There is a doctor in Sonoma County named Rémy Coeytaux. Louisiana wants him. Prosecutors there charged him with a felony — "criminal abortion by means of abortion inducing drugs" — for allegedly mailing abortion pills to a Louisiana woman in 2023. Then Louisiana asked California to put him on a plane.

California said no. Governor Gavin Newsom's office answered in January with one line: "California protects patients and their doctors. We will not be complicit in efforts to strip away their privacy, autonomy, or dignity."

Steve Hilton, the Republican running to replace Newsom, spent his entire primary campaign saying he'd answer differently.

On Friday, three months before the general election and 25 points down in the polls, he changed his answer.

What he said when he was talking to Republicans

Back in January, Hilton told KQED he would let Louisiana take Coeytaux. His argument was about federalism, not abortion:

"Louisiana voted one way. California voted a different way. That's the beauty of our federalist system, and I think that's exactly right. But you can't have one state imposing its will on another."

He put it even more bluntly: "Louisiana is trying to uphold what its people voted for, and California is undermining it."

He kept saying it. In a May debate, he framed it the same way — this isn't about abortion, it's about one state undermining another's laws. Pressed on it again at the final gubernatorial debate, he doubled down rather than back off.

That was not a slip. That was a position, stated repeatedly, over months, in front of the voters he needed at the time.

What he says now that he needs the rest of us

On Friday, on Southern California radio host Jennifer Horn's show "The Morning Answer," Hilton said this:

"I think that the clear decision for me would be that whatever one's personal views on abortion, you wouldn't actually extradite this doctor because the doctor hasn't broken California laws."

Same doctor. Same case. Same California shield laws — which have been on the books since 2022, along with Newsom's executive order directing the state to refuse exactly these extradition requests. Nothing about the law changed between January and July.

Hilton's explanation is that he took a closer look at California's statutes.

Ask yourself whether you believe that. A candidate for governor spent six months publicly promising to hand over a California doctor, went through a full primary and multiple debates defending it, and only got around to reading the state's shield law after the primary was safely over.

What actually changed

The polls did.

In early July, the Public Policy Institute of California found Democrat Xavier Becerra leading Hilton 61% to 36% among likely voters. That is not a race you win with the Republican base. California's Republican base isn't big enough to win anything statewide.

So the position that helped him in a Republican primary became the position that was going to sink him in a general election. And it went away.

That is worth naming plainly: this wasn't a change of heart about whether California doctors should be dragged to Louisiana. It was a change of audience.

He didn't actually defend abortion rights — read the sentence again

Look closely at what Hilton said, because it isn't what it sounds like.

He did not say Louisiana is wrong to prosecute doctors. He did not say Coeytaux did nothing wrong. He said the doctor "hasn't broken California laws" — a jurisdictional technicality.

That's a very different thing from believing a woman in Louisiana should have been able to get that prescription in the first place. And Hilton has been clear about what he thinks of that. He called abortion an "awful, awful outcome" and said he'd encourage adoption instead.

His new line — "if there was someone sitting in front of me making these choices, I would not be telling a woman what to do" — is about how he'd behave personally. It's not a commitment to protect the shield laws, or to veto anything, or to fight the next state that comes after a California provider. It's a mood.

And there will be a next state. UC Davis law professor Mary Ziegler, who studies abortion law, warned that even a win here "shouldn't create a false sense of security that shield laws will always hold up." Louisiana's attorney general has said plainly: "We are going to continue to fight the illegal sending of abortion pills into Louisiana."

The question for a California governor isn't what he'd say to one woman in his office. It's what he'd do when the next warrant lands on his desk — and whoever is governor will be the one who signs or refuses.

The pattern

If this feels familiar, it should. CalMatters ran a whole profile on how Hilton has rebranded himself multiple times — adviser to a British prime minister, then Silicon Valley futurist, then Fox News populist, now candidate for California governor.

He was also a leading champion of Brexit — and then moved here rather than live with it.

This is a man who is very good at telling a particular room what that room wants to hear. The rooms keep changing. So does he.

Why this one matters

California built its shield laws in 2022 for exactly this moment — so that a doctor here doesn't have to wonder whether a prosecutor in a banned-abortion state can reach across the country and take them. Coeytaux's case may be the first real test of whether they hold.

That protection only works if the governor honors it — every time, not when it's convenient.

Hilton has now given us two answers to the same question in the same election year. One of them was given when he was courting Republican primary voters. The other was given after a poll showed him losing by 25 points.

Whichever one he actually means, we're being asked to guess. And the person who'd pay for a wrong guess isn't Steve Hilton. It's a doctor in Healdsburg, and every provider in California watching to see what happens to him.

We deserve better.

Source

Ben Paviour, In reversal, Hilton says he would not extradite California abortion doctor, The Sacramento Bee, July 31, 2026. Photo: Hector Amezcua / The Sacramento Bee.