How would Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton manage California’s most precious resource, water?

California’s next governor must reckon with a state of extremes — where weather swings from drought to deluge, and water divides the land of backyard swimming pools from places where grandmothers fear to bathe babies in water from the tap. 

Climate change is raising the stakes, amplifying the cycles of wet to dry and fueling conflicts between water haves and have-nots that have defined California for generations. 

The next governor — Republican Steve Hilton or Democrat Xavier Becerra — will inherit these challenges, and more. 

Groundwater overuse and sinking land in the state’s agricultural heartland continue to jeopardize both water supply and delivery systems. The fishing industry is cratering and farmers feel so squeezed that some are planting solar panels instead of crops.

And, hundreds of thousands of Californians still lack access to safe, affordable water. 

From this shared reality, the two candidates’ strategies diverge: Hilton is outspoken about his plans to clearcut environmental regulations in order to build more ways to store and move water to farms and cities.  

Becerra leans on his history as attorney general, the legal arm in California’s first-term fights against President Donald Trump. But Becerra offers no specific proposals on water. 

“(Becerra) knows that there is not a whole lot of upside for him in coming out with detailed plans ahead of the election,” said Max Gomberg, an independent water consultant and former climate and conservation manager for the State Water Resources Control Board, who resigned in protest of the Newsom administration’s water policies. 

“Because no matter what he says, someone will pop up to criticize it.” 

More is more

Republican Hilton’s water strategy is: more. 

More water for farms. More storage. More desalination. More water recycling. More of the state’s money, spent to cut expensive water bills and build more infrastructure. Less of the rulebooks for protecting endangered species from California’s water delivery systems — which he says get in the way of more. 

“We can and should have abundant water in California, and there’s no reason that we don’t other than bad policy and mismanagement,” Hilton told CalMatters. “You get to abundant supply with a much more aggressive plan for building and running capture, storage, distribution of water in all its forms.”

Hilton, political strategist and former host of The Next Revolution on Fox News, traded the United Kingdom for California permanently in 2012 and settled in the wealthy Bay Area enclave of Atherton. In 2024, he wrote a water policy strategy with Edward Ring of the libertarian think tank California Policy Center. 

The plan, titled “Achieving Water Abundance,” estimates that making abundant water a reality could take as much as $150 billion, assuming regulatory reforms. 

Hilton and Ring proposed a combination of funding sources, including a 2% allocation from the state’s general fund gleaned by “cutting wasteful and ineffective programs.” 

Water experts are skeptical. 

“Rule 1. There is plenty of water, there is no more cheap water,” said Greg Gartrell, retired water manager at a Northern California water district and now an adjunct fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “The only cheap water is water that someone else pays for and gives to you below cost.” 

Hilton is bullish on building. That includes Sites Reservoir — the Northern California reservoir expected to cost between $6.2 and $6.8 billion that’s intended to store Sacramento River water to send south. The project is closer to clearing a major permitting hurdle after pressure from Newsom and other backers to relax limits aimed at protecting fish and others relying on the river’s water, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. 

Hilton also backs the Trump administration’s controversial proposal to build Shasta dam higher. 

The powerful Westlands Water District, the nation’s largest farm water supplier and a major player in California’s $60 billion agricultural industry, has long supported both.  

“It is good to hear that Mr. Hilton is considering water infrastructure, and really already considering water projects,” said Allison Febbo, Westlands general manager. Neither candidate, Febbo said, has met with Westlands staff and the district is not permitted to make endorsements or contributions to campaigns. 

Opponents to the reservoir project and dam raise, including fishing and environmental groups as well as the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, fear that further loss of river flows will harm iconic salmon and other species already imperiled under federal and state water management. 

Though Hilton said he sees the salmon industry as “hugely important, just as important as the ag industry,” his goal, he said, is to “rebalance the system in favor of agriculture and domestic use away from the very, very narrow focus on what they call environmental use, but actually it’s much narrower than that — it’s a couple of fish species.” 

Plummeting population numbers forced the cancellation of salmon fishing for three years in a row during Newsom’s tenure as governor. 

The one thing Hilton’s determined not to build is the Delta tunnel, Newsom’s version of a decades-old plan to route water around — rather than through — the fragile Delta in order to send more water south. That, for Hilton, is a building project too far. 

“I’m totally against it,” Hilton said. “It’s ridiculous, and unnecessary.” 

Abundance: a bipartisan buzzword

Frontrunner candidate Becerra — former state assemblymember, congressman, California attorney general, and U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services — is much more cautious about making promises.

Unlike Hilton, Becerra has not detailed water plans and has no specific water policies on his campaign website. He refused multiple requests from CalMatters for an interview on water issues. CalMatters eventually emailed his campaign the same list of questions that Hilton responded to over the phone. 

After several follow-ups, spokesperson Jonathan Underland responded: 

“As governor, Becerra will bring everyone to the table to modernize our water infrastructure, guarantee safe, affordable drinking water for every Californian, give farms and businesses the reliable supply they need to grow, and prepare for the wet and dry years ahead.”

Becerra’s is an audible silence in a state where 83% of Democrats, 77% of Independents, and 67% of Republicans say they are more likely to support a candidate who “prioritizes improving California’s water reliability and affordability,” according to polling earlier this summer by the Association of California Water Agencies and FM3 Research. 

Instead, Becerra has said he’ll listen. 

“I will tell you, as governor, when you’re at the table sitting with me, I will listen to what you think we need to do,” he told the audience at an April forum in Fresno hosted by powerful agricultural groups. “Because water is more precious than gold. Let’s make it work.”

Some water experts say Becerra’s deliberative approach is refreshing on an issue as complex as California’s water. 

“The idea of a governor who wants to think about things and talk to everyone — that’s music to my ears,” said Felicia Marcus, who led the State Water Resources Control Board under Gov. Jerry Brown. “It’s something you want a governor to do even after they’re elected, you know, versus being fully baked.”

Others are more cynical. 

“Becerra’s right. It would be great if everybody was at the table,” said Peter Gleick, climate scientist and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a global water think tank. “But what’s being served?”

Where Becerra is light on specifics, he’s deep on history. As attorney general, he sued the Trump administration more than 120 times. His lawsuits beat back a Westlands-assisted effort to raise Shasta dam, and contested a Trump proposal affecting water delivery systems that state officials feared would harm salmon and other species. 

At their only one-on-one debate, Hilton described this track record as Becerra “suing to stop our farmers getting the water that they need.” 

Becerra fired back: “Donald Trump was trying to impose his standards on California when it comes to water infrastructure. We have a right to make sure water in California is regulated by California.” 

For all of Becerra’s and Hilton’s barbs, though, they echo each other in some ways.

Both agreed at the Fresno forum during the primary election that protecting groundwater is important and both agreed the state’s landmark policy to rein in agricultural overpumping may be overburdened by bureaucracy.  

But where Hilton said the answer is more surface water and that “it’s all insane. It all needs to be cut back and shut down wherever possible,” Becerra said rules are necessary. 

“I’m not sure how some folks who want to get rid of our rules that help us manage groundwater believe that we can do the right thing without some guidance. I agree that maybe there’s too much regulation … and we have to trim it back. But let’s be honest: we need groundwater.”

Like Hilton, Becerra, too, has centered his limited public remarks on the promise of abundance — predictable supplies for farms, conservation, groundwater recharge and wastewater recycling. 

“We have to do a far better job of storage, of conveyance, and we have to do a far better job of conservation and distribution,” Becerra at the Fresno forum. “We have enough water in California. It’s making the best use of it, and the state has an obligation to be the big investor to make it work for everyone.”

Unlike Hilton, though, Becerra’s version of ‘more’ may include the deeply controversial Delta tunnel, called the Delta Conveyance Project. 

Questioned about it at a January forum hosted by California Environmental Voters and others, Becerra nodded to ecological concerns tunnel opponents raise, but added, “We should never say no to anything until we’ve examined it completely … everything should be on the table, and everyone should be at the table.” 

The history of more

‘More’ is a strategy that California governors have tried before, over and over, with mixed results. But none have moved water at the scale — or with the hubris — of Gov. Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. 

In the 1960s, in a feat of nature-defying engineering, Brown spearheaded construction of the State Water Project to carry Northern California river water to Central and Southern California. 

“I wanted this to be a monument to me,” Brown said of the project, which now funnels water through 705 miles of aqueducts and canals to two-thirds of California’s population and Central Valley farmland. 

The emphasis, noted Norris Hundley — one of California’s great chroniclers of water — was Brown’s. 

But the lengths California’s leaders have taken to move water from rivers and aquifers to cities and farms have consequences. A dying Delta. Undrinkable water. Disappearing species. Sinking earth.

In his 1952 novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck described how the turning of California’s great water wheel drove out memories of what came before: “And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”

But in this new California, where the wheel turns wild and fast, Californians remember both. The state is recovering from its driest three-year stretch on record, followed by catastrophic floods. The Colorado River’s massive reservoirs plunged to record lows this past summer. Now, California is on the brink of an El Niño winter, and the rainfall and flooding it could bring. 

The question is whether the next governor is ready to manage what’s coming. Gleick isn’t sure. 

“Here’s the problem: The problem is what we’ve always done for California water no longer works,” Gleick said. “And no governor has been able to move beyond incremental approaches, incremental changes to past policies.”