Meg Whitman says she has no regrets about investing a record-breaking $141.5 million of her own cash to run for Governor of California. Throw in the $25 million in donations and Whitman’s campaign spent nearly $170 million on her gubernatorial bid—far more than any other political candidate this election cycle.
Stop to think about that number. What does $170 million dollars get you?
10. 850 round trip tickets to space on Virgin Galactic.
9. 6,956 Toyota Prii (or Priuses). Or 160 Ferraris, or 9 F-16 fighter jets, or…
8. Send California’s 2.2 million unemployed workers an extra $70 check for the holidays.
7. An estimated 3,914 California public school teachers’ first-year salaries. Or California’s estimated 30,000 teachers could get a $5,333.00 bonus this year.
6. The National Endowment for the Arts 2010 budget: $161.4 million.So she could have doubled the budget for the largest annual funder of the arts in the country.
5. Or could have paid for the top three most expensive Senate races in the country: Connecticut, California and Nevada. (And that’s still only $131 million when you add it up.)
4. 9,500 people living with HIV in the U.S. could get their meds paid for one full year.
3. She could have provided full scholarships for almost 40,000 students to attend Cal State Universities for one year. Or prevented future tuition hikes for a few years.
2. Her money would have bought 5,517 full undergrad scholarships to UC Berkley or UCLA including university fees, room and board, health insurance, travel expenses, etc.
1. Or would have helped keep domestic violence shelters in California open for the next 10 years.
the money also could have provided permanent supportive housing for 10,625 homeless people, maintained child care for 43,828 families who are scheduled to lose it due to budget cuts, more than paid for educationally-related mental health services for california K-12 students, paid for 6 months of diapers for 472,222 infants, funded the entire food stamp grant of 87,180 california households for 6 months, or any number of things that would have met the needs of californian’s more effectively and meaningfully than running her crap campaign ads for so long.
