There’s nowhere better than California. But everyone can see how badly things have gone off track. We were once the land of opportunity – but now we have the highest housing costs and worst business climate in America. We were once the land of plenty – but now we have America’s highest prices for gas and electricity, power outages are a regular occurrence and most shamefully of all, almost a million Californians don’t have access to clean drinking water.
The home of free spirits and rebels has become plagued by endless rules and regulations, bossing everyone around, telling people what to do and how to live. What car to drive. How to cook your food! Even telling parents how to raise their own kids.
Instead of our magnificent landscapes, iconic industries and amazing weather, today we’re sadly famous for dystopian scenes of crime, chaos and squalor.
The long term policy failures, serial mismanagement and staggering incompetence of Democrat one-party rule was tragically revealed for all the world to see in the Los Angeles wildfires.
We can’t go on like this. We’re not just any other state. California means to America what America means to the world.
We need to make California an inspiration again, not a warning of what not to do. We need to revive our spirit, our energy, our optimism, our dynamism. It’s time to restore the California Dream – especially for working people who’ve had it so tough these last few years.
There’s only one way to do it. We need to end the one party rule that got us into this mess. That’s why I’m running for governor.
To make California Golden Again.
A good job, where you make enough to raise your family in a home of your own in a safe neighborhood with a good school so your kids have a better life than you. Great jobs, great homes, great kids.
Democrat one-party rule gave California the highest unemployment in America, and the highest rate of poverty. What a devastating record – especially when we also pay the highest taxes in the country. Democrats brag about California being the “world’s fifth largest economy”, and that’s true. But that ignores the fact that over a third of Californians can’t meet their basic needs. It’s a shameful record. And imagine how much bigger and better our economy could be if we weren’t weighed down by high taxes and ridiculous regulation.
It’s time for a completely new approach. To guarantee Great Jobs for our people we need to create a positive business climate so entrepreneurs can easily start and grow businesses here. Right now we have the worst business climate in America, according to an annual survey of Chief Executives – and we’ve been the worst for ten years in a row!
We’ve got to get rid of the bloat and bureaucracy in our state government, the endless nanny state agencies churning out rules and regulations, the pointless permits and processes and absolute nonsense that drives everyone crazy. On top of that we need abundant, affordable energy and water — utilities and infrastructure that actually work, prioritizing practical results not ideological crusades.
And of course we need to massively reduce the tax burden on people and businesses. That means cutting back the state budget, which has gone up by 50%, after inflation, in the last ten years – while our problems only got worse.
California has a completely unaffordable cost of living, driven by the highest taxes in America and the highest prices for housing, rent, electricity, and water. As governor my priority will be to help working people by reducing their taxes:
This will be paid for by returning state spending to pre-pandemic levels, where it would have been if the government had grown in line with the economy, rather than the Democrat approach of growing it so much faster, and so unsustainably. This would take just over half of California households (7.1 million households) out of paying state income tax.
Reducing taxes, which is urgent, will require a more sensible approach to spending. Over the last decade, government spending has more than doubled in California – from $161 billion in 2015/16 to $322 billion in 2025/26. Even after taking account of inflation, the budget has gone up by 50%. And it’s still going up! My aim is to return spending to pre-pandemic levels, where it would have been if the government had grown in line with the economy. We can do this because everyone can see that higher spending hasn’t led to better outcomes.
A recent audit found that over $24 billion was spent on homelessness without any idea where it went or what it did, while the problem just gets worse and worse. Over $30 billion was “lost” by California’s Employment Development Department in the pandemic. Over $30 billion was spent on “high speed” rail without a single mile of track being laid. More and more of the taxes we pay are eaten up by government unions, in luxury pensions and healthcare handed to them by the Democrat politicians they bribe – with our money!
It’s obvious that more spending doesn’t lead to better outcomes when you compare New York and Florida. Both states have similar populations (around 20 million) but Florida spends about $115 billion, compared to New York’s $250 billion. Florida has much better outcomes on almost every measure. That’s what we need here in California: better results for less spending. If other states can do it, there’s no reason we can’t too.
Talk to any business in California, especially smaller businesses, and they’ll tell you regulation is their biggest nightmare. Last year, California’s Democrat Industrial Complex passed 1,200 bills containing yet more ridiculous micro-managing regulation – on top of the 420,000 regulations that already exist.
Businesses are under assault from the government. Endless different agencies attacking them non-stop with rules, inspections, fees, charges, insane processes that cost a fortune and can take years to complete.
Over the years we have allowed a completely ridiculous, sprawling bureaucracy to metastasize, making it impossible to get anything done in a timely, cost-effective manner. No wonder so many businesses are just giving up and moving to other, more welcoming states, including perhaps our most iconic industry: movie and TV production.
On top of that think of the investment, the jobs, the opportunities – and the tax revenue! – that never comes here in the first place. We regularly hear about big new investments in America, including high-tech manufacturing. Almost none of it comes to California these days.
But some businesses can’t “just move.” Look at our great agriculture industry. We have the most fertile farmland on the planet but instead of supporting this world-beating industry the Democrats are deliberately crushing it. Every single aspect of farming has been made impossible: taking away water rights; forced electrification of farm and transportation vehicles; labor regulations that increase costs and lower wages for workers … and more. It’s all a nightmare, and all totally avoidable.
We can’t go on like this. As your governor my priorities will be to:
For generations, when people pictured the American Dream, it was the California Dream: a home of your own, in a safe neighborhood, with a yard where your kids could play. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when California had the most affordable homes in the country.
Now we have the highest housing costs, and the lowest home ownership. It’s impossible for most people to even think of buying a home of their own, and rents are absolutely insane. High housing costs are the number one reason people are leaving our state.
The Democrat Housing Crisis affects everything else: our worst-in-the-nation homelessness crisis of course, but also the cost of living, the ability for schools to recruit good teachers, business location decisions … even traffic and our environment, as people have to commute for hours when they can only afford to live a long way from their place of work.
All of this comes after endless promises by Democrats to build housing and make it more affordable. They have totally failed.
It’s time for a completely new approach. To provide Great Homes for Californians we need to directly tackle the main causes of the Housing Crisis: hidden housing taxes, anti-housing regulations, and anti-housing lawsuits.
Most people don’t realize that a huge (and rising) part of the cost of housing is directly imposed by state and local government in the form of “Impact Fees” – charges that are supposed to cover the local “impact” of housing development. These have risen to astronomical levels: the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley estimates that fees can now make up nearly 20% of the typical house price. Politicians say they have to do this because Prop.13 caps property tax. But that’s obviously ridiculous when we already have the highest taxes in the country. Where does all the money go? Impact Fees are a Hidden Housing Tax and my priority will be to rein in this abusive racket that steals opportunity from the next generation.
Every year, new regulations make it more and more expensive to build housing in California. Building codes that are constantly changing; bureaucratic state agencies like the Coastal Commission blocking development; other bureaucracies like CARB (the California Air Resources Board) or regional “air quality” bureaucracies imposing arbitrary nonsense like VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled) rules, even as they try and ban gas cars … it’s all a massive roadblock to building the housing we need. Only around 5% of our land is developed, one of the lowest rates in America. We have plenty of space to build the homes people want, and I will work to sweep away the ridiculous bureaucratic obstacles to getting it done.
One of the main reasons housing is so crazily expensive in California, compared to other states, is the abuse of lawsuits by special interests. One of the worst examples is the abuse of CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act). Originally passed in 1970, it was never intended to cover housing, or to be used for private lawsuits. But over the years, unelected judges extended its scope and usage so that now, around 70% of CEQA lawsuits are used to block housing, many by special interests (like unions) masquerading as environmental groups in order to blackmail house-builders. We have to stop the outrageous scam of anti-housing lawsuit abuse.
Apart from these specific policy changes, we need a change of attitude. For too long, the Democrat ruling elite have been fighting a war on single family homes. They want everyone to live in apartments and take public transit everywhere, as if we were living in some European city. But this is California! That’s not how people want to live here! Especially when they have children, families want the space and freedom of a single family home with a yard for the kids to play outside and enjoy our weather. Who are these arrogant politicians, to tell people how to live? In a state as big as California, where just 5% of the land is developed, there’s plenty of room to build the housing we need. They call it “sprawl.” I call it the California Dream, and I will do everything I can to restore it.
California’s public schools are failing. Only 35 percent of K-12 students meet state math standards, and only 47 percent meet state English language standards. Nearly two thirds of California’s Latino students and 70% of Black students do not meet basic standards in English; for math it is even worse, 77% of Latinos and 83% of Black kids do not meet basic standards. This is not about “resources” as is sometimes claimed. California’s public schools receive funding equal to at least 38 percent of the state budget every year, no matter how big the budget gets – and it has risen by 50%, after inflation, in the last ten years. The failure of our government-run schools is an outrageous scandal that we cannot tolerate any longer.
That means taking on the ideologues and activists who have removed accountability for teachers and lowered expectations for students. On top of that, bureaucrats and politicians have added social and political indoctrination to our public school curricula, undermining the traditional coursework designed to teach fundamental skills.
I will not let the teacher unions, or anyone else, stand in the way of reaching a target that is surely the most basic expectation of a school system: that 100% of students meet basic standards. We will do that by measuring and demanding higher standards of academic achievement; enforcing transparency and accountability; restoring and expanding ‘parent trigger’ laws enabling parents to initiate rapid reforms at poorly-performing schools; rewarding and retaining effective teachers; making it possible to remove incompetent teachers; rescuing traditional public schools from counterproductive curricula that do not effectively educate students in the necessary basics; protecting (and, where parents want them, expanding) charter schools, and over time introducing school choice.
Parents know their kids best, and want what’s best for them (even though their children may not always agree!). Of course there are a tiny number of exceptions — and the abuse of children can never, ever be tolerated. But I believe that laws and regulations work best when they are designed for the vast majority of people who do the right thing, versus the tiny minority who don’t. It’s why the rights of parents within our school system are so important and as your governor I will protect them. When teachers and parents work closely together, they can achieve more for our kids. This transparency is especially important around issues of sex, gender and identity. Ensuring parental rights isn’t about politics — it’s common sense, just like it’s common sense that biological boys (or men) should not be competing in girls’ (or women’s) sports.
In many ways public safety has become the defining feature of Democrat-run California — from the homelessness crisis to retailers fleeing our downtown neighborhoods. Now that Proposition 36, which Democrats like Gavin Newsom fought so strongly, has passed, it’s amazing to think that anyone ever thought it was a good idea to make theft under $950 a day legal. But that’s the insanity of Democrat one-party rule — violent crime up 23% and arrest rates down to 30% state-wide.
We will never have Great Jobs, Great Homes and Great Kids without public safety. Democrats love passing new laws – thousands every year! But they’re terrible at actually enforcing the law. We need to get back to the basic principle that we should enforce the law — whether it’s on homelessness, open air drug markets, shoplifting, illegal immigration or violent crime. People need to know that if they commit a crime they will be caught, prosecuted and convicted. As governor, I will ensure our brave law enforcement officers are fully supported in enforcing the law.
HELP STEVE HILTON END DEMOCRAT ONE PARTY RULE IN CALIFORNIA!
