Steve Hilton, GOP candidate for governor uses SF visit to bash Newsom, Democrats

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host who is running for California as a Republican, used a visit to San Francisco this week as an opportunity to bash Democratic leadership. Hilton, 55, who emigrated to California from the UK, officially announced his run for governor earlier this week at an event in Huntington Beach Tuesday.

The following day, he posted video on X that showed him visiting San Francisco. In the video, Hilton walks through the city’s SoMa neighborhood chatting with homelessness and drug policy activist, Tom Wolf.

“It’s infuriating, because it’s all avoidable and preventable, all of it” Hilton says while walking down streets among people showing indications of fentanyl use.

At another point in the video, Hilton and Wolf stand at Sixth and Mission streets as the former Fox host gestures toward Salesforce Tower at the end of the street.

“I just want everyone to see, we’re right here, and as we’ve been saying, this is good compared to what we’ve seen on other occasions and what you’ll see here at night,” he says. “Look at what you’ve got there, right at the end of the street.”

“That is the gleaming Salesforce Tower, right? The kind of symbol of San Francisco’s tech economy, the billionaires, side by side with this totally unacceptable failure of policy. It’s not a human failure. It’s not these people’s failure. It’s the government’s failure that we’re in this situation.”

At no point in the video does Hilton specify which policy failures were to blame for the current conditions in the Sixth Street area, which has been blighted by drug use and street crime for decades. Early in the video, Wolf appears to cast the blame toward former San Francisco Mayor London Breed, telling Hilton, “We had a mayor for five years who basically did nothing to stop this.”

In a second video posted to X on Friday, Hilton is seen on a San Francisco street introducing himself to a homeless couple, telling them, “My name is Steve. I’m running for governor.”

Holding up the man’s sign, which reads, “Please Help,” Hilton addresses camera, saying, “This is, as Gavin Newsom keeps bragging, the fifth biggest economy in the world. Look down the street, Salesforce Tower, the symbol of the tech billionaires, and you’ve got good people like this, doing this. It’s disgusting actually, and it’s gone on for so long.”

Hilton is then seen putting his arm around the woman and introducing Wolf as “My friend Tom.” Wolf then speaks to the couple, telling them, “I used to be on the street too, back in 2018. I got clean and I got off the street.”

Hilton then addresses camera directly again.

“It’s just so unbelievably, I don’t want to say sad and heartbreaking, it’s true of course it is on a human level, it’s f***ing outrageous, that’s what it actually is. You’ve got good people like that, you could see that they’re good people, they’re not drug addicts, they’re not anything like that.”

Hilton goes on to say that the man on the street told him he wasn’t able to get housing because of his disability, but that Wolf told him they’re giving housing “to people who are drug addicts but not requiring treatment.”

“That’s what you get from these totally ridiculous ideological zealots, who impose this leftist ideology without any regard for practicality and what’s happening in the real world,” he adds, again without adding any specifics.

Hilton, who has never held public office before, has pledged to “Make California Golden Again” and criticized the state’s one-party rule under Democrats. The Fox News contributor, who is also author of the book, “Califailure,” has said California is “barely recognizable” after “15 years of one-party rule.”

Hilton, who lives in Atherton, is the second high-profile Republican to enter California’s gubernatorial race, alongside Riverside County Sheriff, Chad Bianco.