SAN DIEGO — Is Steve Hilton trying to lead California, or colonize it?

The Republican running for governor of the nation's most multicultural state wants to transform California. He envisions a monocultural, English-only state with fewer immigrants that is free of DEI, tribalism and "identity politics."

Fun. Hilton's slogan could be: "Let's make California into Iowa." Speaking as a native Californian, it occurs to me that Hilton-izing California could ease overpopulation. If we went vanilla, people would definitely stop moving here.

I bet that would be just fine with the woman dubbed the Karen of Laguna Beach. A wedding proposal at an idyllic oceanfront park went viral after an angry white woman ruined the moment with racist comments captured on video.

Emmanuel Banuelos bought flowers, booked a mariachi band and hired a film crew before proposing to his girlfriend, Hayley Lugo.

This all unfolded in Laguna Beach, which is affluent and mostly white. A white woman, a local resident who was walking her dog in the park, began to scold the camera crew and said that she had called the police. She really got triggered by the mariachi music. "Bull—," she exclaims. "It's fu— Mexican. This isn't Mexico either, you mother—!" Then, as she storms off, she offers some travel advice. She shouts: "Go back to Mexico!"

Here you have a typical Hilton voter. This is the kind of furious and fearful Californian that the Republican is courting when he promises that, if elected governor, he will help President Donald Trump carry out immigration enforcement.

Or when he, during a recent interview on Fox News, declares that every public school classroom in California should be English-only. "This is our country," he said. "We speak English here."

So now it's "our country," is it? Easy there, immigrant.

It was just 14 years ago, in 2012, that Hilton migrated to the United States, settling in California. He became a U.S. citizen five years ago in 2021. He still doesn't understand my home state — or folks who live here.

Hilton tries to paper over that ignorance by pandering to specific tribes of voters. The same Republican candidate who bemoans "identity politics" is serving tacos in a Mexican restaurant and bouncing around in a lowrider in East Los Angeles, while supporters wear T-shirts that read: "Latinos for Hilton."

I get it. When you're 20 points down in the polls, and wearing a red hat in a blue state, you chase every vote. Still, it's hard to have your flan and eat it too.

At first, I was going to say that Hilton wants to "re-colonize California." But that's not historically accurate. The state used to belong to Mexico, and before that, to Spain. Unlike the original 13 colonies that fought the British crown for independence during the Revolutionary War beginning in 1775, this little plot of land on the shore never belonged to England.

Ironically, for more than 30 years, nativists in the Southwest have gotten themselves worked up over the idea of a reconquista. That's where Mexican American activists would forcibly take back California and return it to Mexico. Our neighbor to the south nixed the idea, essentially saying: "No gracias. Now that you've made California into Crazyland USA, you can keep it."

The state's Spanish roots run deep. California is believed to have gotten its name from a 1510 Spanish romance novel which features a mythical island filled with gold and ruled by a beautiful queen named Calafia. Spanish explorers named the region "California" in the hopes of finding the gold mentioned in the fable.

In the late 18th century, it was a Spanish Catholic priest and missionary named Junipero Serra who founded many of the Spanish missions. Dozens of cities and towns in California — Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Jose, etc. — have names of Spanish origin.

Here in my home state, we have a special vibe going on and part of it is in espanol. We don't need an Englishman who has barely been in the Golden State long enough to boil a tea kettle giving us lectures about speaking English.

In fact, some Mexican Americans — who are fluent in English and whose families have lived on this side of the border for several generations — are so upset over the sermon that they've gone full nativist, saying Hilton should "go back to England."

I didn't have that on my bingo card. Hilton needs to read the room. As he was preparing to run for governor of California, where Latinos make up 40% of the population, he should have learned to speak Spanish.

To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Steven Pahel at Unsplash