Let California’s winds of change sweep all of Blue America

Winds of change are blowing across California — and should bring hope to all Americans now suffering under arrogant Democratic-machine misrule.

It looks like both Steve Hilton and Spencer Pratt will be on the ballot this fall, for California governor and Los Angeles mayor — a huge sign of voter rebellion in a deep-blue state.

No, the results aren’t final, because Cali authorities now take weeks to count the last ballots — itself a sign of institutionalized incompetence, as even Third World nations manage to get the task done in a day.

California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton speaks to reporters outside the Capitol in Sacramento, California, Wednesday, June 3, 2026. AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli

Each man will be an underdog in November — but the machine candidates are such total mediocre-at-best hacks, and fury at machine-run government’s failures all across the Golden State is at such a high pitch, that the rebels’ odds are looking better than they have in years.

Mayor Karen Bass, in particular, epitomizes poor leadership — and not just for fiddling off in Ghana while LA burned, but for the disastrous decisions that made it burn (empty reservoirs, unmanned fire stations and worse), and for continuing to fiddle as bloated city government frustrated all efforts to rebuild.

No: She also owns the city’s pothole-plagued streets and flickering streetlights, its ailing economy (even the movie industry is fleeing) and its homeless horrors.

And all she offers about any of it are lame excuses and promises to do better . . .  by doubling down on what she did the last four years.

Xavier Becerra at least can pretend he doesn’t own Gov. Gavin Newsom’s rancid record, but he’s even more of a cookie-cutter product of the state machine than the pretty boy.

Spencer Pratt, a candidate in the Los Angeles mayoral race, fields interviews during an election night event Tuesday, June 2, 2026, in Los Angeles, California. AP Photo/Jill Connelly

He’s spent 40 years dutifully climbing up the party ladder in a career with zero highlights.

How do you say “apparatchik” in Spanish?

The establishment will insist Hilton and Pratt aren’t fit for office,  but former Fox News host Hilton also long worked for British Prime Minister David Cameron, while reality-TV vet Pratt has shown a huge aptitude for public policy during the campaign, soundly winning debates on substance.

Both offer fresh, common-sense answers the public craves — and is already demanding: San Francisco’s been rejecting its machine establishment for years now; voters there seemed to join LA and San Diego in nixing tax increases on Tuesday as other Republicans also outperformed in the “jungle primary.”

Let us emphasize: This isn’t much about Republican vs. Democrat, though that’s how the establishment will strive to frame it.

It’s about everyone else against a machine that puts mediocrities in high office to rubber-stamp the mindless dictates of an unholy alliance of ideologues and special interests that (with a nod to the great Iowahawk) has consumed the flesh of the once-great Democratic Party and now wears its shell as a skin suit.

Beating this monster absolutely requires Republican voters, but in the end it’s about saving the Democrats, too.

And if it can happen in California, it can happen anywhere.