RACE FOR GOVERNOR - Steve Hilton has spent much of his career helping politicians, corporations and political movements reinvent themselves. Now he is attempting his most consequential reinvention yet: Steve Hilton, governor of California.
The question is not whether politicians are allowed to change their minds. They are. The question is whether Hilton’s evolution represents genuine political growth or whether a man who spent decades mastering political branding has simply become exceptionally good at rebranding himself.
Hilton has been a Conservative Party modernizer, corporate social-responsibility consultant, environmentalist, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Brexit campaigner, Fox News host, Trump supporter and now Republican candidate for governor. That is quite a political journey.
From “Vote Blue, Go Green” to California Republican
Long before Hilton became associated with Donald Trump, he helped remake Britain’s Conservative Party under David Cameron.
The Conservatives were struggling with an image of being elitist and disconnected. Hilton helped create something different: a younger, socially tolerant and environmentally conscious conservatism.
Cameron emphasized fighting climate change and famously traveled to the Arctic Circle for a photo opportunity with huskies and a melting glacier. The Conservative Party replaced its traditional torch logo with a tree. The message Hilton helped promote was simple: “Vote blue, go green.”
Today, Hilton attacks much of California’s climate regulatory system as an expensive “climate agenda.” He promises deregulation, lower taxes and cheaper energy.
Hilton says there is no contradiction. He still considers himself an environmentalist but argues environmental protection should not require costly Sacramento mandates. Perhaps. But it is nevertheless a striking evolution from the strategist who helped promote Cameron’s supposedly “greenest government ever.”
From Corporate Responsibility to Deregulation
Hilton’s earlier business career presents another contrast.
He co-founded Good Business, a consulting firm based on the idea that capitalism could become more socially responsible. Its clients included Nike, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola.
“Capitalism is a force for good, but it can become even better,” Hilton wrote in 2001.
Today, his emphasis is different. Hilton argues California businesses are being suffocated by taxes, regulation and government mandates. Corporate responsibility, he says, simply is not the immediate priority.
Instead, California itself needs a makeover. Hilton wants to restore “Brand California.” It is an appropriate slogan for someone who has spent much of his professional life understanding how brands are built, damaged and reinvented.
Silicon Valley, Populism and Trump
After moving permanently to California in 2012, Hilton entered another political phase. His 2015 book, More Human, offered ideas that would surprise many Republicans today.
He supported higher minimum wages and generous family leave, discussed limiting excessive executive compensation and expressed openness to a single-payer healthcare structure if patients retained meaningful choice.
Hilton once described his politics as something resembling Bernie Sanders meets John Kasich meets Rand Paul.
Then came Fox News.
Beginning in 2017, The Next Revolution transformed Hilton into a nationally recognized conservative television personality. His rhetoric sharpened. He aligned himself closely with Trump, attacked elite institutions and universities and became a prominent voice of populist conservatism.
Yet even then, Hilton occasionally departed from Republican orthodoxy, including advocating “asset reparations” to expand Black home and business ownership. Hilton has never fit neatly into one ideological box.
The Hilton Philosophy That Has Survived
There is, however, one consistent thread running through Hilton’s political life: distrust of centralized power.
It shaped his work with Cameron, his support for Brexit, his writing and now his attacks on Sacramento bureaucracy.
Hilton believes large institutions become detached from the people they are supposed to serve. His answer is decentralization, entrepreneurship, competition and greater local control. He now calls his approach “positive populism.”
But California would provide the ultimate test.
Campaign slogans are one thing. Governing a state of nearly 40 million people with a Legislature dominated by Democrats, powerful interest groups and an enormous regulatory structure is another.
Promises of $3-a-gallon gasoline, affordable starter homes, sweeping deregulation and dramatically lower costs are politically powerful. Delivering them is harder.
Which Steve Hilton Would Govern?
So, who exactly is Steve Hilton?
The Cameron modernizer? The environmental conservative? The corporate responsibility advocate? The Silicon Valley reformer? The Brexit populist? The Fox News firebrand? The Trump ally? Or the California Republican promising an affordability revolution?
Perhaps all of them.
Changing political positions over decades does not automatically make someone a hypocrite. Circumstances change. People learn. Political realities evolve.
But Hilton deserves unusual scrutiny because reinvention is not merely something that has happened to him. Reinvention has been his profession.
He helped corporations reshape their images. He helped David Cameron remake Britain’s Conservative Party. He reinvented himself on American television. Now he is trying to reinvent himself once more and perhaps California Republican politics along with him.
California voters should look past the branding and examine what remains underneath.
Because the most important question is not how many times Steve Hilton has reinvented himself. It is which Steve Hilton would actually govern California.
(Yonthan Mendal writes on Jewish community issues, antisemitism, Israel, and public policy. His articles focus on civic engagement, education, and issues affecting Jewish communities.)
