Over the past 50-plus years wealthy individuals repeatedly launched expensive, high-profile campaigns for California governor and U.S. senator and failed to win. William Matson Roth, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina are among fabulously wealthy candidates who spent personal fortunes and lost. Others with elected-office experience such as Michael Huffington, Jane Harman and Richard Riordan also spent heavily and fell short. Billionaire Rick Caruso is considering runs for governor and a second bid for Los Angeles mayor. Wealthy newcomer Stephen Cloobeck has been campaigning for governor and spending liberally with little electoral success. Large personal wealth has not ensured victory in these statewide contests.
The rich, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, are different. In California, they lose a lot of very expensive, very high-profile political races. Over the past 50-plus years, a half-dozen fabulously wealthy men and women - William Matson Roth, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina among them - have clambered atop their hefty cash piles and, despite any significant political experience, tried to launch themselves into the office of governor or U.S. senator. Every last one of them failed.
That history is worth noting as the very-well-to-do Rick Caruso eyes a possible entry into the wide-open race to succeed Gavin Newsom. Caruso recently told my colleague Julia Wick he was "very seriously considering" both a gubernatorial run and a second try for Los Angeles mayor. "I'm running down two parallel paths," the billionaire developer said. "As we speak, there are teams very busy working on both of those paths."
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