Republican Hilton in the gubernatorial runoff

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Republican Steve Hilton will move on to the November general election runoff in California’s governor’s race, where he will face Democrat Xavier Becerra in a race in which he has promised to cut spending and regulation if elected.

hilton, British-American former Fox News anchor, won about 25 percent of the vote in the June 2 primary, with about 88 percent of the vote counted as of Tuesday night.

your opponent, Becerra is a former attorney general and former US Secretary of Health and Human Services, who emerged from a wide field of Democratic candidates.

In a statement, Hilton said he would “lead the movement for change” in California and called Becerra the embodiment of that same decade and a half of Democratic control.

“My mission is clear: go to Sacramento, end corruption, reduce our costs, help our businesses and improve our schools,” he said. “We cannot continue to vote the same way and expect different results.

Hilton’s victory knocked out billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer, who spent $215 million of his own money to boost his populist campaign and flood the airwaves with ads. That would make the general election a traditional midterm party contest that Democrats will see as a counterweight to President Donald Trump’s administration rather than the infighting within the Democratic Party that Steyer’s supporters had expected.

California uses two-circuit primary system ; The two candidates with the most votes advance to the November election, regardless of party affiliation.

Steyer conceded defeat in a statement Tuesday night and endorsed Becerra for the November election. He said he’s proud to have won over the animosity of state utilities, tech companies and Big Oil, and doesn’t blame Californians who “just couldn’t bear to vote for a billionaire.”

“It is absolutely critical that Trump’s nominee does not have the keys to California,” he said, referring to Hilton.

Con a large group of Democrats Competing for votes, Hilton led the polls for much of the race, exciting conservative voters with promises to cut income taxes. and the gasoline tax boosting oil drilling and repealing environmental regulations such as state mandates to reduce greenhouse gases.

He pitched his candidacy as an opportunity for cost-burdened Californians to end “16 years of one-party rule.” Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last Republican to lead California, left office in 2011.

“The people of California have been very generous in giving the Democratic Party an opportunity to show that their ideas work,” Hilton said last week, announcing his victory earlier at a news conference in Sacramento. “I think I’m running out of patience.”

He has a tough fight ahead of him in November.

California Democrats outnumber Republicans almost two to one. Although Hilton says it provides an opportunity for the state to take a different direction, there has been a Republican candidate in the general election for governor in every race for the past two decades, and with the exception of Schwarzenegger’s tenure, Democrats have won them all.

He also has the support of Trump, whom Californians disapprove of by a wide margin.

But he doesn’t downplay that support.

“I think it will be a great benefit to Californians to have a governor who maintains a good working relationship with the president and his team,” he said.

Hilton’s main campaign promise is to eliminate the income tax on the first $100,000 of income and establish a flat tax rate on income above that amount. Last week, he announced that his campaign would consider increasing that limit after conducting an economic analysis of the cost of living in California. Both options would mean a huge cut in government revenue, which Hilton said he hopes to offset by cutting a third of public spending.

He has not explained how, if elected, he would get the proposal approved by the Democratic supermajority in the state legislature.

Hilton was born in London, the son of Hungarian immigrants to the United Kingdom. He began his political career working for the British Conservative Party and played a leading role in the rise of Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010. In 2012, he moved to Silicon Valley, where his wife is a Google executive, and ventured into the world of startups before launching a weekly show on Fox News in 2017, during Trump’s first presidency. The show, titled The Next Revolution, ran until 2023.