As Californians count their primary votes Tuesday night, three results could advance conservatism in the once-Golden State.
If Spencer Pratt secures first or second place in Los Angeles’ mayoral race, the former villain of MTV’s “The Hills” will emerge as a hero to Angelenos desperate to liberate City Hall from the feeble, fumbling, feckless Karen Bass.
My birthplace has devolved from a thriving, gleaming metropolis in the 1960s through the ’90s into today’s trashed, vagrant-filled dystopia. The deadly January 2025 Pacific Palisades and Altadena infernos were the nadir of Democrat dysfunction. Gov. Gavin Newsom was in over his gloriously gelled head. Despite forecasts that a perfect firestorm was en route, LA’s neo-Marxist mayor was gettin’ down in Ghana when flames exploded.
“Potentially damaging Santa Ana winds prompt red flag warning for extreme fire conditions,” CBS News headlined its story at 6:38 a.m. PT on Jan. 6, some 28 hours before the conflagration erupted. CBS’ Chelsea Hylton echoed the National Weather Service’s grim prediction: “The strong winds will cause wildfires to grow rapidly.”
Like a phoenix, Pratt arose from the ensuing ashes of the Palisades Fire, which cremated his home. Early empathy for a man and his family, relegated to a trailer on their burned lot, has grown into an unstoppable sensation.
Pratt is jarringly blunt about LA’s economic stagnation and graft, as well as about Bass’ clueless detachment from her city’s multiplying woes. He is astonished that Bass “just spent $400 million to house 1,400 people.” That comes to $285,714 each.
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Pratt is bracingly clear about LA’s vagrancy problem. “Well, they’re not homeless. They’re drug addicts. Most of these people are addicted to fentanyl and meth,” Pratt told KABC’s Josh Haskell. “No matter what anybody tells you, we have housing and shelter for everyone that’s living on the street. They are choosing to be on the streets because they want to do drugs. They don’t want rules. They don’t want to listen.”
Pratt offers a refreshingly practical solution: “Mandatory help” would stop tolerating sidewalks as outdoor toilets and building housing for the “homeless.” Instead, Pratt would return non-Angeleno derelicts from whence they came. Locals would be detained on federal land long enough for drug rehabilitation to be effective.
As mayor, Spencer Pratt could become Rudolph W. Giuliani with palm trees. If the hard-left City Council does not lash him down like Gulliver, Pratt’s envisioned turnaround could make him a stella nova on the Right and inspire other Republicans to rebuild America’s embattled cities atop the rubble that Democrats have made their legacy.
Statewide, Republicans should rally around native-born Englishman and naturalized American Steve Hilton. The entrepreneur, author, and broadcaster’s polished British accent hints at his Oxford education and experience as a Thatcherite political advisor and former aide to Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.
Hilton embodies the dynamism contributed by legal immigrants versus the devastation inflicted by illegal aliens. The Left’s “Republicans hate immigrants” lies will bounce off Hilton like stray tennis balls at Wimbledon.
Hilton plans to slash California’s sky-high taxes. He would make the first $100,000 of income tax-free. Above that: a 7.5% flat tax. He would deregulate construction and energy production to deliver affordable homes and $3-per-gallon gasoline. Hilton is running to make California “truly golden again.”
Hilton “is a truly fine man, one who has watched as this once great State has gone to Hell,” President Donald Trump declared on April 5, via Truth Social. “Steve can turn it around, before it is too late, and, as President, I will help him to do so!” Trump concluded: “Steve Hilton has my COMPLETE & TOTAL ENDORSEMENT.”
Meanwhile, Hilton’s GOP rival, Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, deserves an 11th-hour implosion as voters learn of his conduct unbecoming of a Republican.
On June 1, 2020, while America burned during the deadly George Floyd riots, Bianco genuflected before Black Lives Matter protesters. “And there you go,” a local TV anchor described Bianco’s BLM encounter. “You see him take that knee.”
On illegal aliens, Bianco channels Nancy Pelosi.
“Let me make this perfectly clear,” Bianco said last year. “The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office and your deputies have not, are not, and will not engage in any type of immigration enforcement.” Bianco announced, “We absolutely must have a path to citizenship for people that are here.” Bianco declared: “Whether they came across illegally into the country, legally or not, is irrelevant.”
Worst of all, among California’s 58 county sheriffs’ offices, Bianco’s is dead last for using arrests to solve violent crimes and property offenses, from 2019 through 2024.
Finally, conservatives should hope that Tom Steyer comes in second and faces Hilton in November.
Steyer’s $2.4 billion bank account is daunting. So are the $213 million that he already has poured into this race, CalMatters calculated on Thursday. Self-finance is Steyer’s middle name.
However, the more of his own money Steyer spends, the more he will resemble a loaded guy trying to buy the governor’s mansion—which he sort of is.
Also, Steyer is exactly what Democrats hate. He is a white, male, heterosexual multibillionaire. Even worse to typical Dems, Steyer cashed in on coal mines and private prisons. That makes him the C. Montgomery Burns of the Left.
It’s hard to see Democrats going all in for someone who so strongly triggers their pain centers.
For the Right, Steyer could serve as a human shield against the Left’s thunderous volleys of rage.
So, whenever Democrats complain about the white patriarchy, Republicans can respond, “Oh, like Tom Steyer?” When liberals moan about heteronormativity, conservatives can retort, “Oh, like Tom Steyer?” And when the Left screams about greedy multibillionaires who must pay their “fair share,” the Right can shout, “Oh, like Tom Steyer?”
Republicans should appreciate that Steyer, unlike former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, will do little to energize Hispanic voters. Many will see Steyer as just un gringo rico.
Can California regain paradise lost? Tune in Tuesday night.
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