How a former staffer for David Cameron could become the next California governor

It is a long way from 10 Downing Street to the Californian capital city of Sacramento, but one man might be about to make that journey.

Steve Hilton is a frontrunner in the Republican primary for governor, being held on Tuesday. Like many Republican candidates under Donald Trump, he is a former presenter on Fox News.

But he also held another unlikely job before that.

Who is Steve Hilton?

Born in London in 1969, Hilton worked for the Conservative Party’s Central Office after graduating university.

There, he met David Cameron, and when Cameron became prime minister in 2010, he hired Hilton as his director of strategy, a post he remained in for two years until moving to California.

During that time, he rubbed shoulders with all the top names from the Cameron years. One of them, former education secretary Michael Gove, told the website Politico this week that Hilton is a serious operator.

“I’m absolutely convinced that it wouldn’t be where he is if he weren’t deadly serious about bringing change,” Gove said.

“Steve Hilton was instrumental in helping David Cameron become leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister.”

How can he become governor of California?

The system in California mandates that all candidates stand in one giant primary election, being held on Tuesday, with the top two finishers then advancing to a runoff election scheduled for November.

According to the most recent polls, Hilton is in a neck-and-neck fight at the top with Democrat Xavier Becerra, who was health secretary during Joe Biden’s presidency.

California is a long-time Democratic state whose last Republican governor was Arnold Schwarzenegger two decades ago, but of all the Republican candidates on the ballot of around 60, Hilton has one thing they don’t – the endorsement of Donald Trump.

In April, on Truth Social, Trump called him “a truly fine man, one who has watched as this once great State has gone to Hell. Gavin Newscum [sic] and the Democrats have done an absolutely horrendous job”, using the insulting moniker he always deploys when referring to California’s incumbent governor, Gavin Newsom.

Hilton has been appealing to voters by saying that he is the change agent needed to break up decades of Democratic Party rule.

“This state needs change, and it can’t be provided by a Democrat,” he told reporters about an hour before polls were set to close.

The message appears to be working on some voters.

57-year-old Rosamaria Cerezo blamed Newsom and other Democrats for failing to make California more affordable.

“Both my husband and I have two jobs each just to make ends meet,” the teacher told the Associated Press.

She said she planned to vote for Hilton because she thought he had the best chance of advancing to the general election in November.

Why is the race for Los Angeles mayor drawing so much attention?

But probably the most watched contest in the primaries is the one for mayor of Los Angeles, and that is largely down to the candidacy of a former reality TV star.

Spencer Pratt rose to fame on The Hills, a show about young people living in Los Angeles.

His home was destroyed in the city’s catastrophic fires last year, and he blames Mayor Karen Bass for the widespread destruction.

His campaign has drawn attention with videos generated by artificial intelligence. One of them casts Pratt as Batman, saving a dystopian city from Bass, portrayed as the Joker.