California Republicans walked into their San Diego state party convention this weekend with more spring in their step than they’ve had in years, largely because Eric Swalwell’s political troubles gave them something to celebrate. The unity, though, stopped right there. Ask delegates who should actually run for governor and the room splits fast.

The two candidates chasing the California Republican Party endorsement are Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, and both of them spent the weekend working every handshake and hallway conversation they could find ahead of the June primary. Hilton is the former Fox News host turned candidate. Bianco is the Riverside County Sheriff who made his name fighting COVID mandates. Both want the same thing, and neither’s backing down.

It’s worth remembering what the baseline looks like. California hasn’t sent a Republican to the governor’s office since Arnold Schwarzenegger finished his second term in 2011. That’s 15 years without a win at the top of the ticket, and voter registration trends haven’t exactly moved in the party’s direction since then. The LA Times covered the convention and captured the split clearly: delegates were happy about Swalwell’s problems but couldn’t agree on who should carry the fight forward.

Still, the mood was different this cycle. Several delegates said 2026 feels like a real opening, not just a moral victory in the making. The Swalwell situation, whatever it amounts to legally, handed Republicans a ready-made contrast heading into what’s already shaping up as a brutal campaign season.

That energy doesn’t solve the Hilton-versus-Bianco problem, though.

“Both candidates are making legitimate arguments,” one delegate told me, speaking without authorization to go on record. “That’s actually what makes this hard.”

Hilton’s argument is fundamentally structural. In a state where Republican nominees start 12 or more points underwater before a single ad runs, name recognition and fundraising capacity aren’t luxuries. They’re survival tools. His team points to his media profile and his ability to command earned media as advantages that a lower-profile candidate can’t replicate. He’s built his brand on tech skepticism and a brand of conservatism that’s meant to feel fresh rather than recycled from 04-era GOP playbooks.

Bianco’s pitch runs in the opposite direction. He’s not interested in sounding like a cable news personality, and his supporters don’t hide the fact that they consider that a specific knock on Hilton. The Riverside County Sheriff has spent years building credibility with voters who care about public safety, fiscal sanity, and a government that doesn’t lecture them. His coalition skews toward the Central Valley and the Southern California communities where former Democrats landed after leaving the party and haven’t fully committed anywhere else.

Both arguments have genuine traction inside the California GOP, which has always carried the weight of being a coalition that doesn’t agree on much beyond wanting to win. Coastal conservatives, inland traditionalists, and suburban swing voters don’t naturally produce consensus candidates.

The endorsement itself won’t show up on any ballot under California’s top-two system, where the two highest vote-getters in the June primary advance regardless of party. But what the party’s backing does is signal to major donors, funnel grassroots volunteer energy, and tell the political press corps who Republicans are treating as serious. In a state where Republicans are perpetually resource-constrained, that signal matters more than it would somewhere the party was actually competitive at the statewide level.

What neither camp can fully answer yet is whether the Swalwell story has the staying power to reshape a race that Democrats still control structurally. It’s generated noise. It’s given convention delegates a reason to feel good going into a cycle that normally requires a tolerance for disappointment. Whether it does anything to the underlying math of a California governor’s race is a separate question entirely.

Republicans leave San Diego energized but divided. The June primary will sort the rest of it out.