If there’s a gender bias, it’s in the political baggage these women bring, baggage that might have been lighter if it were carried by a man. It was a big upset when Linda McMahon won the primary over the favored Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, a Vietnam vet and member of Congress. As the former CEO of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), which her husband now heads, McMahon had to overcome assumptions about her character based on the unorthodox business that she once ran.
“I grew up in Connecticut, and it’s a very straitlaced place,” says Linda Fowler, a government professor at Dartmouth. “I can’t imagine people pulling the lever for someone who has a boat that’s named Sexy Bitch.”
People are not against self-financed candidates, and some buy the argument that rich politicians can’t be bought, so they’re a better bet. But the problem Meg Whitman is having in the California governor’s race is the sheer volume of her money she’s spent—$162 million at last count—which has set the terms of the debate. “There’s a sense if you have to spend that much money, maybe there’s a problem with you,” says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the School of Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California.
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