Meg Whitman turned eBay into what it is today, the biggest auction site on the planet. I like eBay, I bought loads of stuff there and except a glitch or two, the marketplace mechanism she put in place pretty much works fine. Meg, who oversaw eBay for a long time, has a reputation for being a tough taskmaster and a very very demanding boss. But very few people who were at her level can claim to be the opposite.
Meg, who apparently never cast a vote until she decided to run for Governor of California, lost quite badly yesterday. Badly not only in terms of votes (she polled around 41% to Jerry Brown's 54%, which is a much bigger spread than the surveys had predicted) but also in terms of return on investment. She spent about $160 million in the 2010 election for a job that would pay about $200,000 a year. Surely she was not doing it for the money cause she made more than enough for herself and her family at eBay. Obviously she was running for Governor either because she really wanted to do something for the public or its just her innate leadership drive. Whatever it is, its a pretty bad loss.
Now, had the Governorship of California been auctioned on eBay, she would have been the highest bidder what with a $160 million bid. Nobody would have come close. Of this money, almost $140 million is her own, that's about 10% of what she made at eBay. Ouch, that's a lot for losing an election. Depending on what your interests are, this type of money can do a lot of things. For Meg, she could have generated loads of jobs by simply investing in California. She could have stayed away from the bloodsport she got bludgeoned in. But that's what drive does I guess.
So, here are a few things I think went against her in spite of the scale of monies involved in this election. Please note that this is the largest personal wealth any person has ever spent on any single election in the history of United States.
1. Out of touch: People on the street had no idea who she really is. I mean, tech industry folks like myself or my friends surely know everything there is to know about her in the public domain, but the minimum wage workers? Nope. They think that she is some wealthy corporate person, who lives in a million dollar mansion in the hills and goes around in chauffeur-driven cars. That's never an image that would help those seeking public office. Sadly, Meg could do nothing about it. She is what she is. She is a legal multi-millionaire, a fact she could not take pride in public because people would always say, "hey, you are rich, what do you know about unemployment?". Due to this, a lot of women could not identify with her. This is reflected by the fact that more women voted for Brown than they did for Meg.
2. No participation in democracy: The fact that Meg never voted, deftly exploited by Brown, only hurt her already out of touch image. It made it look like Meg woke up one fine day and realized that she has a few hundred million to throw around and see if she could become a Governor. She has nothing to do anyway, except maybe give a few talks here and there. Lesson: People who want to run for public office in the future, please start voting from now.
3. Foul campaign: The amount of muckraking done by Meg's campaign is just too much. Yes, Brown did some too (that whole "whore" episode was so bad taste) but maybe Meg could have run a cleaner campaign and could have said what she has in mind for California instead of foul-mouthing how bad Brown is for the state? This makes it a lesser of the two evils situation and given the above two problems of being out of touch and never having voted, totally worked against Meg.
4. Money cant buy me love: Again and again, the major point that Brown hit Meg, where it hurt the most is the fact that she was pumping so much money into her campaign. Even people who don't usually vote know how much Meg spent. This has so badly ricoched on her, she never fully recovered from it. A strange victim of her own success.
5. Maid issue: Finally, the last nail in the coffin that sealed her defeat is the whole drama about her using an illegal immigrant as a maid for years. Less said, the more about this issue. This never went down well with the Hispanic community in California and for the right reasons. Lesson: Maybe Meg would have been better off, had she brought this out herself in the beginning of her campaign? Politics is a bloodsport and such skeletons in the closet will be adroitly manipulated by the opponents.
In the Republican wave of 2010, when the house was lost and major Senate gains being made, it must be really disappointing for Meg to loose. Maybe Mark McCormack can update his best-seller on "what they dont teach you at HBS" and include a chapter on "winning the public mandate" since clearly HBS did not teach Meg that. And if he does update, I will bid for the book on eBay.
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