‘Vanity Candidates’ Pave Their Way With Gold

Tuesday’s election showed that the vanity candidate has become as much a part of our political life as television commercials and campaign contributions.

By vanity candidate, I mean someone who, after earning a lot of money, decides that his or her mastery of American capitalism is a qualification for high public office. So, as political unknowns, they sink a pile of their wealth into getting known, the first step in winning office.

Ross Perot is the most famous vanity candidate, although he gets an asterisk after his name because he jumped in and out and back into the 1992 presidential race. Richard Riordan, on the other hand, seemed to thrive on political heat and kept his wealth flowing until he was elected mayor.

This year, we had computer software multimillionaire Ron Unz, who unsuccessfully challenged Gov. Pete Wilson for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. But the most interesting example is the race that will add to the legend of California political zaniness--Rep. Michael Huffington’s campaign for the Senate. Huffington won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate by spending more than $6.5 million of his $75 million oil fortune in the primary. Just a year and a half ago, he poured $5.4 million into his successful campaign for the House.

I’m fascinated by the phenomena of the vanity candidates and how they seem a perfect fit for the chaotic, unstructured politics of California. I’m curious about what drives them to spend their wealth on something as grueling and risky as a political campaign.

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It was this curiosity, more than anything, that drew me to the big Republican party Tuesday night at the Westin, near Los Angeles International Airport, where Huffington was scheduled to appear.

I’d read about him and his wife, Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington, author and discoverer of “The Fourth Instinct.� (In case you haven’t read the book, the fourth instinct is volunteerism. The other three are survival, power and sex.)

If you were making a movie about a Texas oil millionaire and his wife spending their way from the House to the Senate to the White House, you’d cast the pleasant-looking Huffington as the candidate and the striking Arianna as the spouse. In a scene that a director might have conceived, the Huffingtons appeared on the ballroom stage, holding their two small children. About 100 young men and women crowded directly in front of them, waving banners and shouting, “Huffington! Huffington!�

Since I didn’t know the Huffingtons, I figured they wouldn’t level with me about why they were spending all that money. But I do happen to know another candidate who ran a successful self-financed campaign. So on Thursday morning, I went to see Kathleen Connell.

Connell, winner of the Democratic nomination for state controller, had put $1.3 million of her money into her campaign. Although she was a political novice, running against two pros, she got 49% of the vote, more than twice as much as her nearest competitor, and will face Republican Tom McClintock in the November election.

“You can’t run for office as an outsider unless you are willing to invest some of your own assets in the race if you want to be considered seriously,� she said.

But unlike most vanity candidates, Connell plans to take her campaign mainstream in the general election, relying on contributions rather than the family account.

Connell has a confident manner that comes from her success in the high-pressure bond market. I had met her in another stage of her life, more than a decade ago, when she was Mayor Tom Bradley’s first chief of the city housing department. The daughter of a middle-class family, she’d gone through college and graduate school on scholarships and by working.

Connell left the Bradley Administration to take a job with Chemical Bank’s bond department in New York. “Those were good times,� she said. “Those were the ‘80s on Wall Street. I made considerably more than I made for the city. My lifestyle changed dramatically.�

Returning to California late in 1985, she joined the UCLA business school faculty as head of the finance and real estate department. She also began a financial consulting and investment banking business and married Bob Levenstein, a land developer. They have two small children.

Friends, she said, had urged her to run for public office. But she wasn’t interested until she was head of the Rebuild L.A. investment task force and watched government fail to promote investment in new, job-creating businesses. With Controller Gray Davis planning to run for lieutenant governor, his office was open. Connell figured her background was perfect for a job that is basically financial.

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Whether they’re right for the job or not, Connell and the other self-financed candidates impose a special burden on us voters. It’s hard to judge them because they have little or no record of votes or other public actions. Huffington, for example, has not completed his first congressional term. Unz was a total unknown until he spent a couple of million dollars.

The news media will have to dog these newcomers, tenaciously recording their words and nail them for whatever inconsistencies crop up in their campaigns. The voters must be interested enough to pay attention, which is unlikely considering the low turnout in the primary election.

This process, of course, ignores the talented unknown who doesn’t have money. There’s no place for such a person in today’s elections. That’s why we need public financing of campaigns.