Everybody who doesn’t live in California thinks it’s such a progressive state, and while that is the case sometimes, it’s also the place that sterilized inmates without their consent until 2015 and which includes at least half of the State of Jefferson secessionist people!
And it likes to remind us of that fact every few years, when it belches out a Republican gubernatorial candidate who looks and acts like someone who was specifically cast to play the part of a supervillain in a movie about infiltrating California’s political system.
Right on cue here comes Steve Hilton, the GOP nominee for California governor with Yul Brynner’s pate but balder, Piers Morgan’s voice but more grating, and partnerships with wingnuts who are so far to the right that their own purported political allies disowned them!
Back in England, Hilton was also the political advisor to David Cameron, the guy who was so politically savvy that he engineered Brexit right before dropping out of politics, never to be heard from again. Yes, the guy who advised the guy who fucked a pig (allegedly! -eds.) wants to run the entire state of California!
Hey you wanna do a Paypal instead?
Hilton was also a prominent anti-vaxxer and election conspiracy theorist, some of which he aired out on his Fox television show, which he also had!
To be fair, Hilton probably doesn’t have a chance in hell against Democrat Xavier Becerra, given that all these articles have just come out about how he probably doesn’t have a chance in hell, so at least there’s that. Right now he’s decided that he’s going to go with “the machine” beating him, I guess so that it’s less humiliating when people have no idea who he is come November:
Hilton has already put that framing on screen. In July, his campaign released “The People vs. The Machine,” an AI-generated ad produced by Charles Curran, the filmmaker behind the viral videos that powered Spencer Pratt’s bid for Los Angeles mayor.
And that election went great for Spencer Pratt, who has decided to become the Mayor Of Tweeting Mean Things About His Former Political Rivals instead! It gives him something to do, since he’s out of the race for mayor, bless his dumb, stinky little heart.
So back to Steve Hilton. He wants to get rid of the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which is — to be fair — a portal to hell* and a legendarily depressing and inconvenient place to spend your day, so that Hilton idea sounds like a great thing until you think about it for two seconds and then realize it’s the best we can do with what we’ve got right now, which is major budget cuts and an economic crisis, does anybody have any ideas where those might be coming from? Haha, anyway, Steve wants to repeal and replace the DMV with local county services.
*Editrix here to say I once went to the Santa Ana DMV and took the written test, renewed my license, changed my address, and reregistered my car and was out in 30 minutes. MAKE AN APPOINTMENT. Also! At the same DMV, I explained, “no my old car was upside down so they added that number to the sales price,” and the woman took my paper, looked at it, did some typing, and HANDED ME A NEW TOTAL SEVEN HUNDRED LESS. I am just saying: SANTA ANA DMV? No, SANTA ANA MVP.
I bet that’s just what overworked county employees all over the state dream of at night, more interaction with a frazzled, weary, extremely cranky public that now has no idea where to get their fucking car registered when it’s already three months overdue. Great idea!
He’s also got a real problem with forest management, which he knows about because there were lots of forests back in Merrie Olde England that I’m sure he spent lots of time chasing Robin Hood through, and “climate change extremists,” which is the new cool GOP term for people who believe the climate has changed and is still warming and that is bad for humanity and should be mitigated!
He’s also not a fan of high gas prices, to which I say good luck with that, buddy!
There is one exceptionally good thing about Steve Hilton though, which is that he isn’t Chad Bianco, the Riverside County Sheriff-Coroner who is somehow an even bigger whackadoodle conspiracy theorist than Stevie and is currently seizing 2025 ballots and shit like that to “prove” that last year’s Prop. 50 election — the fuck you Trump and Texas redistricting — wasn’t real.
Steve washed out Chad in the primaries. So he’s got not being that guy going for him, I guess. Good job Steve!
What the hell is with all the pigfucking this week?
"Give me your stupid, your idiots,
Your huddled masses yearning to eat paste."