California Insider

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Sacramento Bee Columnist Daniel Weintraub

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August 27, 2003

Who is Garrett Gruener

Nobody is paying much attention to Garrett Gruener, and hey, he just one among those 130 or so unknown candidates on the replacement ballot. But Gruener is the only one among them who has contributed $750,000 to his campaign, giving him a warchest that rivals McClintock, Bustamante and some of the others on the media-defined list of “competitive” candidates. So who is this guy?

He’s a Democrat and a businessman, the co-founder of AskJeeves.com, an Internet search engine that’s one of the few success stories still around from the 1990s dot-com boom. He tells me he intends to present the “best Internet campaign that’s ever been run.”

“The idea is to have forums, where people will be able to talk about the things we’ve proposed, help us get smarter or focus on other areas that might be of greater concern,” he says.

Gruener says he “suspects” he will do some paid commercial advertising, mainly to direct people to his campaign web site. “I am going to put enough money into this so I can get the message I want to get across to California, to kind of blast through the noise a little bit.”

What is that message? You can see it for yourself at his web site. In a nutshell, he wants to encourage the growth of what he calls the “innovation economy,” build a radically different education system for the 21st century using technology as its foundation, and safeguard the environment. He calls it the “three e’s” strategy, for encouraging growth, education and environment.

Gruener has been a big donor to Davis in the past, and opposes the recall. But he is running to get his message out there about “the things California needs to accomplish in order to be successful.”

I’m intrigued by this. Spending a million or so probably won’t be enough to help Gruener cut through the din. But if he spent $5 million, or $10 million, he might start to get noticed. He might even get Cruz Bustamante’s attention.