steve hilton

SACRAMENTO — Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is pressuring his Democratic rival, Xavier Becerra, to participate in a series of debates in the weeks leading up the Nov. 3 election to determine California’s next governor.

In a video shared by his campaign Friday, Hilton listed six debate invitations he has received from cable broadcaster CNN and television news stations around the state, beginning in late September.

“I have accepted every single one of these debates,” said Hilton, standing behind a debate-style podium and gesturing at an empty one beside him with Becerra’s name on it . “This guy, Xavier Becerra, has not accepted any of them. That is completely outrageous. We have to have a debate in this governor’s race. So come on, Xavier.”

The video shows Hilton walk out of frame and return with a cardboard cutout of Becerra, which he plunks behind the second podium while urging the candidate to “man up and show up.”

Becerra’s campaign said he will debate Hilton and blasted the Republican for “chasing” publicity.

“Snowflake Steve is melting faster than he can plan another press conference. While he’s there chasing media and doing Donald Trump’s bidding, Xavier Becerra is building a coalition of Californians ready to elect a governor who won’t bring Trump’s chaos to their front door,” Becerra spokesman Jonathan Underland said in a statement to The Times.

Hilton, a British immigrant who once advised a U.K. prime minister, is endorsed by President Donald Trump and finished second in the June open-party primary election with 24.6% of the vote.

Years of hosting a weekly show on Fox News has made Hilton comfortable on camera and the debate stage; he appeared at-ease during a series of debates earlier this year while lobbing attacks at his Democratic opponents and blaming the party for the state’s long list of problems.

Becerra served as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services during the Biden administration. Before that, he spent four years battling the first Trump administration as California attorney general and more than two decades representing a Los Angeles congressional district.

The longtime Democratic politician became the come-from-behind winner of the primary, finishing with 28.1% of the vote after polling near the middle or bottom of a crowded field for months. His meteoric rise came after another front-runner, former Rep. Eric Swalwell, dropped out after a former staffer and other women accused him of sexual assault and misconduct.

Becerra has kept a relatively low profile since the election with few public appearances.

Hilton has held several campaign events in recent weeks to court independent and Latino voters. As a Trump-endorsed Republican, he faces a steep climb in California, where the president is deeply unpopular and a GOP candidate has not won a statewide election since 2006.

Last week he accused Democratic leaders of “abandoning” residents in Boyle Heights, where flies, rats and the stench of rotting food have lingered weeks after a frozen food warehouse was damaged by fire.

Hilton also recently took out full-page ads in The Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle to make the case to voters who dislike Trump but are dissatisfied with the status quo in California.

With less than two weeks before the primary election, Steve Hilton is leading in the polls for governor, and Los Angeles mayoral hopeful Spencer Pratt is making the city’s progressive class sweat.

If the former Fox News commentator and the reality television bad boy move on to November’s general election, they’ll be running as conservatives in a super-blue state and city where most voters loathe President Trump.

The president endorsed Hilton last month, posting on social media that he “is a truly fine man, one who has watched as this once great State has gone to Hell.” On Wednesday, Trump said he wants Pratt to “do well … I heard he’s a big MAGA person,” before claiming that California elections are rigged and that he would have won the state two years ago “if we had Jesus Christ come down and count the votes” because “I do great with Hispanics.”

Trump was right about one thing — the importance of Latino voters. If Hilton and Pratt are to pull off historic upsets, they’ll need this bloc, which has emerged as a mercurial swing vote in local, state and national elections — but only if stirred into action by anger. And if ever there was a year for Latino anger, 2026 is it.

In recent years, Latinos in California have drifted rightward as they tire of Democratic policies, from L.A. City Hall to Sacramento. Rick Caruso captured a majority of the Latino vote in his unsuccessful bid for L.A. mayor four years ago, and there are more Latino Republicans in the state legislature than ever. Some of the most Latino areas in Southern California saw the biggest shifts toward Trump from 2020 to 2024.

Hilton has held town halls in small, Latino-majority cities across a state that’s about 41% Latino. He frequently appears alongside lieutenant governor candidate Gloria Romero, a pioneer in challenging disaffected Latinos to not always vote Democrat.

Pratt has shared AI-generated salsa and merengue songs that hail him as a savior and uses Spanglish when referring to Mayor Karen Bass as “Basura” — trash. He’s starting to roll out endorsements from Latino business groups and held a block party in South L.A. this week for which a Instagram post tried to draw supporters with the promise of a taco truck.

So if the candidates know that Latinos are essential to their long-shot campaigns, why the hell aren’t they running as far and fast from Trump as possible?

Two years ago, Trump — the most anti-Latino president since James Polk — grabbed a larger share of the Latino electorate than any Republican presidential candidate ever had. GOP leaders predicted that Latinos were finally theirs. But Trump annihilated that advantage by launching his deportation deluge. Now, he has turned off even some die-hard supporters by starting a war in Iran, which has further strained an already shaky economy.

Trump annihilated the advantage the GOP had with Latinos by launching his deportation deluge.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

A New York Times/Siena poll released this month found that only 20% of Latinos support Trump — the lowest during his two terms. A Pew Research Center survey, meanwhile, found that only 66% of Latinos who voted for Trump now approve of him, compared to 81% of white Trump supporters.

Instead of running away, Hilton and Pratt seem fine with hitching their prospects to this political Titanic.

Hilton sought and received Trump’s endorsement, arguing that it’s better to have a friendly relationship with the White House than the antagonistic path California’s elected leaders have chosen.

But most voters want no part of Hilton’s kumbaya. Proposition 50, a direct rebuke of Trump’s gerrymandering efforts in other states, passed with more than two-thirds of the vote last fall. A CalMatters analysis found that Latino-majority precincts voted in bigger numbers for the ballot initiative than for Kamala Harris two years earlier.

Hilton can promise Latinos his “Califordable” agenda and eat all the tacos he wants. But our economic malaise was caused in large part by Trump, who recently said he thinks about Americans’ financial struggles “not even a little bit.”

For Hilton not to decry such cluelessness is almost as ridiculous as his recent boasts that he — the British son of Hungarian refugees who became a U.S. citizen just five years ago — is the candidate of “legal” immigrants. That’s a callback to the days of Proposition 187, when Republicans obsessed with the state’s changing demographics turned off my generation of Latinos by demonizing our undocumented friends and family. The GOP was finally starting to emerge from the political wilderness with Latinos, but Hilton cozying up to Trump will drag the party back into that weak salsa place.

Pratt has been coyer on his thoughts about Trump, but at least he seems to realize that the president might be a liability. The Republican said his party affiliation doesn’t since the mayor’s race is nonpartisan. He has portrayed himself as focused solely on improving Los Angeles, telling CBS News, “I don’t do national politics. I don’t do tribal politics.”

But for someone who says he wants to make L.A. a world-class city, Pratt seems unconcerned about Trump’s assault on us, including last summer’s unchecked immigration raids and temporary occupation by the Marines and the National Guard. Rather than denounce those moves, Pratt has instead denounced L.A.’s sanctuary city ordinance and vowed to work with ICE and other federal immigration agencies to target bad hombres if he becomes mayor, even though a majority of those rounded up in the raids had no criminal history.

It’s as if Pratt’s understanding of Latino L.A. ends with an Erewhon burrito. He continually platforms supporters who portray L.A. as a multicultural wasteland. And when another mayoral candidate, City Councilmember Nithya Raman, posted Trump’s praise of Pratt on social media, he responded with a snippet of himself making a dismissive face during a debate.

But this is nothing to dismiss. For Pratt and Hilton to win, they need Latinos to believe in them. And why would we believe anyone who hitches their wagon, even a little, to Trump?

Out in the high desert city of Barstow stand three Del Tacos that bill themselves as better than their corporate cousins.

They’re the last ones owned and operated by Ed Hackbarth, the founder of the Mexican fast food chain. Two of them feature the word “Original” under their marquees, even though that’s historically inaccurate — Hackbarth opened the first Del Taco in the nearby town of Yermo in 1964.

That hasn’t stopped thousands of devotees — myself included — from trekking to these Cal-Mex shrines to buy memorabilia, gawk at historical photos and gorge on hard shell tacos, burritos and bun tacos that they insist are tastier than the ones at regular Del Tacos.

Among those visitors was Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton.

He stopped by the Original Del Taco off 1st Avenue on Saturday after a town hall with lieutenant governor candidate and Barstow native Gloria Romero. His campaign posted a short video on social media of him standing outside the spot — the oldest operating Del Taco — while holding something that looked like a melted Frisbee.

It was what the place calls a Barstow Taco: ground beef, a few strips of lettuce, a blizzard of bright yellow cheese and a thick red tomato slice on top, all inside a hard taco shell.

Hilton gleefully wielded the crunchy mass with one hand as he pointed to the Original Del Taco sign with the other.

“My Barstow street taco, I’m going to enjoy,” he concluded in an accent from his native England, while giving a thumbs-up. “See you soon.”

He didn’t take a bite.

The social media blowback exploded like a digital Montezuma’s revenge. Haters ridiculed Hilton for visiting a Mexican restaurant in what seemed like an attempt to attract Latino voters — if he was going to do that, why on Earth pick a multimillion-dollar empire founded by a gringo? Others noted that “street tacos” are made with corn tortillas and bought from a food truck or street stall. As the author of a book about the history of Mexican food in the United States, I pointed out that this Del Taco isn’t actually the original, despite what the marquee says.

A humble man would have immediately owned up to his mistakes. Hilton is not a humble man.

To someone who pointed out that “Barstow street taco” is a misnomer, Hilton shot back, “It’s what they call it!” To someone who accused him of supporting bland corporations instead of mom-and-pop shops, Hilton responded that he went there because Romero once worked there.

“Not everything in life has to be turned into a political argument!!” he whined.

Hilton and his followers are treating Del Taco-gate as much ado about nada — and yet it tells voters everything they need to know about the man.

Three hard shell beef tacos from Mitla Cafe, the San Bernardino restaurant that indirectly served as the inspiration for Taco Bell and Del Taco.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

Endorsed by President Trump, he has consistently topped the polls this year, mainly because the many Democratic candidates have split the vote. Hilton has outperformed his main Republican rival, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, by promoting a message of positivity with weak-salsa slogans like “Make California Golden Again” and “Califordable.”

During debates, the former Fox News host has relied on his dry wit and posh tone to make his answers sound stronger than they are. He has especially focused on selling himself to Latinos. Months before announcing his run, we sat down at my wife’s restaurant in Santa Ana as he tried to pick my brain about this crucial swing vote, asking questions I kept telling him I had already answered in my columna.

Hilton is no pendejo. But I have to wonder about his judgment after that Del Taco video.

I have no problem with Hilton campaigning at a Mexican restaurant — it’s a political trope practiced by candidates of all persuasions. It’s unfair to expect a British immigrant who’s been in California only since 2012 to be fully versed in taco culture, as essential to the state as it is. And people shouldn’t bash him for highlighting a California culinary institution that’s one of the better legacy fast food chains out there, even though the Barstow Taco is, well, whatever. (Del Taco’s half-pound bean and cheese burrito, on the other hand, is as silky as a Luther Vandross slow jam.)

A proper hard shell taco is a beautiful thing. Just head out to San Bernardino’s Mitla Cafe, where Hackbarth’s former boss, Glen Bell, learned to make the tacos that turned the two of them into millionaires. But bragging about enjoying a hard shell taco nowadays is like showing up to a street takeover in a horse buggy.

As relevant to modern-day California as tamale pie, hard shell tacos are a reflection of Hilton’s pitch to voters: Instead of offering a bold vision for the future, he offers a return to a past that will never happen again and that wasn’t as great as people make it out to be.

I’ve tried to be as open as possible to Hilton’s campaign. California could benefit from a governor who didn’t emerge from the Sacramento swamp. It might even benefit from a Republican, as in the 2000s when Arnold Schwarzenegger forced Democrats to fight instead of fester.

But Hilton disappoints again and again. He launched his campaign in Huntington Beach, enamored of politicians there who seek to silo their city from the rest of California and humiliate liberals at every opportunity. His embrace of Trump‘s endorsement and refusal to admit that Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election expose him as a toady. Hilton’s ongoing boast that he is the candidate for legal immigrants disqualifies my father, who originally came to this country without papers yet has contributed more to the California experiment (and is now a U.S. citizen) than Hilton ever has.

I’ll even be gracious and excuse Hilton for wrongly calling the Del Taco he visited the original one — the background is admittedly confusing. But his Barstow street taco flub is a stand-in for his campaign, which will flop come November if he doesn’t get his Mexican meals straight.

Hilton told me over the phone that it was his first time eating at a Del Taco (he enjoyed the Barstow Taco off-camera but felt their fish taco was better). He didn’t stop by “for the food, frankly,” but rather for its meaning to Romero and to California entrepreneurship.

“The idea of going to the first location of a business that ends up going big is actually pretty cool,” the former restaurateur said, noting that he had shot a video at the San Bernardino location of the first McDonald’s, which is now a museum.

He didn’t get defensive when I told him the Del Taco wasn’t the first one and that what he ordered wasn’t actually a street taco — “I would say I’m learning, and I love learning and I love food, and exploring places and community through food, and I really would love to learn more, for sure.”

Hilton said he does enjoy “real” tacos but couldn’t name any places he favored. He asked for recommendations. I suggested we go get some tacos with my dad, and he immediately agreed.

“So you can explain to him how you’re the candidate of legal immigrants,” I added. “My dad came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.”

Hilton stayed silent for a second. “OK, let’s have that conversation,” he said.

Dear reader: Where should we eat?

For the third time in as many weeks, the leading candidates for California governor met on the debate stage Tuesday night.

The latest installment was a two-hour session, hosted and carried live from Monterey Park by CNN. The debate marked the first time the candidates appeared before a national audience and came as mail ballots have begun arriving in homes throughout the state.

Columnists Gustavo Arellano, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria took in all 120 minutes, absorbed every zinger — scripted and otherwise — and dutifully observed each parry and thrust. Here’s what they took away:

Arellano: Antonio Villaraigosa finally rises above his gubernatorial rivals. Is it too late?

I wrote my thoughts about this debate while writing my next columna on … something, stopping to pay attention only when issues in my bailiwick like immigration and the failure of the Democratic Party were the subject of discussion. The rest of the time, what the candidates said came off as one giant shout-fest straight out of the studios of the late, great Wally George, with everyone playing true to form.

Chad Bianco raged, Steve Hilton tried to mask his MAGA-ness with his British accent. Katie Porter scolded, Tom Steyer channeled Bernie. Xavier Becerra did his best impression of the old Bunsen character from “The Muppet Show.” Matt Mahan was just … there.

You know who sounded the best? Antonio Villaraigosa.

Anyone who really knows the former L.A. mayor has always seen him as Chicano Prince Hal, someone who doesn’t take himself as seriously as he should. His infidelities effectively killed his political career after his mayoral years; his consulting for the nutritional supplement company Herbalife made Villaraigosa a walking joke among too many Latinos I know.

He has spent the last decade effectively embodying Marlon Brando’s famous quote in “On the Waterfront”: He coulda been a contender. Even his gubernatorial run, announced way before many of his opponents, has mostly had the air of a has-been — that’s one of the reasons why Villaraigosa has polled so low through most of the race to the point he was excluded from many of the early debates.

But that hangdog Villaraigosa was nowhere to be seen tonight.

His wisecracks were kept to a minimum. He stayed mostly within his time limits and didn’t interrupt much. He hammered Hilton over his refusal to admit that President Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and his dismissal of undocumented immigrants.

Villaraigosa especially went hard on his forever frenemy Xavier Becerra on everything from his time as President Biden’s health secretary to how former staffers have been charged with stealing millions of dollars from his campaign funds. (Becerra has not been accused of any wrongdoing.)

When CNN co-moderator Elex Michaelson asked Villaraigosa if he would cancel California’s much-maligned high-speed rail project, the candidate’s emphatic “No” thundered down like a Lebron James dunk. He called out the waste on the multibillion-dollar project, said he revived L.A.’s subway to the sea, and spoke with a passionate gravitas that Becerra could only dream of doing.

“When I make a mistake, I’m accountable,” Villaraigosa said at the end of the debate. This sounded like a candidate who can win — and now he has a month to make a comeback worthy of his political mentor, the late, great Gloria Molina.

Four weeks to prove them wrong, Antonio.

Barabak: It was a no-hitter.

No startling breakthrough. No game-changing moment. No candidate so irresistibly charming he or she knocked the race akimbo and stamped themselves as the far-and-away front-runner in the slowly consolidating contest.

By now, the candidates are plowing well-furrowed ground.

To anyone who has watched each of the debates — and there may not be a great many of those viewers out there — it was all quite familiar.

What is new, and what may have been the draw for those just tuning in, is a sense the race is finally taking a coherent shape, with Xavier Becerra unexpectedly emerging as the candidate to beat.

A month ago, Eric Swalwell was a leading contender in the dozy contest and Becerra was an afterthought, being urged to quit for the sake of his dignity and the good of the Democratic Party. (Fears of a Democratic shutout in the June 2 primary have greatly receded.)

When Swalwell left the race and vacated his congressional seat amid allegations of sexual assault and other potentially illegal misconduct, it was widely assumed much of his support would move to either Steyer or Porter, the two other leading Democratic contenders.

But Becerra has been the clear-cut beneficiary and his new status was evident Tuesday night as he faced repeated attacks. He didn’t particularly dazzle, but that’s not his appeal. It’s his steadiness and seeming unflappability in a time of great upheaval and stress, and that was again evident.

With less than four weeks to election day — and voting already underway — time is waning for another dramatic shake-up like the one that took place between Swalwell’s implosion in April and Becerra’s surge in May.

It seems, however, as though little to nothing will change, with Becerra steadily gaining ground, Hilton consolidating GOP support and the remainder of the field looking for something — or someone — to drastically shake up the race one more time.

Chabria: I don’t know about a winner, but the debate definitely had a biggest loser: Bianco. The Riverside County sheriff, to his credit I guess, didn’t try for a hot second to hide who he really is — a conspiracy-loving immigration hardliner with ties to an extremist group.

Bianco sort-of said he was a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right organization best known for some of its members participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol. He threw out election fraud theories, even suggesting state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta could be involved. He made it clear that undocumented folks are breaking the law by existing in the state.

Maybe some MAGA voters will stick by that shtick, but I’m guessing independents and more moderate Republicans will find Hilton, the Trump-endorsed Republican, even more appealing after Bianco’s ragey ramblings. Hilton may well be sending his opponent a thank-you note and a bottle of bubbly for that performance.

As for winners, a couple of the Democrats had their moments. Porter spoke with clarity and force on issues including single-payer healthcare (she supports it) and resisting Trump’s immigration policies in this state of immigrants.

But she also directly addressed the criticism of her having a bad temper in a way that I think may haunt her.

As her male opponents bickered back and forth, taking swipes at each other, Porter said that given all the “shouting” and “disrespect” onstage, she was shocked that “anyone wants to talk about my temperament.” It’s a pushback she tried out earlier in the week with a new advertisement that sought to make a punchline out of the criticism.

I get her point and I don’t think a male candidate would face the same scrutiny for yelling at a staffer as she has, but also — what’s more unappealing to voters than an angry woman? A complaining one. That moment of resistance against the narrative may not land the way she intends with voters.

I agree with Gustavo that Villaraigosa had a good night, and that Steyer had Bernie energy — which may be good.

Steyer was the most lively and direct he’s been in a debate, landing a few punches and making points with clarity (far less wonky than he’s been in the past). He’s owning his far-left politics, and labeling himself the “change-maker.”

Steyer has been trailing Becerra in the polls, but Becerra again had a steady if less-than-thrilling appearance. For fed-up Democrats, Steyer may be looking better all the time.