Wildly wealthy, politically lame: A brief history of state’s politics

The rich, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, are different. In California, they lose a lot of very expensive, very high-profile political races.

- MARK Z. BARABAK COLUMNIST

THEY WENT FOR IT: Carly Fiorina, clockwise from top left, Rick Caruso, Bill Simon Jr., Meg Whitman, AI Checchi and William Matson Roth. Caruso is mulling a gubernatorial run and another try for mayor.

Over the past 50-plus years, a half-dozen fabulously wealthy men and women — William Matson Roth, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina among them — have clambered atop their hefty cash piles and, without any significant political experience, tried to launch themselves into the office of governor or U.S. senator.

Every last one of them failed.

Others with at least some background in elected office — Michael Huffington, Jane Harman, Richard Riordan, to name a few — sank a goodly chunk of their fortunes and came up similarly short in their efforts to win one of California’s top two political posts.

That history is worth noting as the very-well-to-do Rick Caruso eyes a possible entry into the wide-open race to succeed Gavin Newsom. Caruso recently told my colleague Julia Wick he was “very seriously considering” both a gubernatorial run and a second try for Los Angeles mayor.

“I’m running down two parallel paths,” the billionaire developer said. “As we speak, there are teams very busy working on both of those paths.”

(Wealthy businessman Stephen J. Cloobeck, another political first-timer, has been campaigning for governor for months, spending liberally to little avail.)

‘There’s a common disclaimer in the field of investment — “past performance is no guarantee of future returns” — which certainly applies here.