By Steve Hilton (GOP Candidate for Governor)

California means to America what America means to the world.

California has always represented the essence of the American Dream. Optimism, adventure, opportunity. We are the home of free spirits, rebels, people from all over the world who dream big and work hard. There’s nowhere better than California. The beautiful Golden State has been an inspiration to so many, for so long. Still today, our innovation connects the world. Our creativity entertains the world. Our farmers feed the world. In California, we build the future. We shape the culture.

But everyone can see that things have gone off track. California is now as famous for dystopian scenes of public squalor as for our magnificent landscape. Upward mobility–the foundation of the California Deam–has been crushed as it become increasingly difficult to buy a home or afford the basis of a good life. Crime is up. The quality of life is down. In 2022, for the first time in state history, California lost representation in the Congress thanks to the exodus of people and businesses to other states.

For over a century, there wasn’t anything Californians couldn’t do. People moved to the Golden State by the millions. There were good jobs, affordable homes, great schools and universities, beaches, mountains, the best weather on earth.

But something terrible has happened. California is not the welcoming place it used to be.

In recent years, California has been top of every list you’d want to be at the bottom of, and bottom of every list you’d want to be at the top of. For every essential–homes, rent, tuition, gasoline, electricity, and water–the highest prices in the United States. The worst business climate in the country. The highest taxes. The highest housing costs and lowest rate of home ownership. The highest unemployment and lowest income growth. Shamefully, despite the enormous concentration of wealth in places like Silicon Valley, California has America’s highest rate of poverty. (Yes, rate–not just the highest number of people living in poverty.) According to a recent study over one-third of Californians cannot meet their basic needs. Public schools are failing, crime is soaring, cities are overrun with tens of thousands desperate homeless people, electricity is unreliable, water is rationed, and the mismanaged forests are burning like hell.

Nearly every news story you read whether you realize it or not, has a connection to California: the rise of Elon Musk and Tesla, the “homeless industrial complex,” the censorship industrial complex,” the professor who wouldn’t cancel a test just for Black students, social media companies, shoplifting videos, banning gas cars, banning gas stoves, the “Green New Deal,” reparations, lists of words and phrases you can’t say anymore, Covid lockdowns, pioneering “rules for the but not for me” at the French Laundry, Netflix, iPhones,Chat GPT, the housing crisis, high-speed rail (okay, high-speed fail).

California’s wounds are self-inflicted, the result of an unchallenged political monopoly. 

Democrats have controlled the state legislature for over twenty-five years. They have had complete control of all state-wide political offices for fifteen. In recent years they have had the benefit of a “supermajority” that allows them to impose laws, regulations, and tax increases without limit.

California is what you get when Democrats get everything they want.

(Editor’s Note: Steve Hilton writes 10 chapters, 210 pages,  for Part I Califailure on: One-Party Rule, Elitism, Narcissism, Maoism, Climatism, Socialism, Bureaucratism, Compasisonism, Cronyism, and Incompetism.)

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(Part II) Califuture: The Dream Is Alive–Conclusion

By Steve Hilton (GOP Candidate for Governor)

(Editor’s Note: Steve Hilton writes 6 chapters, 77 pages, for Part II Califuture on: A Revolution Is Brewing, Restoring Political Balance, A Foundation of Prosperity an Abundance, Reducing K-12 Education, A Guarantee of Security, The California Dream before concluding with “The Dream Is Alive.”)

Restoring the California Dream involves practical policy solutions that can seem mundane. Yet the compelling appeal of these solutions is not the grinding detail but the outcome they will collectively deliver, and in the fact that the problems they will solve–as well as the dreams they will fulfill–have universal appeal. These solutions, and the future vision they point toward will captivate everyone young and old, rich and poor regardless of ethnicity or ideology or lifestyle. Prosperity and freedom have no identity. Realizing them is a goal shared by all.

We can move from defense to offense and change our policy environment. We can enact reforms to labor laws that will have what to some may be a surprising benefit of helping lift up all workers by creating more jobs and more opportunities. We can enact reforms to environmental regulations–again, in what will to some be a big surprise–that will benefit the environment while also lowering the cost of living. We can lower taxes and fees, especially on the basic essentials that form the building  blocks of our economy, such as housing and energy. And we can reduce the size and complexity of government.

All these reforms will help businesses stay in California and grow, as well as attract new businesses to relocate to the Golden State. At the same time, we will redirect public money away from failed programs and invest it in practical infrastructure that yields generational economic benefits, while returning to taxpayers whatever savings remain.

We will restore public safety with new laws that are tough but compassionate, with an emphasis on deterrence through certainty of accountability, combined with an emphasis on developing effective rehabilitation programs. We will develop programs to help and support young families, particularly those living in poverty, and by improving conditions during early childhood, we will rescue a generation while saving taxpayers money in the long run.

We will save K-12 education in California by insisting on higher standards, demanding transparency and accountability, introducing school choice, expanding charter schools, and protecting the public schools from the teachers unions.  And we will manage our forests according to time-tested best practices instead of misguided environmental extremism, creating healthy forests and thousands of jobs, and generating tax revenues.

We can once again be a land of plenty, a place of unlimited possibility, abundance in place of scarcity. We can once again be that home for doers and dreamers, rebels and creators, visionaries and builders. That is the spirit of California, and it’s time to ignite it.

These are ideas with power that transcend campaign financing. These are arguments that counter and overcome millions in opposition political spending. These policies represent a transformative optimistic agenda to which politicians afflicted with “progressive” pathologies have no answer. The vision of the future that will come when these policies are realized is one that every California will want to leave for their children and grandchildren.

This is the positive Califuture we deserve, the antidote to Califailue. And it belongs to everyone.

(Editor’s Note: “Califailure: Reversing The Ruin of America’s Worst-Run State”–a 352 page book written by Steve Hilton, published March 25, 2025 by Broadside Books–can be purchased for 56 percent off the $32 hardback cost at Amazon Books. Hilton’s book is divided into Part I–Califailure, chapters 1-10, and Part II–Califuture, chapters 11-16. Other Hilton books include: “Good Business: Your World Needs You” with Giles Gibbons, 254 pages, published in 2002 by Texere and “More Human: Designing A World Where People Come First” with Scott and Jason Bade, 387 pages, published in 2016 by BBS.

Steve Hilton was born in London, the son of Hungarian immigrants who fled communism in search of freedom and opportunity. He came from a working-class background, made it to Oxford, and built a career in business and government. He served as a senior advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron before moving to California, where he taught at Stanford University, built businesses, hosted The Next Revolution on Fox News, and launched Golden Together. He is the California GOP 2026 candidate for Governor.)