PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Standing amid the ash and rubble of a neighborhood that once defined California luxury, Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton did not offer platitudes on Sunday. He offered an indictment.
"I'm so sorry. And it's so sad about what happened because it could and should have been avoided," Hilton told supporters and residents gathered in the Palisades, according to Fox News. "This place is a symbol of 16 years of Democrat failure."
The timing was deliberate. With Tuesday's election looming, Hilton chose the burn scar of the January 2025 Palisades Fire as his closing backdrop — a place where more than 23,000 acres burned and roughly 6,800 structures, many of them family homes, were reduced to foundations. Tens of thousands of residents were displaced. Nearly two years later, vacant lots and construction fencing still line the streets.
'NOT RANDOM, DISCONNECTED EVENTS'
Hilton, a former Fox News commentator who advised British Prime Minister David Cameron before entering this race, argued that the fire and the halting recovery were not acts of God alone but the predictable output of a political machine.
"These are not random, disconnected events," Hilton said, per Fox News. "These are what has gone wrong in the state of California over 16 years of one-party rule."
Democrats have held the governor's office in California since 2011. Hilton faces Democrat Xavier Becerra, a former state attorney general and Health and Human Services secretary under Joe Biden, in Tuesday's contest to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom.
At the rally, Hilton accused state and local officials of failing to prepare for the fires and failing to help residents rebuild, pointing to what he described as a combination of "incompetence, ideology and corruption." He also took aim at environmental and land-management policies, arguing that inadequate brush clearance and forest management contributed to the devastation. Fox News reported that the crowd included residents who lost homes in the fire.
The pitch was aimed squarely at a broader California electorate that has watched the state's quality of life erode. In a Fox News opinion piece published Monday, former California resident Gianno Caldwell wrote that after 16 years of one-party rule, "Californians deserve to ask a simple question: What are the results?" Caldwell, who left Los Angeles for Miami in 2020, described tent cities, rising violent crime and small businesses "drowning in fees and regulation" — and said Hilton is giving residents "a reason to stay."
BECERRA HITS BACK — AND AVOIDS THE RECORD
Becerra, campaigning in Sacramento on Saturday, dismissed Hilton as a proxy for President Trump. "I suspect, if he takes off that mask, you'll see Donald Trump right underneath," Becerra said, according to the Associated Press. "That's who he really is. Either that or he's a clown."
The remark was a reference to Hilton's Halloween stunt at a Trunk or Treat event in Highland Park, where the Republican candidate wore a gray-haired Becerra mask and sarcastically warned parents about a "mileage tax." Video of the event circulated widely over the weekend.
Notably, Becerra's public schedule has been light on the Palisades. The AP reported the race has been "relatively sedate" — a luxury for a Democrat in a state where Republicans last won a statewide election two decades ago and where recent polls show Becerra leading by a wide margin.
The national mood, however, is another matter. The Next News Network account on X noted that Hilton told voters if they're not happy with the way things are going, "you've got to vote for change" — in a state that hasn't elected a Republican governor since 2006.
Our Take
Ask yourself this: if the Palisades Fire had happened on a Republican governor's watch, how many cable news panels would have been convened about "failed leadership"? How many magazine covers about the death of competence? The answer is obvious, because we've watched the same legacy media spend years treating California's decline as a weather event — something that happens to the state rather than something the state's leaders do.
Sixteen years is long enough to build a record, and the record is on the ground in the Palisades. Brush wasn't cleared. Water systems were mismanaged. Permits for rebuilding crawl while residents who lost everything pay mortgages on dirt. Sacramento's response was not to fix the machine; it was to keep feeding it. Hilton's campaign is worth watching not because he's likely to win — the math in California is brutal — but because he's forcing a conversation Democrats would rather skip until November. The people in that crowd lost their homes. They deserve better than a talking point about a mask.
Tuesday's result will tell us whether Californians see the same thing standing in the rubble that Steve Hilton does. If they don't, they should ask themselves why not.
