Gloria J. Romero and Steve Hilton join to discuss the governor's race in California and independent voters' demand for a new direction in the state.

California

A survey of nearly 2,000 independent Californians revealed skepticism toward entrenched political power and a strong desire for change. In response, Steve Hilton, running for governor, and Gloria Romero, running for lieutenant governor, have formed a bipartisan ticket aiming to address issues such as high taxes, homelessness, and mismanagement in state government.

The candidates criticized the state's one-party rule and outlined plans to reduce waste, improve emergency management, and lower the cost of living. Their platform includes tax reforms, increased accountability, and policies to support working families, with a focus on reaching voters across the political spectrum.

California independent voters demand new direction

Please welcome Steve Hilton, who's running for California governor, and also with us, Gloria Romero, who's running for California lieutenant governor. I dub this duo the Sunshine Ticket. Good morning. Good morning. Great to have you both this morning. I'm going to start with you first, Steve, here on this independent voter project, this survey. It surveyed nearly 2,000 Californians with no party reference and found them pretty skeptical of entrenched power while also aligning themselves with major policy concerns. So, Steve, what's your message to those voters and others looking for some real change here? Well, I agree with them. We're very skeptical of what we've had in California now, which is 16 years of one-party rule. The Democrats have been in charge. By the way, Gavin Newsom has been in power each of those 16 years. As lieutenant governor now, he's entering his eighth year as governor. It's a total disaster. We have the highest taxes in the country, the highest poverty rate, the highest unemployment rate, highest costs for everything that matters—gas, electric, rent, water, insurance, everything. It's a disaster. Homelessness, crime. The schools are a disaster. This guy's running for president. Well, before we get to that, I'm running for governor. And now I've invited Gloria Romero, who is a respected leader in California, once the leader of the Democrats in the state Senate, to run with me as lieutenant governor. That's not how it's normally done in California. These offices are independently elected. But I want to do something different. I want to run with a respected leader who can help me, when I get to Sacramento, clean up the corruption, the fraud, the failure, and actually put behind us those 16 years of one-party rule. We need change in California. And this golden ticket, as we're calling it, that's part of what's going to happen, this revolution that we're planning in our home state. Absolutely. You have to clean up the poop. And I'm not talking about the pet poop. But filled of Democrats, jam-packed right now, it could be growing even more. One significant name on the list, Congressman Eric Swalwell, who's also an outspoken critic of President Trump. Now, Gloria, what sets your campaign apart? Because many people already know that California has been in a nosedive for quite some time. So could you walk our viewers through some of the policy points that this ticket will bring to California residents? Thank you so much. And it is the golden ticket for California. I think, as that poll indicated, that Californians, irrespective of whatever label they have behind their name—an R, a D, an NPP—they're ready for change. They're ready, like I was, to walk away from the recognition that one-party rule has failed California. On the policy issues, quite frankly, the most important policy issue in any state is the budget. And what Steve and I have uncovered is some $250 billion of waste, fraud, abuse. American viewers have seen how we have spent millions, billions on a train to nowhere. We've seen $24 billion applied to solving homelessness, according to Gavin Newsom, and yet they can't find that money. We have seen some $18 billion unemployment cash, cash intended for unemployment benefits, basically just stolen. And the real passion over which the lieutenant governor has a significant voice on education, which is almost half the state budget in California, we find that in education, over half of our students are not reading at basic levels of proficiency. So the message is basically, walk away from one-party rule. Give a different opportunity for a new ticket, one that's going to put working families' affordability, accountability first. The Democrats can't run on that. They have the record behind them. Steve and I represent a new path forward, one that will reach out to Republicans, to Democrats, to independents, to basically say, this state is worth fighting for, and we're the ticket that's going to lead that charge. Yeah. And Gloria, speaking of the Democrat record, it's been a year since the massive Los Angeles wildfires. They devastated neighborhoods and destroyed communities, yet we haven't seen much progress with respect to the recovery. And for many, it's still ongoing. Many are still picking up the pieces. Steve, you sounded the alarm on this very early on. What's your plan now to prepare for any potential fires and community outreach that you're looking to do? So I was there with Gloria last week on the first anniversary of the fires, and with a whole team that we put together, Palisades residents, experts from across the state, with a new focus that we will bring to common sense, emergency management and response. Everything that we saw in those wildfires and that community experienced was avoidable. That's what's so outrageous about what happened. And what's outrageous about Gavin Newsom running around making speeches like the one you just played, when you've got a community there that believes, in the words of their slogan on that anniversary, that they let us burn. Gavin Newsom let them burn with his extreme environmental policies that meant that the wildfires burned out of control because there wasn't proper management of the brush on those hillsides. The empty reservoirs, the empty fire hydrants, the fire department that wasn't deployed properly, the failure to extinguish the first fire that led to the Palisades fire because of some concern about some ridiculous endangered plant. All of that's going to be swept away when I'm governor and Gloria's with me as lieutenant governor. We're going to take this seriously. We're going to put the safety of our communities first, instead of what you're getting from this Democrat one-party rule, which is ideology and incompetence. I like that. I might actually use that. Hopefully you don't have a copyright on it. But California ranks among the most expensive states with key factors leading to that, including high cost of living when it comes to housing, expensive utility and energy prices, high state and local taxes on everyday goods costing above the national average. Experts even say a single person needs to make more than $100,000 a year to live comfortably. Now, Gloria, do you and Steve have a plan to help bring the cost of living down for your residents? Of course. Steve and I have been working together even before we decided to launch our campaigns for political office. The key is, of course, affordability. The key is fighting for the middle class. The key is beginning to get rid of the income tax issues and some of the exorbitant costs. This whole new proposal that you've heard about in California on basically charging a surplus, they call it the billionaire tax, it really is the entrepreneur tax. Already, we've seen a number of significant entrepreneurs in California fleeing California. And with that goes a vital investment in our resources. So there's much that we can do, should do. We are also going to stand up for workers, including adopting and implementing the no tax on tips, the no tax on overtime that the president has enacted, and yet Gavin Newsom is objecting to in California. There's much that we can do, but we've got to get in place so that we can work together to fight for the middle class, the working class, and to bring down those costs. If you don't have a home, you don't have access to the American dream. That's so true. Steve and Gloria, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Thank you. Great to be with you.

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Breakdown