(The Center Square) – Candidates for various elected offices spoke Friday and Saturday about priorities regarding affordability, public safety and other statewide issues at the California Republican Convention in San Diego.
The annual convention is being held this weekend at the Sheraton San Diego Resort. Party leadership and delegates were to continue discussions about races for governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer and other positions on Saturday night.
Ahead of the meeting of delegates, some candidates spoke in scheduled sessions at the convention about their platforms or talked exclusively with The Center Square about their take on taxpayer issues.
Steve Hilton
The leading Republican candidate for governor, Hilton earned the endorsement President Donald Trump on Monday, which he spoke about to an audience at the convention on Friday. The former Fox host also spoke about some of his priorities if he were elected governor to an audience of Central Valley Republicans on Saturday morning.
“Here’s what’s going to happen starting a few months from now,” Hilton said to the crowd. “The water will be flowing to our farmers. The oil will be flowing to our refineries. The forests will be managed.”
Hilton, in response to a question from The Center Square on Friday, said he doesn’t see how a Democrat can win the governor’s race in November.
“I don’t understand how a Democratic candidate has a chance of winning,” Hilton told The Center Square. “After 16 years of one-party rule that’s ending in the highest poverty rate in the country, the highest unemployment rate in all 50 states, the highest cost of living. After all of this, the Democrats are asking for another four years of one-party rule? No way. They don’t deserve another four minutes.”
A recent University of California, Berkeley poll showed Hilton and fellow Republican gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco, who’s the Riverside County sheriff, ahead of all other candidates, Republican or Democrat, with 17% and 16% of the vote respectively. Campaign signs and merchandise for both candidates were seen at the convention.
Gretha Solorzano
Former businesswoman Gretha Solorzano, a Republican candidate for governor, told The Center Square in an exclusive interview on Friday that she’s focused on issues of affordability and solving California’s budget woes.
The state faces a $35 billion a year budget deficit starting in fiscal year 2027-28, and the state’s total bond debt stands at $99 billion.
Republican lawmakers in Sacramento have said that California doesn’t have a revenue problem, but a spending problem. But Solorzano believes that the state has problems on both fronts. She said she wants to see the billions of dollars the state spends importing oil into the state pay for development of the oil industry instead.
“We are in a deficit because companies are leaving, 40% of our taxes are paid by the 1% of the population, so we are creating this environment in which wealth is leaving California,” Solorzano told The Center Square. “How about we invest instead of shutting down our refineries and shutting down our wealth, how about actually using some of that money and invest it right here in California?”
Solorzano said she would invest money the state collects in oil revenue to help spur job creation in the oil industry and manufacturing, which she wants to see come back to the state.
Solorzano also wants to use state money to pay for development of the state’s water infrastructure, similar to Democratic Sen. Anna Caballero’s 2025 bill, Senate Bill 72, which aims to develop 9 billion new acre-feet of water by 2040.
“Look what that would do to our economy,” Solorzano said. “Housing prices would come down and food prices would come down. It would continue to sustain jobs in California.”
Caballero told The Center Square in recent weeks that she envisions that bonds would pay for the development of additional water infrastructure. But Solorzano emphatically doesn’t believe the state needs to go into additional bond debt to pay for water infrastructure development.
“No, no, absolutely not,” Solorzano said when told Caballero wants to pay for SB 72 with bonds. “We have plenty of money. We need to bring revenues back to California and use our money.”
Unlike her rivals in the governor’s race, Solorzano did not know what Proposition 36 was. Prop. 36 was passed by California voters in 2024 and elevated certain drug-related and theft crimes from misdemeanors to felonies. The ballot measure passed by 68.4% of the vote statewide in November 2024. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom opposed the measure and allocated no new funding to enforcing Prop. 36 in his 2026-27 budget.
When asked if she would allocate money to enforcing Prop. 36, Solorzano asked for more information about what Prop. 36 was.
“I think I would need to read more about it before I answered that,” Solorzano said.
Rep. Jay Obernolte
U.S. Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Hesperia, spoke to a room full of Republicans from California’s Central Valley on Saturday morning, saying that a challenge Republicans in Congress face now is narrow margins by which to pass legislation. Obernolte noted the Republican-Democratic margin in Washington is still 218-214.
Three of the 435 seats are vacant. That means Republicans can pass legislation even if one Republican votes with Democrats – assuming the Democrats vote together.
All 435 seats will be voted on during the Nov. 3 midterm election.
David Serpa
Serpa, a candidate for state treasurer, told The Center Square on Saturday morning in an exclusive interview that he is concerned about fraudulent or wasteful spending in the state’s budget. Serpa adopted the California Republican party’s oft-quoted phrase, “California doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem.”
“They’re not doing anything well, yet they keep increasing their budget without any sort of accountability,” Serpa said.
The California Air Resources Board and programs and regulations instituted under the California Environmental Quality Act would be two of the first things Serpa would cut if he were elected to State Treasurer, he said.
“We already have federal oversight and federal regulations,” Serpa said. “Why do we need more state oversight and regulations, and why do we need county oversight and regulations on top of that?”
He also wants to develop the state’s oil industry, and looks on the continual shutting down of the state’s remaining oil refineries as an economic harm to the state. Regulations that limit drilling don’t just drive oil refineries out of the state, but also increase gas prices for the Golden State’s drivers.
“We have deep oil reserves, some of the deepest oil reserves in the world, yet we’re paying the most for gasoline,” Serpa said. “We’ve been shutting down oil refineries, we’ve been shutting down nuclear power plants, and we can’t be surprised when we’ve got $6 gas and no one can afford their energy bill.”
If he wins the election, Serpa said he wants to lower gas prices by allowing private businesses the chance to solve the problem he says government created by instituting too many regulations.
Tony Strickland
State Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Huntington Beach, also told The Center Square on Saturday afternoon that while he sees California has a spending problem, not a revenue problem, there are certain programs he would like to cut to reduce government spending besides cutting waste and fraud.
“There’s going to be some programs I can definitely cut,” Strickland told The Center Square. “High-speed rail is at the top of the list. Health care to undocumented immigrants. BART, because that should be a local thing that is done.” BART – the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District – received a $590 million loan in legislation signed by Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor.
Strickland also said he would like to see more concrete measures of success or failure in homelessness spending, which he would also cut.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice and news reports, millions of dollars were fraudulently spent on homelessness programs in California. One case involved a man who was accused of obtaining $23 million of taxpayer money that was meant to pay for homelessness services in Los Angeles and taking millions of dollars for himself.
Strickland also told The Center Square this weekend that a number of bills he introduced are aimed to reduce the cost of living in California and address issues of affordability. One bill, Senate Bill 1035, would suspend the state’s gas tax for one year. The bill failed in the Senate Environmental Quality Committee in a bill hearing on March 19.
California has consistently had the highest gas prices in the nation for several years, and it has risen over a $1 a gallon since the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran started. On Saturday, the average was $5.90 a gallon, above the national average of $4.14.
Another bill Strickland introduced, SB 926, aims to allocate $400 million of general fund money to funding enforcement of Proposition 36.
“I can’t recall the last initiative that passed all 58 counties,” Strickland said of the popular measure. “We’re gaining ground, actually. Not only did I introduce my bill, but I sent a letter to the budget lead, [Senator John] Laird, to fully fund that $400 million.”
Another letter by Umberg, Blakespear and Richardson asked for the same amount of money to fund Prop. 36, Strickland said.
“We’re gaining momentum to get law enforcement the tools they need to keep us safe,” Strickland said. “Democrats, independents and Republicans voted overwhelmingly to get this done. It shouldn’t be this hard to get this funded – it should be the first thing funded, not the last.”
Laurie Davies
Assemblymember Laurie Davies, R-Oceanside, told The Center Square on Friday that she doesn’t want to cut any state agencies or programs to reduce state spending.
“We do not have a revenue problem,” Davies said. “It’s where the revenue is going and how it’s being used. I think it’s really important we stop the fraud, and we need to know what our budget is, get the accountability and then we know who the good actors are and who are actually performing and actually getting good results and what we need and those that aren’t.”
When asked who the bad actors are who waste taxpayer dollars, Davies couldn’t answer the question.
“When we put money into programs, the programs are supposed to be doing something, whether it’s health, education, whatever it may be, to better someone’s life,” Davies told The Center Square. “You have to look at them individually. I never want to put them under one label.”
Davies also said that Prop. 36 funding could come from the general fund revenue or other funds allocated to public safety.
Just days after Trump endorsed Hilton for governor of California, Davies added that a Republican governor could still face the challenge of seeing any veto overridden by what will still likely be a Democratic supermajority in the legislature.
“I’m not afraid of it,” Davies said when asked if she is concerned that a Republican governor would have any veto overridden. “It would depend on whatever the legislation was.”
Assemblymember Leticia Castillo, R-Corona, who is also running for re-election in November, declined to be interviewed on Saturday morning. Many of California’s Republican state senators and Assembly members did not attend the conference in San Diego this weekend.
