Saturday’s Los Angeles Times, released to the web on the evening of Jan. 25, outlined recent developments that could propel retiring eBay CEO Meg Whitman into the Republican primary to succeed term-limited Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010:
As she prepares to depart from EBay after a decade at the helm, Chief Executive Meg Whitman appears to be investigating a new career — in politics.
Whitman has talked with top Republicans about the possibility of a run for California governor in 2010, according to three operatives who have had discussions with her. Whitman is said to be asking detailed questions about the logistics of a run and the effect she could have as governor, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal the conversations. …
The source close to Whitman, however, downplayed the seriousness of the conversations, saying that Whitman was still new to politics and that California Republicans, not Whitman, were the ones driving the discussion.
“This thing has come to her,” the source said. “She hasn’t given it all that much thought. It’s not, ‘I’m going to run. Give me a game plan.’”
The tech blogs reacted quickly, and with enthusiasm. Valleywag went with “eBay ex-CEO considers run for California governor” and Mashable asked: “Could Meg Whitman Be The Next Governator?”
It only took another few hours before Mashable returned to the subject with “Meg Whitman NOT Running For Governor, After All.” Valleywag, whose reporting claims to knock down this rumor, this time floated another: “Meg Whitman quashes governor rumor, but could she serve under Romney?”
So that’s what this is all about! is what I first thought upon reading this. Now, if you think I’ve been holding back mention of Whitman’s role as a finance co-chair for the Romney campaign on purpose, you’re right. I have no evidence, let alone proof, that this story was pushed on the LAT by Romney’s camp. But I’m thinking it.
eBay is one of the few survivors of the dot-com era, one of the great business success stories of the Internet, and Whitman has been on board since it went public in 1998. Before that, she worked with Mitt Romney at Bain & Company. Her professional credentials make her “supremely well qualified” for the job, quoth Henry Blodget, and in fact this is something she has in common with Romney.
Her Republican credentials, however, are thin. The Times reports she only recently changed her party registration from “decline to state” to GOP, and Whitman’s politics are assumed to be moderate. Very possibly she is too moderate for the California GOP, especially one annoyed by Schwarzenegger’s “post-partisan” policies, but then Tom McClintock is probably too conservative for the state. This reminds one of Romney as well, although in a less salutory manner. Romney has been a Republican since 1994 at the very least, but if we believe him that he was an “independent during Reagan-Bush,” not much longer than that.
Now, the California primary arrives on Feb. 5, and the RealClearPolitics polling average puts Romney in solid second place, albeit solidly behind John McCain. Whitman is fairly popular in the Valley, as the blogs cited above indicate. If she is considering a run for governor, that could reflect well on Romney. (I’m undecided whether to trust Valleywag’s reporting; other news outlets have yet to follow suit, but the life cycle of a trial balloon is usually longer than 24 hours, so we’ll see.) If she is not considering a run, then even better! If you’re in the California primary, this is just the time to float the idea of a respected Bay Area businesswoman as a member of your cabinet.
Or if she ran for governor and won, Whitman could be the first of what one might eventually have to call “Romney Republicans.” It’s obviously way too early to seriously start talking about such a thing — but do you really suppose that Romney’s supporters haven’t already?
