California Republicans have not won a statewide election in two decades. This June, they have a narrow but real path to change that, and it runs through an unusual strategic paradox: both GOP candidates need to beat each other without actually beating each other.
The math works like this. Eight major Democratic candidates are dividing the liberal vote heading into the June 2 primary. If Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco split their party’s support roughly evenly, each could pull enough total votes to finish first and second statewide, locking both into the November general election and shutting out every Democrat entirely.
California’s top-two primary system sends the two highest vote-getters to November regardless of party. That rule, designed to produce more competitive general elections, has occasionally scrambled conventional political strategy. This cycle it creates a scenario that strategists from both parties are watching closely.
The Numbers Behind the Strategy
Democrats outnumber Republicans in California by nearly two to one in voter registration. That structural imbalance has made statewide Republican victories essentially impossible since 2006. The only viable path for a Republican governor in 2026 runs through a general election with no Democrat on the ballot.
For that to happen, Hilton and Bianco each need to hold roughly half the Republican primary electorate. If one candidate consolidates significantly more GOP support than the other, the runner-up finishes below enough Democratic candidates to fall out of the top two. The window closes.
Republican strategist Rob Stutzman described the tension bluntly. “There’s an amazing irony in all this: they need to beat each other, but they also both need to succeed,” he told CalMatters. “It goes against human nature and the way campaigns are organized.”
Two Candidates, Similar Platforms
Hilton and Bianco arrive at this moment from very different backgrounds but have converged on nearly identical policy positions.
Hilton spent years as a political strategist in the United Kingdom before moving to California and hosting a show on Fox News. He has written on populism, bureaucratic reduction, and decentralizing government power. Since leaving television he has positioned himself as a national-profile outsider taking on California’s Democratic establishment.
Bianco serves as sheriff of Riverside County, a sprawling jurisdiction east of Los Angeles that stretches to the Arizona border. He has become a prominent figure in conservative law enforcement circles, testing the limits of his authority on voting and elections issues and cultivating a combative public persona.
Both candidates have made California’s cost of living the center of their campaigns. Both target Democratic environmental regulations, which they argue have driven up housing and energy costs across the state. Both favor broad deregulation.
Despite that alignment, they have spent recent months attacking each other directly. Hilton has worked to consolidate Republican support at Bianco’s expense. Bianco has returned the attacks. Neither campaign is running a coordinated strategy to ensure the other survives the primary; they are each running to win it outright.
This article draws on reporting from CalMatters.
Democrats Are Watching
Democratic strategists publicly dismiss the scenario as unlikely, but the party faces real pressure to take it seriously. November 2026 is also a U.S. House election year, and California’s congressional delegation includes several competitive seats. Democratic leadership wants maximum turnout from liberal voters in the fall, which becomes significantly harder to generate if no Democrat appears on the gubernatorial ballot.
The eight-candidate Democratic field itself created the conditions for this problem. A fragmented primary electorate spreads votes across too many candidates, preventing any single Democrat from building an insurmountable lead. Some Democratic strategists have pushed the party’s candidates to consolidate, but no significant dropout has occurred.
The pressure on Democrats to resolve their primary field will increase as June approaches. Whether consolidation happens in time, and around whom, will shape the outcome as much as anything happening on the Republican side.
What November Would Look Like
If both Republicans do advance, the general election would be unlike anything California has seen in a generation. A Hilton-Bianco race in November would force every voter in the state to choose between two Republicans, in an electorate where most voters are not registered with either candidate’s party.
Independent and decline-to-state voters, who now represent roughly a quarter of the California electorate, would determine the outcome. Many of those voters have supported Democratic candidates in recent cycles. How they respond to a ballot with no Democratic option is genuinely unknown.
Neither candidate has developed a public strategy for winning over that pool of voters in November. For now, both are focused entirely on the primary, attacking each other for the Republican base while the broader strategic picture either takes shape on its own or falls apart.
The irony that Stutzman identified is real. Two candidates competing to knock each other out are simultaneously each other’s best chance at making history.