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California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton says the momentum behind his campaign and Spencer Pratt’s independent bid for Los Angeles mayor shows there’s a hunger among voters in the left-leaning state for outsiders.
Hilton, a conservative commentator and former Fox News Channel host who is backed by President Donald Trump, emphasized in an interview Thursday on “Fox News @Night” that “something’s happening in California. I think people who aren’t here don’t realize how sick we all are of what’s been going on, the one-party rule, for 16 years now,” as he pointed to the Democrats’ longtime control of the state government.
The candidate, one of the frontrunners in the race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, also spotlighted the campaign of Spencer Pratt, a reality TV star and online influencer-turned Los Angeles mayoral candidate whose populist pitch to lead the nation’s second-most populous city is gaining traction. Pratt, a Republican, is running as an independent in the Democrat-dominated city.
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“The energy behind Spencer here in L.A., the energy behind our campaign up and down the state, we’re both outsiders. We’re very different, had different experiences, we were running different campaigns. But the one thing we have in common, we are outsiders. We’ve never run for office before,” Hilton said in an interview just days before California’s June 2 primary elections.
Hilton argued that he and Pratt “are both there to shake up a system that is obviously not working. And that’s why our campaigns are resonating.”
Pratt, who has focused his insurgent campaign against Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, is also backed by Trump. Pratt’s rise is fueled in part by his well-known status as one of the victims who lost their homes in last year’s devastating wildfires, when over 17,000 homes in Los Angeles County were destroyed, as well as his right-leaning focus on homelessness, crime and government accountability in a city long run by Democrats.
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Bass is attempting to fend off challenges from the right from Pratt and on the left from progressive City Council member Nithya Raman. If no candidate tops 50% in Tuesday’s nonpartisan mayoral election, the top two finishers will face off in November.
In the governor’s race, the latest public opinion polls indicate Hilton, a former British political advisor and strategist, battling Democrat Xavier Becerra, who served as a Cabinet secretary in former President Biden’s administration, for the top spot in the primary, followed by billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental activist Tom Steyer, a Democrat who ran for his party’s 2020 presidential nomination.
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Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, and former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter are also running for governor, as are Democratic candidates San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
The top two finishers in the nonpartisan gubernatorial primary will advance to the general election.
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