The reason nothing changes in California is that the interests benefiting from the system — government unions, trial lawyers, and non-government unions — are the #1, #2, and #3 funders of the politicians who make the decisions.
Hilton tells a story of a Democratic legislator who privately admitted his own housing reform proposal would be transformational but couldn't support it publicly because 'the unions run this place.' He then cites Gavin Newsom's donation history to show that government unions, trial lawyers, and non-government unions are the top three donor categories. ✦ AI generated
Steve Hilton · All-In Podcast · 2026-04-29 · original ↗
plays this moment only · 34:10 — 37:36
“Why hasn't the California government confronted this? It has the highest rents in America. It has the highest poverty rate in America. And it also has the highest regulation that has the lowest and the slowest unit housing growth. Steve, I guess what I'm asking you is, how does that not get to the legislatures more?”
I took meetings with legislators. There's one meeting I had with the legislator who was described to me as good on housing. This is a person you need to talk to. And we had a great meeting. They said this would be transformational. I said, great, let's work on it together. ...Oh, I couldn't support you publicly. Why not? Well, the unions would hate it. ...if you take away the private right of action, you take away the union's leverage. And I said, yeah, but you just told me it would be transformational. They just waved their arm around like this and said, yeah, the unions run this place.
verbatim transcript · starts at 34:10