,” while agreeing that such “cheating” occurred in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania in the 2020 election.
But the same month, he seized more than 650,000 ballots from the November election as part of an investigation to determine if they were fraudulently counted.
Bianco put the investigation on hold shortly before the California Supreme Court halted it pending further review.
California voters have not elected a Republican as governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger won reelection in 2006. Two Republicans on the ballot in the June 2 primary election hope to change that.
(Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
Hilton has sought to capitalize on these positions, labeling Bianco the “shifty sheriff,” an attack that resonates with some voters.
“The man lies. The man is not honest about taking a knee to BLM, which is unacceptable,” said Agnes Gibboney, 71, of Rancho Cucamonga. “And coming up with three, four different excuses is unacceptable. And then to get mad at the voters for asking the question.”
Bianco has labeled Hilton as a shape-shifting opportunist, pointing to him championing a climate change agenda while advising British Prime Minister David Cameron and expressing support for views expressed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2016 presidential election, and posting a picture of Hilton hugging Newsom on social media.
“Steve is a fraud. He’s a liar, and I’m not going to sit by and just let him do it anymore,” Bianco said after the Rancho Mirage debate. “When he starts attacking me, he starts attacking my deputies, my profession, I’m not gonna let it happen anymore.”
“He remade himself just for this governor election, and everyone is starting to see through it,” Bianco said.
The son of Hungarians who emigrated to Britain, Hilton served as an advisor to Cameron before becoming an American citizen. At campaign events, supporters have gifted Hilton with a Kézimunka, a traditional Hungarian embroidered cloth, which was stitched with a heart, as well as stars-and-stripes bathing trunks.
“My parents are Hungarian refugees from communism,” Hilton said. “I am fighting to make sure that this state that I love does not turn into the country that I left …. I have renounced my U.K. citizenship. I’m all in for California and America.”
Of the two candidates, Hilton has been more publicly visible, and benefits from GOP voters seeing him speak on Fox News for several years.
Both men argue one-party Democratic rule of California has destroyed a state once viewed as the epitome of the American dream.
Hilton describes state leaders as “far-left lunatics.” They’ve ruined the most amazing, the most beautiful place on earth,” and tweaked a popular Texas slight about someone being all hat and no cattle to describe Newsom.
“He’s all hair, nothing there. Don’t you think it’s time in California we have a governor with less hair?” said Hilton, who sports a smooth crown.
Bianco calls the state’s Democratic leaders “far-left psychopaths” who have enacted policies, taxes and fees that are forcing Californians to flee the state.
“We all know government has completely failed and we’re ready to take our state back,” he said, later adding, “They don’t want our lives better. I do …. No one leaves California because they want to. It’s government agenda and policy that is harming California and making it bad.”
Most of the candidates’ pledges, such as tackling unaffordability, reducing gas prices, increasing capacity in state prisons, protecting gun owners’ rights and keeping trans athletes out of girls’ locker rooms, are nearly identical.
They both promise to slash California’s vehicle registration fees, a proposal that echoes former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pledge to repeal the car tax during the 2003 recall election that was immortalized by his campaign dropping a wrecking ball on an Oldsmobile in Costa Mesa.
Schwarzenegger was elected governor soon after.
No candidate in either party can match Schwarzenegger’s global appeal, or voters’ familiarity with the state’s most recent Democratic governors — including Jerry Brown, the scion of a storied political family — or Newsom’s charisma, added GOP strategist Rob Stutzman, a former Schwarzenegger advisor who is not aligned with any candidate in the 2026 race.
“Voters are finding this to be an uninspiring list of candidates. And in fact, the impressive list would be those that chose not to run, right?” he said, referring to Harris, Sen. Alex Padilla and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta. “So it’s not a surprise that there isn’t much interest.”
Though Hilton and Bianco were previously cordial in person, such as when they crossed paths at September’s state GOP convention, their public criticism of each other has ratcheted up in recent weeks, which could sway the many undecided GOP voters in the race.
“My main contention is looking to see whether or not they’re gonna follow the will of the Lord. So I’m paying attention to what they say and what they do,” said retired Air Force IT specialist David Solomon, 42, after seeing Hilton speak in Big Bear. “It really just comes down to who’s gonna be able to enact their plan.”
Jane Price, a 77-year-old Sherman Oaks resident, said she worried that Republicans failing to unite behind a candidate would give Democrats an edge in the governor’s race.
“We don’t want to split, right? That’s a problem,” the charter member of the woman’s GOP group said after seeing Bianco speak. “The state of California is at stake. We were thriving here in California. But now, it has been nothing but a downhill slide. We need people who appreciate what California is all about.”