Thursday, Dec. 09, 2010
$140 million
Amount California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman personally spent on her campaign
It was the costliest campaign in the history of U.S. elections. And it failed. Former eBay chairman Meg Whitman used $140 million of her own money in an attempt to become governor of California, surpassing the previous mark of $108 million set by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in his victorious 2009 re-election campaign. But Whitman came up short, losing to Jerry Brown in November. The revelation that she had employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper while attempting to portray herself as tough on immigration certainly didn't help.