Why a defeat for Hilton would be a victory for Trump

If the last few weeks have shown us anything, it’s that the gubernatorial primary is a surprisingly close race between a trio of unlikely leaders: MAGA Republican Steve Hilton and Democrats Xavier Becerra and Tom Steyer.

Although President Trump has supported Hilton, a former Fox News host, a Hilton loss could be exactly what Trump wants: more fuel to fuel his MAGA base with false claims of a rigged election.

“Whether Hilton finishes first, second or third, Trump will declare without any evidence that there is voter fraud,” Matt Barreto told me. He is a professor of political science at UCLA and founder of its Voting Rights Project, intended to promote free and fair elections.

And since it will likely take days or weeks for California to count all the ballots, a close race will be fertile ground for these claims of fraudulent fraud. Trump has already started, clearly planning to use our primaries to bolster his efforts to assert federal control of state-run elections.

“There’s a really rigged vote in California,” Trump said last week, when asked about Hilton and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, another unlikely right-wing candidate. “California is one of the most dishonest states when it comes to voting.”

California is, of course, not being dishonest in its vote, and Trump has been complaining about the election for so long that this rhetoric might elicit little more than a shrug from most. But California’s elections matter at this crucial time, just months before the midterm elections. Allegations of fraud will further erode trust in our election system and could provide Trump with ammunition for interference across the country.

Allegations of voter fraud could also test a new California law intended to protect the real integrity and confidence of elections — a law (Senate Bill 73, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last week) that has received little attention but could provide a model protection for the rest of the United States. It prevents law enforcement officers, including federal agents, from “providing unauthorized access, disruption, alteration, or seizure of voter rolls, voter rolls, or certified voting technology” without a court order.

Call it Sheriff Chad Bianco’s law.

Bianco, another MAGA gubernatorial candidate, seized hundreds of thousands of ballots in a recent election, claiming he was investigating the kind of wrongdoing Trump constantly alleges without proof. State Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana), a former federal prosecutor, said the warrant Bianco got from a friendly judge was “woefully deficient.”

So Umberg helped pass the measure aimed at “protecting the integrity of California’s elections” from “rogue law enforcement officials,” he said.

And he’s not just talking about Bianco.

“I worry about federal interference in the election,” Umberg said. “I believe Donald Trump when he says, ‘I’m going to interfere in the election.’

Umberg is so concerned that he has two other bills in the works and he hopes they will pass by November. This would prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from being present at polling places. The other would make it illegal for anyone running for a third presidential term to appear on the California ballot.

The accumulation of fraud allegations surrounding California’s elections and resistance from lawmakers like Umberg is a substantive battle that hasn’t received much attention, but is real and consequential.

Trump, through the U.S. Department of Justice’s demands for voter rolls, promotion of the SAVE Act, vague threats of ICE or other federal agents at polling places, and the inclusion of election deniers on major federal rolls, has gutted voting safeguards nationally.

States were slow to address the threat, largely waiting until November to see how it would play out. California, to its credit, is not so complacent.

The strange circumstances of this particular California election could provide a test for both camps. Barreto, the UCLA voting expert, said he thinks “Hilton has the highest probability of finishing first on Tuesday with Becerra close by in second and Steyer in third.”

But that could — and likely would — change as more ballots are counted.

By Thursday, Barreto said, it’s likely (but far from certain) that Becerra will be in the lead and Hilton in second.

“There will certainly be millions of additional ballots counted Wednesday and Thursday and they will be disproportionately Democratic and will contribute to Becerra and Steyer’s numbers,” he said.

Maybe push Steyer into second place? Again, this is far from the case. But possible.

This year, Democrats held on to their ballots until the last minute, and many of them waited until the last few days to vote. It’s possible (although unlikely) that in terms of numbers, Democratic voters will propel Steyer and Becerra into November.

We know that Republicans, despite their smaller numbers, voted and trusted the Postal Service with their ballots this time around at a fairly high rate. This is despite Trump’s claims that mail-in voting is inherently fraudulent.

So even as we expect a large influx of Democratic votes in the coming days, Republicans could be closer to their voting peak, meaning Hilton’s numbers could peak on election night.

If Hilton doesn’t make the top three, after leading in in-person voting, MAGA will most certainly lose its collective spirit.

And Trump will have something as good as a Republican governor of the Golden State – “proof” that we cheated.

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