Wealthy Bay Area businessman tries to get a Republican in the Senate general election

by Brian Leubitz

It is June 1, and the polling on the open Senate seat here in California isn’t looking very good for the Republicans. Now, they were never very likely to put a bunch of resources into California, but you would have thought that they would have at least liked to have a candidate in the race. That now seems unlikely given the latest polling which shows Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez far ahead of the array of Republicans in the race.

But it seems Charles Munger hasn’t completely forgotten about the race:

Now, an outside group funded by the California GOP’s most devoted benefactor is trying to push one of the three major Republicans into a top-two position.

Charles Munger Jr., the Palo Alto physicist whose father is the business partner of Warren Buffett, initially kicked in more than $50,000 to assist Senate candidate Duf Sundheim, a former state GOP chairman polling in single digits alongside fellow Republicans Tom Del Beccaro and Ron Unz.

A new Super PAC funded by Munger, Californians for Fiscal Responsibility, reports spending nearly $540,000 to date to boost Sundheim and sink Del Beccaro. The mailings focus on Del Beccaro’s record as state GOP chairman, blaming him for electoral, voter registration and funding woes it suffered.(SacBee)

If this is their attempt to unify Republican votes, it doesn’t seem to be working. The latest ABC7/Survey USA poll has Sundheim and Del Beccarro in the low single digits. There are still a lot of undecideds on that poll, but it seems either Republican will be able to catch up to Sanchez or Harris.

Hey, Charles, if you have so much money to burn, maybe you can help build some affordable housing in the Palo Alto area? That would probably do a lot more good.