Steve Hilton, former David Cameron adviser, to run for California governor | California

David Cameron’s former top adviser Steve Hilton has joined the 2026 race for California governor, running as a Republican to replace the Democrats’ Gavin Newsom, who is prevented by law from seeking a third term.

Hilton, who hosted a show on Fox News for six years, launched his campaign with the theme “Golden Again: Great Jobs, Great Homes, Great Kids”. His campaign said Hilton would be “reinforcing his commitment to positive, practical solutions instead of today’s ideology and dogma”, and that his brand of “positive populism” would focus on helping working families.

Hilton was one of the then UK prime minister’s closest advisers before the pair fell out over immigration and Brexit in 2016. Hilton, a former advertising executive, is thought to have been largely responsible for a host of early Cameron measures and photo opportunities including the husky expedition to Alaska to popularise his “Vote Blue, Go Green” message.

At his campaign launch in Los Angeles, Hilton took aim at state Democrats over notoriously high state taxes, soaring home prices and “the destruction of the California dream.”

He said he would welcome running against the former vice-president Kamala Harris, a one-time California senator and attorney general who has not ruled out a run for the governorship.

Hilton said the governor’s job was not a “consolation prize to be handed out to a failed and rejected machine politician from Washington … who thinks she should get this job because of her identity, not her ability”.

Harris is the daughter of a Jamaican father and an Indian mother and would become the first Black woman elected governor in the US if she were to run and win.

California operates a top-two primary system where all candidates compete on one ballot, regardless of party, and the two who receive the most votes go on to the general election in November.

Republicans have not won a statewide race in heavily Democratic California in nearly two decades. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the last Republican to be elected governor, in 2006.

As Cameron’s head of strategy, Hilton was the inspiration for Stewart Pearson in the BBC satire The Thick of It and described as “the eco-friendly, media-savvy, blue-sky-thinking director of communications for the Cabinet Office”.

After leaving Cameron’s team in 2012, Hilton backed Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton for the US presidency in 2016. He supported Brexit but criticised the former Conservative government for “dark” policies that “pull up the drawbridge” to the rest of the world.

With the Associated Press