Earlier this year, the candidates for California governor were asked at a forum what they were watching on television. Steve Hilton, the Republican who is President Trump\u2019s pick for the job, brought up a British political satire called \u201cThe Thick of It.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s from the producers of \u2018Veep,\u2019\u201d he told the crowd, adding that it was \u201cincredibly profane.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a character that curses like you\u2019ve never seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he got to his point.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo my horror, there is a character based on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Hilton, 56, is not the typical candidate vying to run one of the bluest states in America. A native of Britain, he served as the headline-grabbing right-hand man of Prime Minister David Cameron before moving to California 14 years ago and becoming a Fox News pundit. Now, he is one of the leading contenders in Tuesday\u2019s primary for California governor. The top two candidates, regardless of party, will advance to November\u2019s general election.<\/p>\n
Mr. Hilton\u2019s American political renaissance has bemused his former colleagues and rivals in Britain. His alter ego on \u201cThe Thick of It,\u201d Stewart Pearson, was portrayed as a clownish figure who tries to push \u201cthought circles\u201d on bewildered Tories and utters pablum like \u201cknowledge is porridge.\u201d The real Mr. Hilton became a larger-than-life figure, infamous among colleagues for walking the corridors of Downing Street shoeless and in shorts and proposing idiosyncratic ideas that made headlines, like using cloud-bursting technology to make Britain sunnier and abolishing maternity leave. (He disputed how both ideas had been previously characterized.)<\/p>\n
In 2012, he decided to leave politics and follow his wife, Rachel Whetstone, another Tory strategist, to America. By then, she had embarked on a lucrative career in the tech industry, where she has worked in top communications jobs for Netflix and Google. Mr. Hilton settled into a role as a Fox News host. (Rupert Murdoch, the founder of the media empire that includes Fox News, is among his largest donors, as is the Google co-founder Sergey Brin<\/a>, according to campaign finance filings.)<\/p>\n Mr. Hilton\u2019s 2024 tax records show that his wife earned $6.7 million. He earned $250,000, though a media production business he set up lost nearly $227,000.<\/p>\n Mr. Hilton became a U.S. citizen in 2021, and now sports an American flag pin in the shape of California and wears campaign-trail attire that tends to be business casual, often going tieless in a blazer. In a contest upended by Eric Swalwell\u2019s sudden withdrawal<\/a> in April, he is promising to make the state \u201cCal-affordable\u201d by slashing taxes and regulations. He also wants to bring a version of the Trump administration\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency to California.<\/p>\n In an interview, Mr. Hilton insisted that a Trump-endorsed candidate can win in California, a notion that even his main Republican rival, Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, has doubted<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cTo a certain extent, people on the East Coast in particular who look in don\u2019t quite get the level of frustration bordering on rage in California with the conditions here,\u201d Mr. Hilton said, adding that \u201cit\u2019s very obvious that the anti-Trump messaging is basically all that the Democrats have in California.\u201d<\/p>\n His campaign hews to more MAGA-friendly fare. He traveled to the state track and field championships to speak out against a transgender athlete\u2019s participation<\/a>. He wants to make California the \u201ccrypto capital of the world\u201d and has close ties to Silicon Valley through his wife, though he himself has said he still uses a flip phone<\/a>.<\/p>\n He dismissed a proposed billionaire tax<\/a> as \u201can insane proposal\u201d that would drive out wealthy Californians, and chided the billionaire in the race, Tom Steyer<\/a>, for offering qualified support<\/a> for it. (\u201cI\u2019ve never seen anyone run around so ferociously pandering to every possible interest group,\u201d he said of Mr. Steyer, a Democrat.)<\/p>\n Some other billionaires are opening their checkbooks for Mr. Hilton. Not only has Mr. Brin donated the maximum amount he could to Mr. Hilton, but he has also poured $66 million<\/a> into Build a Better California, a group that opposes the billionaires\u2019 tax. Other billionaires who have maxed out to the Hilton campaign include Tim Draper, the venture capitalist who proposed splitting California into three states, and Geoff Palmer, a real estate developer whose Los Angeles apartment buildings have been controversial.<\/p>\n Clearly, there are differences between American and British politics.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first thing that comes to mind is the role of money,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a completely different story when it comes to the amount of money that is required to mount a campaign in the U.S. compared to the U.K.\u201d<\/p>\n His most viral moment in the race highlighted that he is still getting a handle on California cultural totems. In a social media video, he inaptly referred to a crunchy taco from the Del Taco chain as a \u201cstreet taco.\u201d<\/a> The internet pounced.<\/p>\n Mr. Hilton defended himself by saying in the interview that it was called a \u201cstreet taco\u201d on the menu. But he allowed that \u201cif we\u2019d spent a bit more time, I think we would have done that differently.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Hilton\u2019s parents were Hungarian immigrants to Britain, and along the way the surname Hircs\u00e1k became Hilton. He was raised in the English coastal city of Brighton by his mother and stepfather. He won a scholarship to Christ\u2019s Hospital School in Horsham, a prestigious institution that funded many less-affluent pupils, and later went on to Oxford University.<\/p>\n He began his career at the research department at Conservative Central Office, working for Mr. Cameron, then the head of the political section. By 1992, Mr. Hilton was working for Britain\u2019s Conservative Party alongside Mr. Cameron and Ms. Whetstone, a party strategist, on an election campaign in which the party narrowly defeated the Labour Party. Subsequently, Mr. Hilton moved to the advertising company used by the party, Saatchi & Saatchi.<\/p>\n \u201cHe quite prided himself, I think, on being slightly eccentric,\u201d said Moray MacLennan, his boss at the time. Mr. Hilton was personable and \u201cprodigiously bright and smart,\u201d he said, but \u201cnot particularly tolerant of people who weren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n The agency\u2019s mantra was \u201cbrutal simplicity of thought.\u201d Before Labour won the 1997 election, Mr. Hilton worked on the campaign that featured one ad with the face of the future prime minister, Tony Blair, with demonic eyes superimposed above the legend \u201cNew Labour, New Danger.\u201d<\/p>\n With an advertising colleague, Giles Gibbons, Mr. Hilton then co-founded a company, Good Business, advising corporations, including McDonald\u2019s and Coca-Cola, on corporate social responsibility.<\/p>\n Then in 2005, Mr. Hilton joined Mr. Cameron\u2019s successful campaign to become the leader of the Conservative Party before softening the party\u2019s image. In one speech, Mr. Cameron called for more understanding of young people, an intervention that became known as \u201chug a hoodie.\u201d<\/a> Then, to advertise green credentials, the Conservative leader was photographed hugging a husky on an Arctic trip with Mr. Hilton. And the Conservative Party\u2019s symbol, a flaming torch<\/a>, was replaced with a tree.<\/p>\n Mr. Cameron won a general election in 2010 but without a majority, forcing him into a coalition with the centrist Liberal Democrats. Some of that party\u2019s advisers were not impressed.<\/p>\n One of them, Giles Wilkes, said Mr. Cameron knew \u201cthat of Steve\u2019s 20 ideas, only one of them will be good and the rest will be stupid.\u201d He added, \u201cIt was policy by mouth feel. If it sounds good coming out of your mouth and it passes the speech test, or surviving the questions in Parliament test, then it\u2019s good policy.\u201d<\/p>\n