Susan Crabtree writes for Real Clear Politics about two Republicans who fared well in this wek’s California primary elections.
In a state that hasn’t elected a Republican governor in nearly two decades and where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one in registered voters, Tuesday night belonged to two conservative political outsiders who based their campaigns on a simple message: Californians deserve better.
Former Fox News host Steve Hilton and reality television veteran Spencer Pratt arrived at their respective races with thinner war chests than their establishment rivals, no prior experience in elected office, and campaigns built less on policy infrastructure than on raw charisma, populist messaging, and an uncomplicated argument: that California leaders had failed, and that change – dramatic, disruptive change – was long overdue. …
… Even before the final votes were counted for the night, Hilton was recalibrating for a broader general-election audience. Hilton struck a tone befitting a candidate running statewide in a deeply blue state rather than one firing up a conservative base.
When pressed on his strategy for winning the general election, Hilton spoke less about defeating Becerra than about uniting Californians. …
… What set Pratt apart from other political outsiders was his willingness to weaponize artificial intelligence as a campaign tool – and his instinct for where voter anger was running hottest. His team deployed a steady stream of AI-generated imagery and video that depicted Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom as cartoonish villains – literally, in some cases, rendering them as the Joker – and framed the city’s Democratic establishment as a detached elite presiding over a corrupt, drug-zombie-riddled Los Angeles in freefall.
The imagery was provocative by design, but it landed because it tapped into something real. Years of rising crime, tent encampments stretching across neighborhoods from Hollywood to Venice, and the Palisades and Altadena wildfire response that drew widespread criticism had left many Angelenos feeling abandoned by the leaders they had repeatedly elected.
