It’s $39 million and counting for Republican Meg Whitman.
And people thought Jerry Brown was exaggerating when he told a San Francisco radio show last week that the former eBay CEO was planning “the paid takeover of the airwaves of California.”
Whitman’s decision to drop another $20 million into her campaign for governor puts her in rarified company. Four years ago, state Controller Steve Westly, who also got rich at eBay, spent $35 million in the race for governor, while in 1998 airline tycoon Al Checchi wrote about $40 million in checks in an effort to become California’s governor.
Of course neither Westly nor Checchi made it out of the Democratic primary, which might be a warning to Whitman that money doesn’t always equal votes.
On the other hand, she may have decided their problem was that they didn’t spend enough of their own money in the race to Sacramento. With more than four months to go until the June primary, Whitman’s got time to write lots more checks.
Political spin was the likely reason for the timing of Whitman’s announcement. In a week or so, Whitman and other candidates for state office will release their full campaign finance reports for the six months that ended Dec. 31. But when Steve Poizner, the state insurance commissioner and the other rich guy in the GOP governor’s race, decided late in December to plunk $15 million of his own money into the campaign, he guaranteed that when those campaign reports came out, he’d show more cash on hand than Whitman.
But while available money is a big concern in most campaigns, the cash-on-hand number means less than nothing in an election featuring candidates who can finance a race for governor out of their own wallets.
Still, Whitman’s newest contribution let her put out a release Thursday headlined “Whitman Announces More Than $30 Million On Hand,” instantly squelching any claims Poizner was ready to make when the finance reports became public.
While $30.5 million is a huge pile of cash to have ready and available, that’s not all that’s interesting in the release.
In an effort to show that Whitman is not riding alone on her campaign bandwagon, her team took pains to report that the Silicon Valley resident also collected $10.2 million from outside contributors last year.
What they don’t do is the math. Whitman’s $39 million combines with the other contributions to total $49.2 million. If she has $30.5 million in the bank, that means Whitman’s campaign already has burned through nearly $19 million, with the most expensive part of the contest still to come.
In the mega-millionaire chess game now going on in the GOP governor’s race, it’s Poizner’s move. So far, he’s been keeping a low – and relatively inexpensive – profile, refusing to match Whitman’s months-long barrage of radio spots and other high-cost efforts.
Poizner’s take is that he’ll be spending his money when the voters are paying attention and that will be enough to shoot past Whitman on election day.
Maybe so, but a new Field Poll released this morning shows that Poizner is in danger of disappearing from view in Whitman rearview mirror as the former eBay chief takes a commanding 45 percent to 17 percent lead. It could be time for Poizner to fire up Plan B.
One thing that now seems clear is that Tom Campbell made a smart move last week when he abruptly shifted his focus to the Senate race, where he has only one multi-millionaire to beat in the GOP primary. The Field Poll released Thursday gave the former San Jose congressman an instant lead over former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Irvine Assemblyman Chuck DeVore in the contest to challenge Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.