For Steve Hilton, two is not company but rather a crowd.
So the former Fox News host is deploying a new campaign strategy in the race for California governor: attack fellow Republican candidate Chad Bianco.
During the recent televised debate that featured some of the leading candidates in the gubernatorial contest, Hilton referred to Bianco as a “RINO,” a term that stands for “Republican in name only” and is used to insinuate someone is not a loyal or true Republican.
Hilton also criticized Bianco for kneeling with protesters during tense demonstrations in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd‘s murder. Bianco, in a news interview at the time, said he wanted to get past “this big huge divide, where it’s us vs. them” and agreed with “the concept of this protest” until it was no longer peaceful.
Related: California governor’s race: Who are the major contenders now?
“Chad Bianco has more baggage than LAX,” Hilton said during the debate, referring to his fellow GOP contender as “shifty sheriff.”
This pivot in strategy, Hilton said in an interview after the debate, is all about making it through the primary.
Both Bianco and Hilton have consistently topped polls in the race for governor, while Democrats struggle to break through with a clear frontrunner in the deep blue state. Bianco is 2 percentage points ahead of Hilton in Real Clear Politics’ aggregate of polls, followed by Rep. Eric Swalwell and former Rep. Katie Porter, who trail Hilton by 1.5 and 2 percentage points, respectively.
“The Republican vote is being split between me and Chad Bianco,” Hilton said. That means, he said, there’s a good chance two Democrats will make it through the June election to vie for the governor’s seat in the general election.
“I think our responsibility is that we make sure that we don’t have a split vote and have two Democrats in the top two,” Hilton said. “My job is to do everything I think we can do to avoid that disastrous outcome and get behind one Republican candidate, the strongest one. I think that’s me.”
Election observers say Hilton’s point about splitting the vote isn’t wrong.
“It’s simple math. You can’t get to a plurality or even second most by splitting the Republican vote,” said Matt Lesenyie, an expert in political psychology who teaches at Cal State Long Beach.
“There just aren’t enough Republicans in the state to spare on a candidate with no chances (the Republican running second) since the top two vote-getters will not be Republicans,” Lesenyie added. “It’s gut check time, time to ask: Is their candidacy a vanity project or a committed and strategic run for governor?”
Hilton, of course, said he believes he’s the committed candidate.
Bianco — who did not attend the debate, reportedly because of a scheduling conflict — did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.
But in a social media post the day after the debate, Bianco said he is a “doer.”
“If you want to elect a talker, there are plenty of options,” the post said. “If you want a doer, that’s me. Ask the officers under my command who they trust. Ask the business owners who stayed open during COVID. Ask the people who have been here fighting the fight with me for decades.”
If you want to elect a talker, there are plenty of options.
If you want a doer, that’s me.
Ask the officers under my command who they trust.
Ask the business owners who stayed open during covid.
Ask the people who have been here fighting the fight with me for decades.
— Sheriff Chad Bianco (@ChadBianco) February 5, 2026
Although they are both Republicans and both gubernatorial contenders, Bianco and Hilton hail from vastly different worlds.
Hilton, 56, is a British-born global businessman who helped get David Cameron elected as the United Kingdom’s prime minister before becoming a Fox News host. He moved to the Bay Area in 2012 and, in 2023, founded Golden Together, a policy organization.
Bianco, who is often seen sporting a cowboy hat, grew up in a small mining town in Utah, moving to Southern California in 1989. Four years later, he graduated from the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Academy at, according to his campaign bio, the top of his class.
To many, the 58-year-old is the no-nonsense, law-and-order candidate who championed Proposition 36, the 2024 voter-approved ballot measure that increased penalties for certain drug and retail theft crimes, and has made public safety a pillar of his campaign.
Hilton’s recent attacks on Bianco — giving him nicknames à la President Donald Trump’s own notorious way for going after political opponents and launching a website that attempts to tie the sheriff to the Black Lives Matter movement in a demeaning way — is keeping in line with his persona, said Dan Schnur, who teaches political messaging at USC and UC Berkeley.
“He’s a much more aggressive presence on the campaign trail. This strategy reinforces the way he (Hilton) wants voters to think about him,” Schnur said.
Hilton, meanwhile, insisted he’s open to working with Bianco.
And he isn’t asking the other Republican contenders for statewide office he’s running alongside — lieutenant governor candidate Gloria Romero, attorney general contender Michael Gates and controller contestant Herb Morgan are campaigning as what they’re calling “California’s Golden Ticket” — to avoid appearing with Bianco at other events. (Gates, for example, is scheduled to appear at a Conservative Patriots of Orange County gathering in Santa Ana with Bianco later this month, according to an invitation for the event.)
Should Hilton prove to be successful and make it through the primary, Schnur does not believe his attacking Bianco will turn away any of the Riverside County sheriff’s Republican supporters in the fall.
“The playbook is much different today than it might have been 10 years ago. Voters are much more tolerant of one member attacking another member of their party than they might have been in the past,” said Schnur.
And whether Bianco actually heeds Hilton’s call to drop out of the race, well, that’s a bit of a long shot, election observers said.
“The goal of Hilton’s message is probably less to convince Bianco to step aside but to convince his voters to switch their allegiance,” Schnur said.
“Assuming that one or the other does finish in the top two in June, they have an uphill fight to November,” he added.
“But you can’t fight that fight unless you get there.”
Staff writer Linh Tat contributed to this report.
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