Outsiders Are In: How Spencer Pratt and Steve Hilton Are Shaking Up California Politics

California, long considered one of the most reliably Democratic states in the nation, woke up Wednesday morning to primary results that have political observers buzzing — and wondering whether the Golden State’s political landscape might be shifting in ways no one quite anticipated.

In the race for California governor, Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra led the pack, while in the Los Angeles mayoral contest, incumbent Karen Bass and reality TV star Spencer Pratt held the top two spots in early returns. The performances of both Hilton and Pratt — two political outsiders with zero prior experience in elected office — sent a clear message: California voters are hungry for something different.

Hilton argued that he and Pratt are both there to shake up a system that is obviously not working, saying their campaigns are resonating because they are outsiders who have never run for office before. That anti-establishment energy has clearly struck a chord.

Before running for governor, Hilton served as a conservative media personality on Fox News and, before that, as a political advisor to British Prime Minister David Cameron. Peppering his stump speech with British expressions and a dash of profanity, he has argued that California is broken and only an outsider can fix it.

Pratt’s candidacy tells an equally compelling story. His motivation stems from the Palisades Fire, which destroyed his family’s home. What began as a wildfire victim’s rage at city leadership transformed into a surprisingly serious political campaign. Standing outside his election night watch party, Pratt declared, “I didn’t know I’d be here tonight, but this is obviously God’s plan and I’m going to go all the way.”

But here’s where things get complicated — and familiar to anyone who has watched California elections before. Final, official results may take days or weeks to solidify as mail-in ballots arriving up to seven days after Election Day continue to be processed and counted. That timeline matters enormously, because the pattern of how those late ballots break is well established.

Votes counted after Election Day in California are typically more Democratic, and in this election, Democratic voters appeared to be returning their ballots at a slower pace than in past elections — suggesting the shift could be even more pronounced than usual.

With 63 percent of the vote counted by 3 a.m. Wednesday, Pratt held second place with 30.4 percent, ahead of third-place progressive City Council member Nithya Raman by 8 points — but a whopping 300,000 votes remained to be counted, and Raman appeared to be slowly closing the gap, in keeping with the trend of Republican votes tending to arrive earlier in the tallying process.

Hilton called it “ridiculous” that the state has a system where it could take days or even weeks to get election results. His frustration is understandable — and whether the mail-in wave once again reshapes these races is the central question hanging over California’s most dramatic primary in a generation