Whitman spends $178.5M on failed Calif. gov's race

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/01/31/national/a154339S27.DTL

Final election reports released Monday show Jerry Brown spent about $36.5 million in his successful bid to become governor, just a fraction of the $178.5 million spent by his Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, in what was the costliest campaign for statewide office in the nation's history.

Brown was buoyed by millions of dollars in spending by union-backed groups. But Whitman, the former eBay CEO, tapped $144 million from her personal fortune and raised the rest from donors in the 2010 California governor's race, including the primary and general election cycles.

She surpassed the previous record for personal spending in a campaign — the $109 million New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent in his quest for a third term.

While the bulk of Whitman's campaign spending went to buy television ads that dominated the airwaves for most of 2010, the billionaire spent more than $20 million on campaign consultants and staff, many of whom hailed from the campaigns of former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger or the Republican presidential campaigns of Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/01/31/national/a154339S27.DTL#ixzz1CiXqsEqJ

Too bad it PROBABLY didn't go to UNION PRINTERS!