by Edward Ring
California Republicans face a daunting political machine and entrenched electorate, but Steve Hilton’s provocative strategy may be their best chance to break through.
In California, the political script is passé. Every statewide election is the same story. The Democrat candidate gets around 60 percent of all votes, and the Republican gets 40 percent. The script is so predictable that voters have stopped paying attention. Even now, in this polarized, politicized era, if you ask a random person on the street who the two candidates are this year to become California’s next governor, they won’t know. In California, the average low-information voter doesn’t vote for a candidate; they vote for a party.
That’s the milieu into which Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton has thrown what in football is termed a “Hail Mary,” a long ball hurled toward an end zone receiver, thrown in the game’s closing seconds by a team that’s behind. Hilton’s just-released video ad features two attractive young women. By all appearances, one of them is about to seduce the other. “Just close your eyes,” the seductress says, “I’ll do all the work.” But then, “Surprise!” The camera pans downward to show the seductress is actually just guiding the other woman’s hand, marking a ballot to vote for Steve Hilton for governor.
Of course, outrage has ensued. Democrats, joined by some Republicans, find it obscene and exploitative. Other Republicans are afraid it will “hurt the brand.” That’s rich. Republicans in California have no brand, and they have no strategy to win. They are politically irrelevant. Democrats dominate state politics. They don’t just have an edge over Republicans. They stomp the sh-t out of Republicans, year after year after year. Hilton should run more racy, spicy ads. He has nothing to lose.
As it is, the opening act of the election is already underway, and the script hasn’t changed. On October 5, ballots were mailed to voters in California. By now, votes are already being cast. “Election season” has begun, with a month of voting, followed by a month of counting. What used to take a day now takes two months. And while some common sense candidates and common sense ballot initiatives may still have a chance in the one-party state, they will be tactical, temporary victories. In a few places, they may slow the machine down. But along the broad front, the machine will roll on, consolidating its power.
Republicans in California are fighting a battle that may be impossible to win. The structural advantages the Democrats have are immense, both in terms of the machine they’ve got for getting candidates elected and the way they’ve primed the electorate to reject Republicans.
By now the mechanics of the election machine are well known. Poorly maintained voter rolls, 29 days of “early voting,” provisional ballots, same-day voter registration, automatic motor-voter registration, universal mail-in ballots, a seven-day post-election grace period for mailed ballots to still be counted, aggressive, comprehensive, micro-targeted ballot harvesting, and county elections offices with 30 days to count ballots while under oversight by Democrat politicians and staffed by Democrat-leaning bureaucrats. Thanks to a state legislature where Democrats hold 75 percent of the seats in both houses, these rules are both corrupt and completely legal.
At the heart of this juggernaut are the public sector unions. In terms of perennial, consistent campaign funding, these unions are by far the biggest political spenders in California. They’re not just active in the big races for governor and seats in the state legislature. They’re even more dominant in literally tens of thousands of elections that determine who controls every school board, city council, county board of supervisors, and special district in the state.
This power is often underappreciated by outside observers. Because public sector unions invariably support Democrats in local elections and spend whatever it takes to get them elected, they have a deep bench of candidates to advance to higher office. This level of spending is also a deterrent to potential Republican contenders. The unions will use all their resources to control local governments, because the public employees who work in them want higher taxes to pay for higher pay and more benefits. They’ve got millions to spend if they need it. Republicans, especially at the local level, do not have any similar source of consistent campaign funding. Why bother?
The machine drives off most qualified candidates and explains why most of California’s cities, counties, and school districts are run by puppets of public sector unions. And by electing their own bosses, these unions have free rein to enact policies that are inherently in conflict with the public interest. The natural motivation of any organization is to grow and prosper, but in the context of a public agency, growth means hiring more employees and prosperity means paying them more. And if programs fail, the answer is always to expand their funding and scope.
This is the insight that still evades most voters in California, which brings us to the other structural advantage Democrats wield in California. They have successfully conditioned California’s voters to associate any deviation from an escalating leftist policy agenda with submitting to bigotry and climate change denial. In an inversion of reality that would be hilarious if its consequences weren’t so tragic, they’ve managed to suggest that bigotry and climate change denial are encouraged by corporations and billionaires because it will distract gullible voters into ignoring that they’re being exploited. But California is the last place where such an argument could have any shred of validity, because in California, for decades, corporations and billionaires have used their power to support a leftist agenda. To the extent there is corporate exploitation, it is in partnership and with the consent of the public sector. Regulation feeds monopolies. In California, this misanthropic synergy has been perfected.
But the indoctrination that obscures these simple truths has saturated every cultural institution in the state. The K-12 system of public education, controlled by the teachers’ union, preaches the message over and over like a mantra, starting in kindergarten. The earth is dying. Racism is rampant. Corporations and billionaires are to blame. That message, slightly more nuanced and expansive, but even more potent, extends to California’s entire system of higher education. Faculty associations, dominated by leftists, ensure that the curricula and the administration never deviate from the message. And California’s media marches in lockstep.
Such is the political landscape for Republicans in California. There is a simple truth that ought to make a difference for Republicans, which is that Democrat policies are the reason there are so many homeless, failing schools, water rationing, the highest prices for gasoline, diesel fuel, and electricity in the United States, the highest taxes, and record levels of poverty. But telling that simple truth cannot prevail against two formidable obstacles: a political machine and a thoroughly indoctrinated electorate.
The meta issue that dominates voter concerns in California today is the cost of living, and yet the overwhelming voter consensus is to continue to elect Democrats. California voters may rebel against Democrat policies on specific issues, and they recognize many systemic problems just downstream from the cost of living, such as a huge homeless population and failing schools. But the indoctrination that most of them have absorbed for their entire lives, reinforced through campaign messaging pushed by an overwhelming funding advantage, means they remain convinced that Republicans would just make all of these problems worse.
And for those who are beginning to question the premise that more government is all we need to fix everything, they are nonetheless voting for Democrats because … Trump. In a sane world, the prevailing message in California’s 2026 electioneering would be slop. Because apart from that one magic word, “TRUMP,” it’s incoherent. They don’t even have to fall back on the leftist tropes of climate change, bigotry, and economic resentment. They’ll pull those back out and use them again when and if the magic word loses its power to induce deranged compliance. As it is, whether it’s a candidate or a ballot initiative, if California’s Democrats oppose it, they associate it with Trump. It’s infantile. It’s Pavlovian.
For these reasons, in the aftermath of the 2026 election in California, there will be higher taxes, more regulations, and ongoing failure of virtually every social program. And as we march into the 2028 cycle, California’s Democrats will continue to claim we need to tax and spend more, and if anyone disagrees, then they will be stigmatized as a MAGA Republican. The message works. It deflects accountability. It shall continue.
When there finally is a fiscal catastrophe that renders California’s state and local governments insolvent, perhaps if there is a huge tech recession, California’s electorate will reach a genuine crossroads. Voters will tilt into supporting full-blown socialism, with all the disastrous consequences that would follow, or they will start to claw back common sense by ceasing to view more government spending as the only possible way forward. We’re not there yet.
Californians cannot see what’s coming, and Republican remedies are unheard. Steve Hilton’s strategy is as good as any. Before you can ever hope to get voters to listen to your ideas, they have to know you’re there.
Edward Ring
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/10/07/steve-hiltons-hail-mary-in-democrat-dominated-california/
No comments:
Post a Comment