CA-Sen: Former Google executive Lexi Reese on Thursday announced that she was forming an exploratory committee for a potential campaign to succeed her fellow California Democrat, retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Reese, whose team tells Politico’s Christopher Cadelago she’d use a “significant” amount of her own money should she run, added, “I’m going to take the next couple of weeks to make a decision.”
Reese’s name hadn’t previously surfaced in a top-two primary contest between Democratic Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter, and Adam Schiff, though she appears to have spent a significant amount of time quietly preparing a campaign. Puck News reports that she “has been actively exploring a Senate run over the last few months,” while Cadelago relays that she’s already put a team together.
Reese’s entrance could make it easier for a Republican to advance to the general election in a dark blue state that’s hosted several fall contests between two Democrats. The San Mateo County resident would also end Lee’s status as the only serious Democratic candidate who hails from the Bay Area instead of from Southern California, though unlike the longtime East Bay congresswoman, Reese has never run for office before. That last bit may be a tough hurdle to overcome because, despite the massive cost of running for office in America’s most populous state, California has rejected several wealthy first-time candidates who wanted the governorship or a Senate seat.
Back in 1998, when the Golden State still held partisan primaries, former Northwest Airlines co-chair Al Checchi broke state records by dropping $40 million of his own money (about $75 million in 2023 dollars) to try and win the Democratic primary for governor. His investment helped him build an early lead in the polls, but Checchi soon found himself trading negative ads against Rep. Jane Harman, who was also deploying some of her fortune.
It also didn’t help Checchi that, as CNN wrote over a month before the primary, voters were comparing him to Michael Huffington, a one-term Republican congressman who narrowly lost the 1994 Senate race to Feinstein after doing his own extensive self-funding. Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who had languished in third place for most of the primary, promised “experience money can't buy” and beat Checchi in a 57-20 landslide, a win that set Davis on the path to becoming California’s first Democratic governor in 16 years.
Checchi in 2010 would acknowledge the limits of his strategy by griping to the San Francisco Chronicle, “What could you say in a 30-second commercial?” but Republican Meg Whitman that year would air many 30-second ads in her bid to lead the state. The former eBay CEO gave her campaign $144 million ($200 million today), which at the time made her the biggest self-funder in American electoral history. That same cycle saw former HP CEO Carly Fiorina challenge Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, though Fiorina deployed “just” $7 million as she relied more on donors.
But while Republicans were on the offensive that year nationally, outgoing GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s terrible approval ratings were too much of an anvil for California Republicans to overcome. Former Gov. Jerry Brown regained his old office by beating Whitman 54-41 the same night that Boxer scored a similar victory against Fiorina.