Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton wants California to spend the next decade doing one thing above all else: building. Speaking at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Hilton laid out an economic plan that would suspend a broad swath of the state's construction regulations, environmental reviews and labor lawsuits for 10 years, arguing the state needs a wholesale reset to address its housing and manufacturing shortfalls.
The plan, first detailed by the New York Post, calls for a 10-year suspension of regulations, government-imposed costs and bureaucratic processes covering everything from housing to reservoirs, nuclear power plants, desalination facilities, semiconductor factories, aerospace and defense facilities, and artificial intelligence infrastructure. Hilton has said he would seek a special legislative session during his first week as governor to push the proposal through, and that projects would move forward under clear deadlines, one decision and one appeal, according to the same report. If lawmakers reject his offer, Hilton has said he would rely on executive authority and control of state agencies to advance the changes instead.
Hilton's plan specifically targets the California Environmental Quality Act, the state's Private Attorneys General Act, and Vehicle Miles Traveled rules that govern how transportation impacts are assessed under CEQA. VMT rules were implemented statewide in July 2020 under Senate Bill 743, requiring developers to evaluate total driving distances generated by a project rather than just localized traffic congestion, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Hilton also wants to suspend PAGA lawsuits and taxes on investment, though the report notes his plan would retain existing clean air and water standards.
Building on 1% of California's Land
Hilton has argued California could develop another 1 percent of its land, or roughly 1 million additional acres, and that doing so could accommodate 5 million people in single-family homes while at least doubling the state's manufacturing capacity, per the New York Post's reporting. He has framed the fight in blunt terms, describing the choice facing voters as builders versus blockers and growth versus decline.
The push comes as California's affordability crunch has intensified. Mid-tier home prices in the state averaged $775,000 as of July — more than double the national median — while typical monthly mortgage payments have climbed 74% since January 2020, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office. Hilton has pointed to California's youth unemployment as another symptom of the problem the state's bureaucracy has created, though his own citations on the exact ranking have varied: the New York Post reports he has described California as having the second-highest youth unemployment rate in the nation, while an earlier Hilton statement claimed California trailed only Delaware. Separately, a Census Bureau labor survey released in August 2025 found California posted a 21.6% summer unemployment rate among teens aged 16 to 19, the highest such rate of any state, even as the state's overall unemployment rate stood at 5.2% in June, according to MinimumWage.com.
Blaming Progressive Policy for an Exodus to Texas
Hilton has attributed California's economic problems to what he calls its left-leaning bureaucracy and progressive policies, and he has blamed climate posturing, high taxes, burdensome regulation, litigation and powerful union interests for pushing residents and businesses to Texas, per the New York Post's account. In a post on X on Monday, Hilton said California must oppose the further rise of socialism, framing his regulatory suspension as a direct countermeasure.
Some of Hilton's targets have already seen legislative action. Governor Gavin Newsom signed budget trailer bills Assembly Bill 130 and Senate Bill 131 in June 2025, creating targeted CEQA exemptions for urban infill housing and specified infrastructure projects, according to a legal analysis by Meyers Nave. Newsom also signed Assembly Bill 2288 and Senate Bill 92 into law in July 2024, narrowing worker standing requirements under PAGA and giving employers new mechanisms to cure Labor Code violations before trial, according to the California Department of Industrial Relations. Those changes stand in contrast to the complete decade-long freeze Hilton is now proposing.
A Campaign Built on Deregulation
Hilton's regulatory push is not new territory for him. Before entering the governor's race, he co-founded Golden Together in 2023, a California policy research organization that published white papers pushing for CEQA elimination, business deregulation, water storage expansion and housing permit overhauls, according to Semafor. Hilton previously served as strategy director for former British Prime Minister David Cameron and hosted a show on Fox News before launching his campaign.
The San Francisco appearance follows other recent campaign stops, including a July 25 event in Bell Gardens where Hilton appeared alongside lieutenant governor candidate Gloria Romero and state Senate District 30 candidate Araceli Martinez and hosted a Latino block party. He also held a press conference across from the Lineage warehouse fire site in Boyle Heights on July 22, part of a broader effort to court voters outside his traditional base.
Facing Becerra in November
Hilton is facing Democrat Xavier Becerra in the November 3 runoff after the two topped the June 2 primary field, with Becerra taking 28.0% of the vote to Hilton's 24.6%, according to the Associated Press. Becerra, the former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary and former California Attorney General, is campaigning on protecting state environmental regulations and expanding healthcare access, and previously filed roughly 120 lawsuits against the first Trump administration, according to the Los Angeles Times. He holds endorsements from outgoing Governor Newsom and state party leadership, per the same report.
Whether Hilton could actually implement a decade-long regulatory suspension remains an open question. Any such overhaul would require cooperation from Sacramento's Democratic supermajorities, which have shown little appetite for wholesale deregulation even as they've approved narrower CEQA and PAGA fixes in recent years. Hilton has suggested some changes could be enacted through executive powers alone, but the state also faces a projected $18 billion budget deficit for fiscal year 2026-27 and structural deficits reaching $35 billion annually starting in 2027-28, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office — a fiscal backdrop that could complicate any plan pairing steep tax cuts with a massive infrastructure push.
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