Xavier Becerra — the man who ran Biden's Department of Health and Human Services while Americans couldn't find baby formula on store shelves — is leading Republican Steve Hilton by 25 points in the race for California governor. Sixty-one percent to thirty-six percent, according to a Public Policy Institute of California poll released this week.
The state that gave us rolling blackouts, $7 gas, and a homeless crisis visible from orbit looked at the menu and ordered seconds.
The PPIC survey polled 1,578 California adults between June 29 and July 6, with 1,003 of them identified as likely voters. The poll was conducted in both English and Spanish. Becerra leads Hilton across every demographic the pollsters measured — age, gender, income, homeownership, race, and region. Not a single slice of the electorate where Hilton is ahead.
Becerra, 68, served 24 years in Congress representing a Los Angeles district before Gavin Newsom appointed him California Attorney General in 2017. He left Sacramento in 2021 to become Biden's HHS Secretary, a post he held until January 2025. He declared his candidacy for governor on April 2, 2025, running on what his campaign calls being the "health-care governor" — which is a bold brand choice for a man who oversaw the federal health bureaucracy during a period most Americans would rather forget.
Hilton, the British-born former Fox News host and onetime senior adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, has staked his campaign on pocketbook issues. His signature promise is eliminating the state income tax on the first $100,000 in earnings and instituting a flat tax rate above that. He wants to suspend environmental regulations to lower gas prices, cut income taxes for middle-class earners, and open natural spaces for housing construction — particularly suburban single-family homes.
On paper, those positions should sell in a state where the median home price requires a second mortgage on your soul. In practice, there's a problem. The same PPIC poll found that 85% of likely voters said candidates' positions on the environment are important to their vote. Among Democrats, 60% called it "very important," compared to just 29% of Republicans. In a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by roughly two to one, running against environmental regulations is arithmetic working against you.
Becerra secured roughly 27% in the June 2 top-two primary, with Hilton taking about 25% to edge out Democrat Tom Steyer for the second spot. President Trump has endorsed Hilton, which in California functions less like a tailwind and more like a concrete parachute. No Republican has won the governor's mansion in 16 years — not since Arnold Schwarzenegger, and that required a recall election against an unpopular Democrat plus name recognition from blowing up aliens on screen.
Hilton's campaign argues the fundamentals favor change. Californians are leaving the state in record numbers. The cost of living is crushing working families. Crime and homelessness dominate local news. But voters who agree with the diagnosis keep rejecting the Republican prescription. That's not a messaging failure — it's a structural one. California's electorate has shifted so dramatically that a Republican needs to run nearly flawlessly and catch every break just to make the race competitive.
Becerra, meanwhile, is running the standard-issue California Democrat playbook: promise to fight Trump, defend environmental regulations, expand healthcare access. If elected, he'd become the first Latino to serve as California's governor in over a century, and the first ever to win the seat by election rather than appointment. That historic dimension gives his campaign a built-in enthusiasm advantage that polling margins don't fully capture.
Hilton reinvented himself from Downing Street adviser to Silicon Valley entrepreneur to Fox News personality. Now he's trying one more reinvention — conservative populist in America's bluest mega-state. His policy ideas are substantive. His diagnosis of California's problems is largely accurate. And he's staring at a 25-point deficit four months before Election Day.
Somewhere, a U-Haul headed for Texas just got a little more crowded.