Republican Meg Whitman aims to bring her business success to California’s economy
By Neil Paik
Oct. 29, 2010 12:13 a.m.
After eight years of having a former bodybuilder as governor, California may soon be administered by one of the state’s richest and most successful businesswomen.
Born in Long Island, Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman first moved with her family to California at the age of 6. She studied economics at Princeton University and went on to earn a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard University in 1979.
Although Whitman, 54, held managerial positions at such companies as Hasbro, Disney and Proctor & Gamble, her most significant rise in business began in 1997 when she joined a relatively obscure 30-employee company called eBay.
Within a decade, eBay went from a small site for people to trade collectable items to an international marketplace with millions of users to more than 25 countries.
After retiring from her position as head of eBay in 2008, Whitman became a finance co-chair for former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney during the primary campaign, and then worked as a senior economic advisor to Arizona senator John McCain.
The experiences exposed Whitman to public service and inspired her to run for governor of California, said Travis Considine, Whitman’s campaign spokesperson who has been working on the campaign for the last year and a half.
“I like how she’s focused on creating jobs, fixing education, and cleaning up Sacramento,” said Considine, a native Californian.
This election season, Whitman hopes to transfer her success in the board room to the governor’s office. Much of the focus of her campaign has been job creation. She has set a goal to bring two million more private sector jobs to the state by 2015. Some of her supporters said they believe her history as CEO of eBay will make that goal a reality.
“She has 30 years experience in the private sector creating jobs,” Considine said. “That’s what this state needs now.”
Higher education, which has faced severe budget cuts during the Schwarzenegger administration, has not received significant attention from the Whitman campaign. Many students, including Bruin Republicans External Vice Chair Anneliese Mondorf, say they know little about what Whitman’s exact plans are for the University of California and California State University systems.
“I haven’t seen anything for higher education,” said Mondorf, a fourth-year linguistics student. “I think she’s really focusing on the economic issues … As a businesswoman, she probably feels like she’s more qualified to think about that stuff.”
Although Whitman’s website makes no mention of plans to resolve the economic issues plaguing higher education, her campaign spokespeople says she plans to fund the UC and CSU systems with $1 billion by reallocating funds from welfare reform.
“She wants to decrease tuition and increase research and development coming out of the UC system,” Considine said. “Meg really believes the UC system is the jewel of the state.”
According to Drew LaFountaine, Issues Director for Bruin Republicans, Whitman is focusing on education more at the primary and secondary levels.
“I think partially it’s because … that’s something more people care about, so she’s likely to put more effort into K-12 education,” said LaFountaine, a fourth-year political science and economics student.
Whitman has also said she plans to increase technology in K-12 schools and promote accountability on the part of teachers and administrators.
“I’ll grade our schools “˜A’ through “˜F’ and put the results on line so parents can easily determine how their schools are doing,” she wrote in a section of her website. “I’ll give parents the ability to move their children out of failing schools.”
Whitman has drawn controversy for her stance on undocumented and illegal immigrants. Denise Velasco, a graduate of UC Berkeley, said she was most put off by Whitman’s proposal to exclude undocumented students from public universities.
“It just reflects how she (is) … not being sensitive to the amount of sacrifices students have to make to be here,” Velasco said.
Polls released this week indicate that Jerry Brown is ahead of Whitman by eight points or higher, but Whitman’s campaign says they will continue to travel up and down the state until Nov. 2.
