The man who bailed out Wall Street wants to bail out California.
Neel Kashkari, the former assistant Treasury secretary who ran the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) bailing out large banks during the 2008-2009 partial real estate correction, is considering challenging Gov. Jerry Brown in 2014, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
Kashkari is a Republican, but also pro-choice, in favor of gay marriage, and a 2008 Barack Obama voter. As an assistant secretary for “Financial Stability” in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Kashkari administered the $700 billion bank bailout from 2008 to 2009. The bailout was imposed on large banks under Bush Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson and continued under Obama Sec. Tim Geithner.
“My focus is different from most candidates that we’ve seen, not just in California but around the country,” Kashkari has said.
“If we were to do this, we would run a campaign that is truly reaching out to people that Republicans don’t normally talk to,” he promised.
Although Californians have elected Brown governor three times, Kashkari says California voters are tired of being ruled by career politicians.
He describes Brown as “born in the governor’s mansion” and with a record of “superficial action on a lot of different issues without actually addressing the underlying problems.”
A recent poll conducted by the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Times showed that although 55 percent of Californians approve of Brown’s performance, only 32 percent would vote to re-elect him.
Even if Brown is losing support among his once loyal constituents, it does not mean the very blue state of California is ready to elect a Republican.
In 2010 former eBay CEO Meg Whitman spent $144 million of her own fortune on a GOP governor campaign, only to lose to Brown in a landslide. Before Whitman, beloved athlete and movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger won a punishing reelection in 2006 but governed left on big-ticket issues such as the state’s first-in-the-nation carbon tax and unkillable high-speed railroad train.
Among the Golden State’s 18,055,783 registered voters, a bare 5,225,675 — just 28.9 percent — are Republicans, according to Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s February 2013 count.
Republicans are also likely to hold Kashkari accountable for the never-popular $700 billion TARP bailout, which he still defends using hyperbolic rhetoric but no solid evidence.
“I would argue tackling the worst economic crisis in 80 years, working for two different presidents, was pretty good training,” he offered.
Kashkari says he will weigh donor and voter support before he decides to announce his candidacy for California’s highest office.
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