eMeg

What has struck me about Whitman is how normal she seems. She's rich. She donated $30 million to Princeton to build a sixth college on campus (dubbed Whitman College). But she routinely flies Southwest, travels by rental car to save money, and appears unfazed by her fame. Senor watched the third presidential debate at her home last fall, during which she cooked dinner. That was the debate in which McCain said Whitman was the kind of person he would want as treasury secretary. "Meg heard her name, looked up at the TV for a second, and then went back to the tuna steaks," Senor says. "It was like she barely noticed.  .  .  .  No commentary, analysis, or patting on the back."

Whitman's virtues don't automatically make her a good candidate. Romney says her eBay experience brought out "the other part of Meg," her people skills. "She was not your typical CEO who does well in the boardroom but not on the shop floor," he says. "Being CEO of eBay is quite different. It was a people movement. It made over a million people entrepreneurs. She was more a leader than a CEO."

With Randle's help, Whitman has gained the support of two heavyweights in state politics, ex-Governor Wilson and Representative Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, the deputy Republican whip in the house. With Whitman, "it won't just come down to party politics," McCarthy says. Indeed she has considerable support among non-Republicans in the high-tech community and Hollywood (she worked for Disney from 1989 to 1992). But those elites are a tiny fraction of the electorate. When I talked to Michael Reagan, the president's son and a talk radio host, he wondered about her popular appeal. So did Marc Andreessen, the designer of the first popular web browser, Mosaic, now a high-tech entrepreneur and Democrat who's backing Whitman.

California has been cruel in recent years to first-time candidates from the business world. Northwest Airlines boss Al Checchi spent $40 million in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1998 and got 12.5 percent of the vote. Bill Simon, a wealthy investor who was the Republican nominee in 2002, lost in a landslide. Neither Reagan, elected governor in 1966, nor Schwarzenegger, who won in 2003, had previously been elected to statewide office. But they were popular actors. For others, winning a down-ticket office helped.

Checchi and Simon found their business records were their greatest vulnerability. Since Whitman has made eBay her chief talking point, her opponents are scrutinizing her tenure there and at other companies. Steve Poizner, her primary challenger, has pointed to eBay's purchase of online telephone company Skype as evidence her business prowess is overrated. Skype is now for sale by Whitman's successor at eBay for less than she paid for it.

Whitman faces a daunting collection of rivals. Poizner too is wealthy, and he is backed by one of California's most influential Republicans, former state senator Jim Brulte. A third Republican candidate, former congressman Tom Campbell, is also a serious threat. The three Democratic candidates aren't slouches either: Mayors Gavin Newsom of San Francisco and Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, and former Governor Jerry Brown.

Whitman's success depends largely on how Californians feel about their state next year. California is an economic basket case. It has the highest tax rate and biggest budget deficit in the country, third highest rate of home foreclosures, an unemployment rate (11.2 percent) that's never been higher, and, as Whitman says in every speech, its schools rank 47th of the 50 states in math, 48th in reading, and 43rd in science. Only 14 percent of Californians are satisfied with the state's performance. "Those are the people who aren't paying attention," says Wilson.