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Who is Steve Hilton? Here’s how he has rebranded himself multiple times
VOL. 17, 15,
Newsom touts another win in legal battle with Huntington Beach over housing By Joe Taglieri
By Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters
joet@civicnewsgroup.com
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This story was originally published by CalMatters.
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hen Steve Hilton first came to live in California, the political strategist had already gone through a few rebrands. It was 2008 and the British Conservative Party was ascendant after a decade of losses. Hilton, a top adviser to future Prime Minister David Cameron, was a source of great curiosity for the British press; he eschewed suits, rode a bike to work, sometimes went shoeless and avoided reporters. He was also at the center of the party’s turnaround, widely credited with refreshing its image from stale and imperious to socially tolerant, environment-minded and diversityconscious. While he was on a temporary stint in Silicon Valley, the British press couldn’t help noticing a similarity between Cameron and Hilton and the Golden State’s then-governor, moderate Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. “The mixture of freemarket economics, social liberalism, high-technology growth and environmental
Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton on election night June 2 in Huntington Beach. | Photo courtesy of Jules Hotz/CalMatters
awareness makes California instantly attractive” to the Conservative Party’s “modernizers,” a commentator wrote in The Guardian. That was the last time a Republican was governor of California. Eighteen years later, Hilton is trying to pick up Schwarzenegger’s mantle in a dramatically different moment for California and American politics. After finishing second in last month’s top-two
primary, he faces long odds in the November general election against Democratic former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Democrats have dominated the state since Schwarzenegger left office; a Republican hasn’t won a statewide seat since before Cameron became prime minister. And though anti-tax sentiments still run deep, so too does
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hatred of President Donald Trump, who has endorsed Hilton. It could help Hilton that he cuts an unlikely figure for a MAGA man. A professional advertiser, Hilton spent the first half of his career softening the public images of the Conservatives, of multinational corporations accused of causing various social ills and of capital-
See Steve Hilton Page 04
ov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced another ruling against the city of Huntington Beach in a three-year legal battle over the state's affordable housing requirements. A San Diego County Superior Court judge tossed Huntington Beach's lawsuit against the state and granted an anti-SLAPP motion filed by Bonta and the California Department of Housing and Community Development. Judge Katherine A. Bacal rejected the city’s view that the state's Housing Element Law and the California Environmental Quality Act are conflicting laws and that the state can't compel the city to violate CEQA by seeking to enforce the Housing Element Law, according to her June 30 ruling. The judge also rejected the argument that the state's rezoning exemption guidelines do not support the city’s claims it should delay its housing element update to accommodate CEQA review. “In ruling after ruling,
the city of Huntington Beach has lost, but the hapless leaders there continue to miss the message: It’s time to do your job, create the housing your community needs, and stop wasting taxpayer dollars on defending your ridiculous NIMBY agenda," Newsom said in a statement. "We’re literally running out of new ways to tell you that you’ve lost.” Bonta recalled the course of legal action that started in March 2023, when the state sued Huntington Beach for violating the law requiring cities to update housing plans. “Huntington Beach claimed it was immune from state housing laws because it’s a charter city. It lost," Bonta said in a statement. "It claimed that having to comply with state housing laws violated its First Amendment rights. It lost. Now it's lost on its claim that the State can be sued simply for enforcing state housing law. No more excuses. It’s time for the City to adopt and implement a lawful housing element.”
See Housing lawsuit Page 15
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