hael Huffington had no political baggage. Instead, he offered a Gary Cooper-esque physical persona, an attractive family, and the personal finances to motor a campaign without resort to those alliances of interest and political action committee (PAC) contributions that are accused of sullying the political process with their nefarious "influence." Nor did Huffington have a legislative record that could be held against him. In other campaigns, in earlier years, his poor track record of attendance in congress might have been used as a negative; the 1994 voting public, in California and elsewhere, appeared to consider that indicative of the "outside the system" approach their sentiment favored (Ruby, 1994, p. 64).
Both Feinstein and Huffington began the 1994 campaign with their elections to office in 1992. Both had achieved a certain notoriety: their respective '92 campaign costs had set new highs for Senate and Representative seats, respectively. Such figures were buried among the Clinton-victory statistics, though. Important to both newcomers were
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