- Days before the primary, leading GOP governor contenders Steve Hilton and Sheriff Chad Bianco shared an unusually civil stage in Fresno, aiming their attacks at Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic state lawmakers.
- With Hilton boosted by Donald Trump’s endorsement and a narrow poll lead over Democrat Xavier Becerra, both Republicans cast themselves as the party’s best chance in California’s jungle primary.
- The rivals promised sweeping conservative overhauls — new dams, tougher crime policies, gutting environmental rules — as Central Valley voters, anxious over water and culture wars, weighed which Republican could win statewide.
CLOVIS, Calif. — In the waning days before California’s primary election, the two top Republicans running for California governor delivered closing arguments in front of a friendly Central Valley audience Friday evening.
Though Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News host Steve Hilton have attacked each other throughout the campaign, they abstained from feuding and instead focused on common enemies — Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers who control the Legislature.
Hilton criticized Newsom’s new $20-million program to provide free diapers for families of newborn babies, referring to the outgoing governor as “the great loaded diaper of California himself.”
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Earlier this year, Hilton and Bianco topped the governor’s race polls as a packed field of Democrats split many of the state’s liberal voters. Under California’s “jungle primary” system, where the top two candidates advance from the primary to the general election regardless of political affiliation, that led to fleeting hope among Republicans that the two candidates could shut Democratic candidates out of the November election.
“That idea was always a fantasy,” Hilton wrote in an op-ed published in the New York Post earlier this week in which he urged Bianco to drop out of the race “for the sake of the state we both love.”
“Steve, it is time for you to drop out,” Bianco retorted in a video posted to social media soon after. “In no world, no world does Steve Hilton beat a Democrat in November.”
After winning an endorsement from President Trump in early April, Hilton has steadily outpaced Bianco in polls. A poll commissioned by the California Democratic Party released last week showed Hilton leading the field with support from 22% of likely voters, followed by Democrat and former Biden Cabinet member Xavier Becerra with 21%. Bianco was at 10%, down from 15% in a previous poll conducted two weeks prior.
Still, Bianco, the two-term sheriff of California’s fourth most populous county, is a favorite of many Republicans in the state and won more support from delegates during the party’s recent endorsing convention than Hilton, though neither reached the necessary 60% to win the party backing.
While the two candidates have needled each other with personal digs and insults throughout much of the campaign, they appeared to set that energy aside during the Clovis forum and even traded some compliments. Hilton praised “sheriffs like Chad who actually understand what public safety looks like” while Bianco acknowledged that his opponent “should be very proud” to have Trump’s endorsement.
State Sen. Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield), who moderated the more than 90-minute event, praised their “extraordinary civility” before she pressured each to commit to backing whichever Republican makes it through the June 2 primary — or if they both advance, continue to focus on policy debates over attacks.
