California Republicans left San Diego without a gubernatorial endorsement Sunday, after delegates refused to unify behind Donald Trump’s handpicked candidate and split their votes in a way that left both contenders short of the threshold needed to win the party’s formal backing.
Steve Hilton, the British-American former Fox News host Trump had endorsed, pulled 44% of the delegate vote. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco got 49%. Neither reached 60%, the minimum required under party rules to secure an official endorsement. Trump’s preference didn’t move the room enough. That’s a notable outcome when the president has made his choice explicit.
Delegates paid more than $1,000 each in travel and hotel costs to attend the San Diego resort convention. A lot of them still chose to split.
Hilton spun the result hard. “Chad Bianco came into this convention taking it for granted that he already had everything won,” Hilton said. He credited his own campaign for closing what he portrayed as a gap in party support, adding, “I think we made a lot of progress this weekend to even things up.” He called denying Bianco the endorsement “a great success” and said he’s still confident he’ll land in the top two when California’s June 2 primary votes are counted in 2026.
Bianco wasn’t buying it. “This doesn’t change anything in our campaign,” he said after the Sunday tally. Despite falling short of even a bare majority, he claimed that “the vast majority of those present support me, far more than the result indicated.” He then called party endorsements “a load of nonsense” before conceding that getting one “would have been nice.” Those two positions don’t fit neatly together, and Bianco didn’t seem to notice the contradiction when he said them.
Both men will now spend the stretch run to June without the party’s formal blessing.
On the money side, Hilton’s got the edge. He’s raised more than $6.6 million, which is over $2 million ahead of Bianco, according to CalMatters, which covered the convention closely. In a statewide race where most California voters don’t follow internal Republican politics, that gap matters. Name ID outside the party’s base is built with money, and Hilton has more of it.
Bianco had worked the delegate circuit for months before the convention. He flew into San Diego expecting consolidation. He’d cultivated the traditional inside relationships, talked to the right people, showed up at the right events. What he found instead was a room that wasn’t ready to hand him anything. A rival who’d been cast as an outsider to the party structure can now credibly claim he’s closed the gap heading into June.
There’s also the March episode that followed Bianco into the convention. He made national headlines that month when his office seized hundreds of thousands of ballots cast in a special election tied to Proposition 50, the Democratic plan to redraw congressional district lines that voters had passed. That controversy didn’t disappear when the convention opened.
Hilton, for his part, is staking a lot on the argument that he’s the candidate with momentum. He leads in public polling across the full field of candidates, not just within Republican circles, and his fundraising advantage reinforces that posture. Whether that translates to a top-two finish on June 2 is the real question for 2026. California’s jungle primary sends only two candidates forward regardless of party, so both men are really running against the entire field.
The 2028 cycle will look a lot different depending on what happens here. A Hilton top-two finish cements Trump’s influence over California Republican strategy even if he can’t deliver convention delegates today. A Bianco surge would suggest the inside game still has value, even when the president is pushing the other direction.
For now, neither candidate got what they came to San Diego for. Bianco wanted a mandate. He got 49% and a fractured argument about what his own support means. Hilton wanted to prove he belonged. He didn’t win, but he didn’t lose either. That’s enough for now.
“This doesn’t change anything in our campaign,” Bianco said Sunday. The race heads to June 2 all the same.