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Steve Hilton & Spencer Pratt: Fixing California, Cheaper Gas, Ballot Fraud & CA Republicans

Steve Hilton & Spencer Pratt: Fixing California, Cheaper Gas, Ballot Fraud & CA Republicans

All-In Podcast•55:43•2026-09-23•Source Audio
Host
Chamath PalihapitiyaDavid FriedbergDavid SacksJason Calacanis
Guests
Spencer PrattSteve Hilton

Executive Summary

California gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton joins the besties to make the case that sixteen years of one-party rule have driven the richest state in the richest country to the worst outcomes on poverty, cost of living, and business climate. He frames his campaign as people versus machine — a donor-and-union machine that passes over a thousand unread bills a year — and lays out a path to victory through the 26% of undecided, financially squeezed working voters, promising no state income tax on the first $150,000 of income, $3 gas, and a $73 registration cap while casting opponent Xavier Becerra, in the words of Democrats who worked with him, as unfit. Midway, Spencer Pratt arrives from his own independent Los Angeles mayoral run: his AI-assisted viral videos carried a truth message that cut through in a city where most of his voters were Democrats, yet he lost to a late-count flip he calls mathematically impossible. The conversation turns to California's ballot system: envelopes separated from ballots, chain of custody broken, ballot collection legal where campaigning at the ballot is not. Pressed on whether fraud cost him the election, Pratt says that without evidence he would say no. The final act moves from ballots to fire: still-empty water tanks, protected dry brush, a class action with 10,000 victims over the Palisades fire, and a blocked rebuild — closing on Pratt's pledge to keep making truth-first content and stage a comeback.

Chapters & Key Takeaways

Sixteen years of one-party control have delivered the worst outcomes in the nation on poverty, cost of living, and — in his framing — unemployment, despite California's unmatched natural, agricultural, and innovation assets.
The machine is financial: unions, trial lawyers, and donor interests put 1,118 bills a year in front of a governor who cannot read them, and Hilton pledges to cut regulations from over 420,000 to fewer than 200,000 in a first term.
Hilton's path to victory runs through the 26% undecided — mostly former Democratic working people without college degrees on the financial edge — with a concrete cost-of-living pitch: no state income tax on the first $150,000, $3 gas, and a $73 vehicle-registration cap.
His case against Xavier Becerra leans on Democrats who worked with him — Susan Rice's reported 'idiot' judgment and the Biden-office assessment that running a large agency is not his forte — and casts Becerra as a union-and-trial-lawyer puppet worse than Newsom.
Pratt says his campaign's viral AI-assisted videos worked because they carried truth rather than because of the technology, and that most of his votes came from Democrats in a city where 200,000 registered Republicans stayed home.
He describes the LA mayoral late-count flip as mathematically impossible and argues the system legalizes what looks like fraud: mail-ballot witnesses can sign with an emoji, checks are barred, and one witness could witness 43,000 ballots.
Hilton's street-level thesis is that California punishes doing right and rewards doing wrong: a 14-year-old shoe shop is bankrupted by 2018 street-vending legalization while city-funded nonprofits hand out crack pipes at MacArthur Park.
Pratt contrasts the city's $500,000 for vendor carts and decades of neglect — a $200,000 tank cover left unfixed before the fire, a Boyle Heights warehouse fire while the mayor traveled — with what he calls an unforgivable double standard.
Departing on optimism, Hilton announces a plan for 10 new cities and argues California can quickly rebuild its heyday if regulations, lawsuits, fees, and taxes are cut.
The core disagreement of the episode: Friedberg insists ballot collection is not fraud but a legal design, while Pratt insists the legal design itself — uncleaned rolls, collectable ballots, no voter ID — is the corruption; pressed, Pratt concedes he cannot claim fraud without evidence.
The Palisades rebuild is blocked in his account: the tanks are still empty, protected dry brush cannot be cut, and a class action with 10,000 victims blames state parks and LADWP for a smoldering New Year's Eve fire left before the January wind event.
Next, Pratt plans a truth-focused content mission — 'truth has no sides' — floating a Skid Row data-center idea and promising a comeback, while the hosts urge him to spend two years holding the city accountable.

One-Party California: The Bill, The Fires, And The Ballots

Source Audio / Video

Introduction

Seven weeks before California's 2026 gubernatorial election, Steve Hilton — Republican candidate, British-born immigrant, and former Silicon Valley entrepreneur — sat down with the All-In hosts, followed by Spencer Pratt, fresh from an independent run for Los Angeles mayor that he says was decided after the polls closed. The two hours that followed doubled as an indictment of one-party rule and an argument, from inside two campaigns, about whether the state's ballot system is rigged, legal, or both. The discussion ranged from the price of gasoline to a class-action lawsuit over the Palisades fire, and it ended with the season's central wager: that seven weeks of voting, and two years of pressure, can break a machine.

Hilton opened with the frame that carried his whole appearance: California is not just the largest state but the richest state in the richest country on Earth, and, as he put it, "California means to America what America means to the world."

Sixteen Years Of One-Party Rule

Hilton's state-of-the-state argument was blunt: after 16 years of one-party control, California has the highest poverty rate, the highest unemployment rate, and by far the highest cost of living in the country. He cited Chief Executive magazine, which he said has ranked California 50th out of 50 for business climate for over a decade. The mechanics, in his telling, are volume: last year the legislature passed 1,118 bills that nobody reads before signing. His remedy is a first-term pledge to cut the state's regulations from over 420,000 to fewer than 200,000.

The reason he thinks this lands now is arithmetic: a 30-point partisan gap on primary night has narrowed, poll by poll, to 8 points. Behind the polling is the household math he recites on the trail — an average home price approaching a million dollars against an average individual salary of $65,000.

A Cost-Of-Living Pitch For Persuadable Voters

The campaign's own early survey, Hilton said, shows 33% firmly for him, 41% firmly for his opponent Xavier Becerra, and 26% undecided — mostly former Democratic working people without college degrees on the financial edge. Those 33/41/26 numbers are the whole strategy: the path to victory runs through persuadable Democrats, not base mobilization. The offer to them is concrete: no state income tax on the first $150,000 of income. On energy, he blames about $1.50 a gallon in hidden fuel levies — the low-carbon fuel standard and cap-and-trade — for gas at roughly $6, promising $3. And he would cap vehicle registration at $73 a year, with the DMV as the symbol of the nanny state he is running against.

The Case Against Becerra

On his opponent, Hilton quoted Democrats rather than Republicans: Susan Rice, he said, described Becerra as an "idiot" after four years working with him. He recalled Becerra's own CNN answer before the primary, when asked what he would change about homelessness and poverty: California is the fourth largest economy in the world, people still come to Disneyland and the beaches, so things must be going well. A host added Peter Thiel's old remark that Silicon Valley is a "resource curse" for California — so much wealth and tax revenue that good government is unnecessary — which is how a one-party state hardens.

Pratt's Message And The Mathematically Impossible Flip

Spencer Pratt arrived with a different tone. Where Hilton says "machine," Pratt says "a corrupt criminal mafia cartel" that launders taxes while people die on the sidewalks. His independent mayoral campaign became known for AI-generated viral videos; he insisted the technology was not the point. "It wasn't the AI, it was what was in those videos" — truth, spoken in his own voice, that most of his voters were Democrats responding to. He said he would have won outright had 200,000 registered Republicans in Los Angeles actually voted.

His account of election night is the episode's rawest passage. He was celebrating a clear second place while his opponent cried on camera — and then, in his words, "the most mathematically impossible thing in the history of politics happened," as the third-place candidate overtook both leaders on late mail ballots. The design detail he keeps returning to: under California mail-ballot rules, a witness can sign with an emoji, and witnesses are not checked.

The Street-Level Evidence

Hilton grounded the indictment in two street scenes. At MacArthur Park on a Tuesday mid-morning, he said, four nonprofits come in every day, handing out crack pipes, needles, and drugs — paid for by taxpayers. And in South Central, a spotless 14-year-old family shoe shop is going bankrupt because street vendors cover every inch of the sidewalk outside; Sacramento legalized street vending statewide in 2018, and cities and counties can no longer do anything about it. Pratt's version of the same ledger was blunter: the city found $500,000 to buy vendors carts while his neighborhood burned because a $200,000 tank cover went unfixed. Hilton closed his own appearance on the upside, releasing a plan that day for 10 new cities for California.

Fraud, Or Legal By Design?

The strongest exchange of the episode is the one the two guests and the hosts could not settle. Pratt walked through what he found when he hired law firms to investigate: at the counting site, ballots are separated from their envelopes. Once separated, "they separate them from the envelopes" — no signature can be matched, the chain of custody is broken, and a recount just recounts the same ballots. A host countered that President Trump filed 60 such lawsuits claiming the same thing and lost all 60. Asked point-blank whether he claims he lost to fraud, Pratt answered: "Without evidence, I would say no."

David Friedberg's rebuttal set the terms of the disagreement: "This is not fraud, Jason. It's that they're following a law that was created to allow them to do what they're doing. It's legal." Pratt's counterexample: wearing a campaign hat near a ballot is illegal campaigning, but it is legal for DSA organizers to bike into apartment buildings, collect ballots, and pitch their candidate door to door. He pointed to downtown voter rolls sending hundreds of ballots to an empty parking lot. His bottom line is procedural, not prosecutorial: "we need voter IDs. People should put this to a vote."

The Palisades: Empty Tanks And A Class Action

The final movement moves from ballots to fire. A year after the Palisades fire took his house, Pratt says the empty water tank is still empty, and the one across the street too; a hose from Topanga now supplies the neighborhood. A brush-clearance specialist told him a 300-yard firebreak around the Palisades would have cost "less than $500,000 to save billions" — but cutting protected dry brush brings fines, and LADWP was fined $1 million for trying. Rebuilding is frozen behind a class action with 10,000 victims claiming negligence. The claim at its core: a New Year's Eve 8-acre fire was left smoldering by the state park before the known January 6-7 wind event, over photographed objections that "we're not firefighters." Pratt's answer to the experience question is that Los Angeles needs a mayor who enforces the law.

Seven Weeks And Two Years

What Pratt does next is content: "truth has no sides," he said, declining the Republican label his audience assumes. He floated turning Skid Row into data centers — private billions for the city, water pipes relocated. And the hosts sent him off with a two-year assignment: torture Karen Bass, and be ready when the city calls back. Hilton's timeline is shorter: seven weeks, one debate, and a bet that the 26% have stopped believing the machine's story.

Interview Highlights5 exchanges

Direct dialogue & timestamps from the recording

QJason Calacanis
12:45

You have one debate on September 30th against Becerra. What do you need to do at this debate to change the narrative and shake things up?

ASteve Hilton

Steve Hilton answers with his campaign's own early survey: 33% firmly for him, 41% firmly for Xavier Becerra, 26% undecided — and most of that 26% used to vote Democratic without being committed Democrats. They are mostly working people without a college degree on the financial edge, focused on practical cost-of-living help. His pitch: cut budget bloat — the state budget doubled in ten years while 2 million people left — cancel high-speed rail, cut state employees 10%, end funding for nonprofits that make homelessness worse, and use the savings to end state income tax on the first $150,000 of income. On energy, use California's own oil instead of shipping it around the world, scrap the low-carbon fuel standard and cap-and-trade — about $1.50 a gallon — to move gas from about $6 toward $3, and cap vehicle registration at $73 a year.

QDavid Sacks
16:26

Why shouldn't people vote for Becerra? What is this person's character flaw?

ASteve Hilton

Steve Hilton quotes Democrats who worked with Xavier Becerra. Susan Rice — Biden's domestic policy chief and Obama's national security advisor — worked with him for four years and, in his telling, described Becerra as an 'idiot' and a 'worthless piece of [ __ ]'; Biden's office said running a large executive agency is not exactly his forte. He notes Becerra's 36 years in big politics and argues he is exactly the puppet the broken system needs, doing the bidding of unions, trial lawyers, and activists who have made California more expensive. Becerra will simply agree to everything, and in his assessment he is even worse than Gavin Newsom.

QDavid Sacks
25:00

Spencer, can you really explain what happened in your election? For those who haven't been following what happened in LA, can you give us a summary of what happened?

ASpencer Pratt

On election night Spencer Pratt was celebrating while his opponent, Nithya Raman of the DSA, was crying on camera because she was losing by ten percent — and then, in his words, the most mathematically impossible thing in the history of politics happened: the third-place candidate started slowly winning every day. Democrats do vote by mail, he concedes, but the incumbent mayor was also a Democrat, and the third-place candidate somehow passed both him and the first-place Democrat to get just enough votes to win. Of the 43,000 votes she gained by mail, he asks how many belong to downtown LA's naked zombie drug addicts. The system, he argues, is designed so that what looks like fraud is not fraud: a mail-ballot witness can sign with an emoji, checks are not allowed, and one witness could witness 43,000 ballots. He stresses he is not saying they cheated.