Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is absolutely right to point out that fires in California don’t have to be as devastating as they are every year. Democrat politicians in the state do everything they can with over-regulation, bureaucratic incompetence, and woke climate policies to ensure that arson or wildfires cause massive destruction.
Hilton was traveling from Los Angeles to San Diego and seeing some of the Southern California fires for himself. From Malibu to San Clemente, homes and acres are burning, with even the Marine base Camp Pendleton affected. While praising firefighters and extending empathy to victims, Hilton highlighted the fact that California Dems refuse to come up with a plan to mitigate fire damage. Authorities this month are only just getting around to refilling the reservoir that was disastrously empty during the Palisades fires, and Central California farmers accused Dems this summer of still dumping 80% of fresh water into the ocean to protect fish while farms needed the water.
Drove from L.A. to San Diego. Wildfires across SoCal. Of course our immediate thoughts are with the firefighters battling to keep people and property safe. But honestly, we are so done with these politicians who NEVER take the common sense action to prevent and prepare. I will: https://t.co/I0d1HHe951
— Steve Hilton (@SteveHiltonx) October 17, 2026
The fact is that Democrats like Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass simply don’t care how many homes or properties are destroyed so long as it doesn’t affect them personally. In fact, they might even see the wildfires as a benefit.
It was incredibly suspicious that after the infamous Palisades fires in 2025 wrecked so much expensive real estate, Newsom began talking about building a bunch of low-income government housing on the land. Newsom and Bass also slow-rolled the rebuild, and many plots are still little more than ashes and charred wood. Perhaps allowing arson and taking zero effective fire prevention measures is the Communist way of clearing out wealthy people and middle-class private property owners to make way for more government control and welfare-dependent residents.
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Los Angeles appears to be part of the C40 cities compact that aims to phase out private property ownership for most people, and many other California politicians have similar globalist ideas. Newsom, for instance, still receives gushing praise from the World Economic Forum, the organization that wants you to own nothing, have no privacy, and like it. Newsom was also previously a WEF Young Global Leader.
That's all important context to keep in mind as you listen to Hilton talk about the traffic jams and delayed firefighting responses that occur every time California has a major fire. Climate alarmism wins over common sense every time for California Democrats. “We don't have a proper plan in place for preventing fuel loads, [taking on] brush in places like this, by the coast or in the Sierras, in the forests. We're not doing the proper forest management. We're not doing the proper sensible things that we used to do, fire breaks and defensible space [buffer zones].”
He pointed out, “We are not incentivizing homeowners to use fire resistant materials by getting big discounts on their insurance. There's so much technology we could be using. That's one of the things that I'm gonna make sure we do as governor. I've said we will have a fire force to make sure we use the world's best technology, much of it invented here, but actually not even being used here, to fight fires.” In short, Hilton has numerous solutions to ensure Californians don’t have to go through this nightmare every year. Democrats have deliberately created a catastrophic environment for fires.
