So if money alone won’t make the difference, what will? The burden is heavy on Whitman to show that her experience at eBay qualifies her for public office. “For voters to buy her argument, they’re going to have to believe that her record in the private sector was exemplary,” says Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, at the University of Southern California. Or, as Gerston puts it, “She has a prominent set of business skills, but the question is, are they transferable to a government setting?
One major problem for Whitman in making her case is that in a certain sense, she never had to reinvent eBay: She grew it, but she didn’t turn it around. And turnaround is what California desperately needs. At presstime, the state had a $20 billion deficit, a 12.5 percent unemployment rate, and a K–12 school system ranking 48 out of 50 in reading. Politically speaking, California is just as ripe for reinvention as Whitman herself is. Will the self-contained but highly competitive personality that proved such an asset at eBay translate politically? Will those same traits make her an effective governor if she does get elected? If enough voters take away the message that she is her mother’s daughter—the pioneer in a man’s world, going where need is greatest—perhaps we’ll all have the chance to find out.
