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John Seiler: Education reformer Gloria Romero aims for lieutenant governor

April 21, 2026

It was a delight talking to Gloria Romero, whose education reform work I’ve backed for two decades. Now she is running for lieutenant governor of California in the June 2 primary. The former Democratic majority leader in the state Senate became a Republican in Sept. 2024 and backed Donald Trump for president.

She’s teaming with Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton on the Golden Ticket. While working with Hilton on policy papers at his Golden Together nonprofit, he said to her, “Look, I’m going to run for governor,” and asked her to be his running mate. Romero joked, “Steve, we really don’t have running mates in California.” Common practice for both major parties is to run separate campaigns for the two positions.

But soon they realized, she said, “This would be really good, because it sends the message that the governor and the lieutenant governor really should be working in tandem, like the president and the vice president of the United States.”

I interviewed Hilton for my column almost a year ago. An immigrant from the United Kingdom, he was a Fox News host before becoming an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Romero’s policy background would be crucial for his success as both a candidate and governor. That experience would include knowing the difficulty of getting anything done in a Legislature dominated by the public employee unions, especially the California Teachers Association.

Romero earned her B.A. and M.A. from Cal State Long Beach, and her Ph.D. in psychology from UC Riverside. She has been a professor at Cal State LA and other universities. She especially has advocated for charter schools, including co-founding Explore Prime Academy in Orange. That background is crucial because K-12 spending is 40% of the state budget. And parents are most concerned about their kids’ education.

Her signature legislation in the Senate was the “parent trigger” law. Officially it was Senate Bill X5-4 from 2010, the Parent Empowerment Act. It allowed a majority of parents to vote to restructure school management. Unfortunately, she said, “The unelected state Board of Education rewrote the rules and neutered it. Although it’s still on the books. That’s what happens. The empire strikes back.”

Which shows how valuable Romero would be to Hilton in advancing real education reform, which she said is needed more than ever. I brought up how Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal for 2026-27 slates average school spending at $27,418 per pupil. He boasted that’s a 60% increase in his seven years in office. Yet school scores remain low.

Romero mentioned reforms in Mississippi. The New York Times reported in January, “Mississippi has gone from 49th in the country on national tests in 2013, to a top 10 state for fourth graders learning to read — even as test scores have fallen almost everywhere else.”

She said since she left the Senate 16 years ago, and while her reform efforts were thwarted, “Mississippi has bypassed us.” She also pointed out the lieutenant governor can directly push for education reform as a voting regent at the UC system, a trustee at the Cal State system and a member of the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges.

Alas, for Republicans the biggest hurdle remains voter registration at 45% Democratic, 25% Republican, 23% No Party Preference and 7% other parties or unknown. That’s as of Dec. 30, 2025, per the Secretary of State’s tally.

“We want to put together a new governing coalition for California, starting with the Republican base and pulling in disaffected Democratic voters,” Romero said. Town halls with Hilton across the state have shown support for reform. Even in Democratic Los Angeles, “The overwhelming expression was, because of regulations, businesses are shutting down, especially in Hollywood with the film industry.”

Hilton’s endorsement by President Trump pushed him to first place at 18% in a Kreate Strategies poll released April 20. The problem: for the Nov. 3 general election, facing a Democrat will engage the full force of opposition from the public employee unions.

But Romero gives Republicans, and real reform, their best chance in two decades.

John Seiler is on the SCNG Editorial Board

Orange County Register

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John Seiler: Education reformer Gloria Romero aims for lieutenant governor

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