Steve Hilton, the former Fox News personality and longtime conservative commentator, announced Monday that he is running for governor of California.

That makes him the second major Republican to enter the crowded field hoping to replace incumbent Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2026. Newsom cannot seek re-election because of term limits.

The British-born Hilton, 55, is best known for his former role as host of The Next Revolution on Fox News, where he championed populist, anti-establishment ideas and frequently praised former President Donald Trump. Before his American media career, Hilton was a tech entrepreneur and senior adviser to British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Hilton moved with his family to California in 2012 when his wife, tech executive Rachel Whetstone, transferred to Silicon Valley with Google before taking senior communications roles with other major tech firms. They settled with their two sons in Atherton, where Hilton, an Oxford graduate, taught public policy classes at Stanford University and started his policy organization Golden Together. This year, he released the book “Califailure: Reversing the Ruin of America’s Worst-Run State,” which chronicled what Hilton says are years of Democratic rule that have created ineffective government. He became a U.S. citizen in 2021.

“We’ve just had the opportunity to live the California Dream. I’d put it as simply as that,” Hilton said in a recent interview with the Bay Area News Group, “and that’s another reason why I feel so strongly about the fact that it’s being denied to so many other people. I don’t just want to talk about these problems. I actually feel as if I can make a contribution to solving them.”

Political experts characterize Hilton’s bid as a long shot. California has not elected a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one.

“It’s an extremely steep uphill fight for him,” said Dan Schnur, who teaches political messaging at the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley. “Republicans have made some strides in the state over the last few years, but winning at the top of the ticket a statewide race is a much, much bigger leap forward.”

After 10 years as a Fox commentator, with many of those as an enthusiastic Trump supporter, winning over moderate or disaffected California Democrats will be another hurdle, experts say. Hilton ended his contract with Fox in March when he published his book and is focused on California now. Besides, he said, Democrats agree with him that California has major problems — and his focus will be tackling the affordability crisis.

“There’s unanimity, I think, on the fact that there’s a real crisis of just daily life being impossible for Californians. And that’s my source of optimism that we will get political change in California, because we can’t go on like this,” Hilton said. “And I think there’s a very simple argument to make, which is, how can the people who caused these problems be the one to fix them?”

When asked, however, how Republicans can be trusted to fix them, when Republicans in Congress are doing little to temper Trump’s impulses on tariffs that are spiraling the national economy, Hilton said more time is needed to allow Trump’s policy to work.

Besides, he said, the answers to California’s problems “don’t lie in what happens with the stock market. It lies in what we do to make it easier to build the homes that we need, to improve the education that kids get in schools, to make it easier to start and run and grow a business, to create jobs and to lower taxes so people keep more of what they make. Those deals are all state level.”

While he credits largely Democratic conservation policies over the years with the preservation of California’s natural beauty that he and his family enjoy as part of their California dream, he criticizes Democratic legislators and their “climate agenda” for going “a long way away from what most people would consider to be environmental protection,” including offshore wind farms.

The presumed favorite in the gubernatorial race has not even announced her candidacy: Vice President Kamala Harris. If she enters the race, as many expect her to, that could clear much of the Democratic field.

But Hilton could be eager for a showdown with Harris.

“It’s time to end the years of Democrat failure,” he says over an image of Harris in his announcement video.

In California’s open primary system, in which the top two candidates regardless of party head to the November ballot, Republicans typically try to throw their weight behind a single candidate. So far, Hilton’s main competition for Republican support is Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who announced his candidacy in February.

Other Democratic candidates in the race include current Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, former leader of the state Senate, Toni Atkins, and former state controller Betty Yee.