In summary
A suggestive new ad from Hilton is trying to seduce liberal voters into voting Republican — and has instead infuriated her conservative allies.
The room is dark, the background music sings, the ambiance suggestive. Two young women (dyed hair, pierced faces) sit in front of a rainbow pride flag, one cajoling the other to try something she’s never done before.
“Give me your hand, close your eyes and I’ll do all the work,” one says to the other, guiding her hand to…fill out her mail-in ballot for California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton.
To set the record straight, the campaign ad ends with a directive to “lick” – the envelope, surely.
The eyebrow-raising new digital and TV ad is part of the British American’s “all of the above” campaign strategy to try to persuade California voters to elect a statewide Republican for the first time in two decades. He will face Democrat Xavier Becerra, the state’s former attorney general, in the Nov. 3 election.
It’s no surprise that many were offended by a political ad inviting the public to an imaginary date between a woman. But Hilton’s attempt to seduce liberals into experimenting with Republicanism – with the slogan “Try it!” » – got him into the most hot water with his conservative colleagues. Some of Hilton’s supporters have criticized him on social media for what they consider inappropriate content.
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Sonja Shaw, a conservative Southern California school board chairwoman and candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, called the ad “creepy, weird, disturbing bullshit” on social media. Her ally, influential evangelical pastor Jack Hibbs, made homophobic comments in response to the ad, saying it depicted “a lesbian problem among college and some high school girls that is currently a pandemic of social disease.” He said he would always support Hilton.
“This is a clear example of why good people are moving away from the Republican Party,” Shaw wrote.
Michael Gates, the Republican nominee for attorney general, also added, condemning the ad for its “sexualized depiction of young women.” Gates was particularly offended by the phrase “What if my dad finds out?” ” and said in a press release that the ad undermines the “sanctity of the relationship between parents and their children.” (Although the woman depicted in the ad is clearly young, she is probably an adult, as one must be to vote.)
Provocative, headline-grabbing media stunts are familiar territory for Hilton, who cut his political teeth in the 1990s as a publicist for the British Conservative Party. The same goes for social liberalism: he turned that advertising job into a career in marketing and is widely credited, as a close adviser to former Prime Minister David Cameron, with softening the British right’s approach to LGBTQ couples. His campaign for California governor is taking a tougher stance, targeting transgender girls’ participation in girls’ sports.
A second ad features another parody of a California liberal, a meditating hippie, lured to vote for Hilton in order to “expand (his) mind” at a spiritual retreat on the coast.
Parental backlash on issues of gender and sexuality has prompted a wave of California conservatives, like Shaw, to get involved in state and local politics in recent years. So has Hilton underestimated the cultural conservatism that underpins the modern California Republican movement?
“That’s not how I think about it,” he said by phone Monday. “Maybe that’s an analyst’s way of looking at it, but I’m a participant. I’m doing everything I can to win elections because the state desperately needs change.”
Republican adman Fred Davis called the ad “brilliant” and said it was successful in capturing the attention of Californians. But he predicted it wouldn’t result in a victory for Hilton, because it won’t convince so-called blue-haired, “Resist” T-shirt-wearing young women to vote for him. Davis is known for producing the “demon sheep” ad, a quirky three-minute pitch for 2010 Senate candidate Carly Fiorina that portrayed her opponent Tom Campbell as a fiscally liberal wolf hiding among a flock of real conservative sheep.
“I will go to great lengths to get attention,” Davis said. “But why am I voting for Steve Hilton? … He accomplished half of this man’s goal really, really well. But you have to have both.”
In a video he posted over the weekend, Hilton explained that the ads were part of a strategy to reach Californians who might never have considered voting for a Republican, and said he understood the criticism but stood by his tactic.
In an interview, he dismissed the backlash as a minor disagreement with his Republican colleagues over strategy. He said he still has their support and just finished a campaign event with Shaw. Shaw did not respond to a call from CalMatters seeking comment.
“Anything strong causes a strong reaction,” Hilton said. “You see that in art, you see that in everything.”
Unlike other Hilton ads, the “Just try it” series features real actors and was not generated by artificial intelligence, he said. Gabriel Mann, a filmmaker who made campaign ads for conservative reality TV star Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayoral race, made those ads for $125,000. More commercials will come as part of the series, Hilton said.
