Who's this Meg Whitman who wants to run California?

Outside the business community, to the extent she's known at all, Meg Whitman was the wrong woman on some lists of John McCain's possible vice presidential choices.

Having been Mitt Romney's national finance chair in the Republican presidential primaries -- gee, was that a year ago already? -- the 52-year-old Whitman moved almost as quickly as Romney to back McCain, helping him raise millions in his unsuccessful general election effort alongside that Alaskan governor.

Now, Whitman herself has announced an "exploratory committee" to run for California governor, which is exploratory in name only. There'll be many more announcing on both sides in coming weeks, elbowing to replace the term-limited Austrian-born incumbent.

Whitman appears quite comfortable speaking in public, although she's otherwise a political neophyte, not counting navigating the arcane internal politics of corporate monoliths like Procter & Gamble. She's actually a New York native from Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island. According to her new website (see video below), she's spent the last 30 years in California as an avid skier, fly fisherperson and hiker.

The mother of two, Whitman had successful stints with several companies, most recently as president and chief executive of EBay. She became a business billionaire, which is a good thing if you want to run for anything in the nation's most populous state, where TV ad salesmen did not nickname the Golden State by accident. 

Born on Aug. 4, 1956, the youngest of three children of Margaret, a homemaker, and Hendricks Whitman, a businessman, Whitman attended local high school before heading for....

...Princeton, intent on a career in medicine. Encountering those required courses, however, she soon switched her major and graduated with a bachelor of economics before earning an MBA from Harvard.

Whitman's first job in business was (look at her hair and take a guess) pushing Head & Shoulders shampoo with Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, where she married Griffith Harsh IV, a neurosurgeon whose medical moves she matched with new jobs in a variety of companies. Later, Whitman also worked for Bain & Co. (ah, the Romney connection), the Walt Disney Corp. and Stride Rite, the children's shoe maker, where she helped revive the moribund Keds line.

She was also CEO of FTD (Florists Transworld Delivery), turning the fading cooperative into a thriving, privately held firm before becoming head of Hasbro's Playskool and Mr. Potato Head divisions.

Don't laugh! Mr. Potato Head makes more each year than you will in a lifetime. Four years later, a headhunter approached Whitman about joining a fledgling online company called Auction Web. It was begun in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar, a Silicon Valley computer programmer, as a means for his girlfriend to find other collectors of Pez dispensers. No, really.

Initially, Whitman declined to even discuss an offer, preferring to be in charge of 600 employees. But after a meeting, she was impressed with the potential of online buying, especially a business model that combined the concept of yard sales, want ads and auctions with online ease and speed.

When she took over EBay in 1998, the company had 20 employees, sales of $195 million and a customer base of 750,000.

With Whitman encouraging businesses to sell online too, within a year the customer base was 7 million with sales of $741 million. And EBay became an everyday online spot for millions.

Whitman proved particularly adept at listening to customers and adding features like increased fraud protection for buyers and sellers. Listening. Listening. Now, there's a rare political skill, one that she highlights in her initial video below.

She could be part of the shattered GOP's national grassroots rebuilding process of personalities and ideas, which seems more likely to come from the ranks of Republican governors (now at 22) than those shiny suits in the Capitol minority holding congressional hallway news conferences at the mere sight of any microphone.

But first comes the GOP gubernatorial primary. Steve Poizner, another endowed Silicon Valley fellow who is state insurance commissioner, is running and has a lotta dough. Another likely competitor is ex-Rep. Tom Campbell, who's biggest challenge may be money-raising.

Whitman has already lined up former Gov. Pete Wilson as her campaign chairman, which will help among traditional Republicans anyway. Not hard to guess who will get at least the tacit backing of

McCain and Romney, both now part-time Californians. She's positioned herself as a social moderate and fiscal conservative who supports abortion rights, the usual stance for non-kamikaze Republicans on the Left Coast.

Here's one early but resonant Whitman website theme: "In Sacramento, politicians argue but never lead."      

And although all of her potential competitors are better-known statewide, not being a familiar political statue has often proved to be a plus recently, given the public mood toward career politicians. Three of the last three presidents were elected on their very first try (and two of them were governors). And how much good did reeking of Sacramento help the good old Grayman last time out? (BTW, the possible Dem gov lineup is over here.)

Plus, Meg will be welcomed by California's headline-writers who've been stuck with the incumbent 14-letter monstrosity for several years now.

--Andrew Malcolm

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Credit: Associated Press

Comments

[Martin Green]

EBay was NOT started so that Pierre Omidyar could help his girlfriend's Pez collection. That story was concocted by an EBay PR person and its falsehood was confirmed by EBay for Adam Cohen's book "The Perfect Store."

[Daman Anand]

Looks like she is responsible for success of FTD which is one of the biggest online flower delivery company today.

[Robin Swanson]

With today’s announcement that Republican Meg Whitman had opened her campaign exploratory committee to run for governor, I expected the usual healthy dose of spin that accompanies a good candidate roll-out. But never did I expect that her handlers would try and package the Meg Whitman campaign as “new.”
With a campaign website full of meaningless recycled platitudes and devoid of any actual concrete ideas or policies, the only thing “new” about Meg Whitman is her affiliation with the Republican Party.
That’s right, the “new” savior of the Republican Party was a decline-to-state voter only one year ago, who, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “did not vote in more than half the federal, state and local elections since she registered to vote in (San Mateo) county in September 2002.” So I suppose she’s “new” to the concept of voting too. In fact, the same Chronicle article says that she failed to vote in every Primary since 2002, including the 2003 recall campaign, in which another Republican gubernatorial candidate with no experience in actual “governing” ran on a platform that Californians were looking for something “new...” For more: http://www.news10.net/life/community/persona.aspx?U=43669f71bc7c4f5eb00a0ccde7bd53dc&plckPersonaPage=PersonaBlog&plckUserId=43669f71bc7c4f5eb00a0ccde7bd53dc

[Sally]

Republicans should no longer be elected to high offices.

Considering the GOP thinks higher of Sarah Palin than Meg - This is not the person or party we want in power.

[Michael]

Who is she? Just another proponent of the same failed ideas that have ruined our country ever since the Reagan administration. Greed is good!

The fact that she backed Romney, then McCain tells you all you need to know about her lack of judgement.

We allready have a Republican idiot in CA, we don't need another!

[Lori]

If she supported Mitt Romney than she has style, class, and is an excellent judge of character. If Romney chose her to lead his finance team, it was a job she managed well. With her help, the guy raised more money than anyone else in the primary and that doesn't even include his personal investment. Meg seems like a can-do executive and leader. I think she may be able to turn the state around.

[Larry Linn]

After reading her positions on major issues this morning, I cannot determine if she is bipolar, or someone at the e-bay help line that talks to make you feel well.

[Marshall]

The Republican party is a joke party full of extremists and wack-jobs. Meg will fit right in.

If you vote, at least vote for a party with a future! Democratic or Independent.

[Ed]

The Times is promoting Whitman with the red carpet treatment. Today's print copy says she's against raising taxes on the rich because "the top 1% already pay 50% of the taxes".
What would you expect in a Third World country such as California where the top 1% owns or controls about 80 or 90 % of the wealth? Raise their taxes. They deserve it.
Beyond that, the Times says she's a Presbyterian which is odd, since they usually don't mention too many politicians' religions. Hey, the media made a shaved naked oiled body builder our governor after helping destroy a good man in Gray Davis. They can make Meg the Gov. too. The people believe what the media tells them they believe. (George Orwell)

[Jon in West Hollywood]

It's interesting that this article failed to mention Whitman's stand on the signature social issue facing California this year. She alone among the most likely candidates in both parties opposes gay marriage and supported Prop 8. She says her "faith" compels her to hold this view, but she's a Presbyterian, for crying out loud, which makes it a lot more likely that it's politics, not faith, that compels her homophobia.

She's also for offshore drilling along the California coast, which makes you wonder if she's ever seen footage of the oil spill along the shore at Santa Barbara in the 1960s. No sane person in either party wants to risk that again. This position alone ought to be enough to disqualify her.

[Gertrude]

Meg is a breath of fresh air.Especialy when you compare her to the list of low morality characters and corrupt leftys lining up for the democrat nomination.
Ex gov. moonbeam is in a class by himself as the top imitator of that other buffoon Biden.