Who is Steve Hilton? 5 things to know about the California governor candidate

Steve Hilton is the US President Donald Trump's pick for the Governor of California. The California Governor is a Fox News Host, one of Donald Trump's favourite channels, where he looks for potential team members and candidates. On Fox News, he hosted the weekly current affairs show The Next Revolution, which Hilton used to target Globalism and the left. His campaign has been populist; he wants to bring the Department of Government Efficiency in California. He advocates against transgender athletes and tried to make his campagin MAGA friendly.

Hilton was shaped by the British conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom Hilton called “Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Lady Gaga all rolled into one”. Hilton later worked with the British Prime Minister David Cameron as National Security Strategist. He was known among colleagues for walking the corridors of Downing Street shoeless and in shorts and proposing idiosyncratic ideas that made headlines. However, David Cameron and Steve Hilton had a fallout over Brexit. While Cameroon opposed Brexit, Hilton supported it.

Hilton's wife, Rachel Whetstone, is a top Technology executive in the industry. Whetstone, another former Tory strategist, worked for Google and Netflix. So many suggest that Hilton is another Silicon Valley candidate. “I’m the candidate of and for business, of all kinds and in all sectors,” said Hilton in an interview. “So I definitely don’t run away from the tech industry, I’m a huge supporter of it.”

Deeply inspired by Thatcherian economic philosophy centred on free markets, deregulation, and reducing state intervention, Hilton wants to cut the taxes for income tax on the first $100,000 of earnings. He is also proposing a flat tax that will significantly reduce what the richest residents pay. He is also opposed to the ballot initiative that targets California's billionaires, which has drawn support from several billionaires. However, his massive tax cuts are likely to create a shortfall of $65 billion in the revenue of the state. He wants to manage this with “every opportunity to reduce or eliminate the size and scope of state agencies.”

Steve Hilton inspired one of the characters, Stewart Pearson, in the popular British Television Show “The Thick of It”. He was portrayed as a hilariously pretentious, unorthodox communications director and exasperating strategist who tries to push “thought circles” and has a running battle with a minister over whether he should wear a “tie” or not.