Wealthy scientist tries to rescue California's shrinking GOP (father is Warren Buffett partner)

[Liberal_in_LA]

The California Republican Party struck another new low last week when news came that its shrinking ranks now make up less than 28% of the state’s registered voters.

But Charles Munger Jr., a courtly Palo Alto physicist who fancies bow ties and suspenders, is determined to reverse the party’s two-decade slide in California.


So the 58-year-old is tapping his vast family wealth to try to rebuild the once-mighty party that gave rise to the likes of Ronald Reagan. (Munger’s namesake father is the billionaire partner of investment icon Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway Corp.)

Last year, Munger spent more than $11 million to elect Republicans to Congress and the Legislature, making him by far the state party’s biggest benefactor.

His funding of Latino, female and moderate candidates has been crucial to the party’s effort to shed its image as a league of conservative white men that’s increasingly out of step with a diverse state of almost 39 million people.

http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-munger-republican-california-20150331-story.html


Adept at math and science, Munger earned a bachelor's degree in physics at Stanford University and a doctorate in physics at UC Berkeley.

"My thesis topic was The Lamb Shift in Heliumlike Uranium," he said by email.

Munger settled in Palo Alto, where he and his wife, attorney Charlotte Lowell, have raised three children. He has not held a paid job since his research appointment at Stanford's Linear Accelerator Center ended about 1992.

Family wealth has enabled him "to have the sort of scientific career usually supported by a salaried position at a national laboratory," he wrote. His work at particle accelerators "will make no one's toaster more efficient but seeks to answer fundamental questions about the universe."

What inspired him to enter politics, he told the audience at San Luis Obispo, was the 2005 special election called by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. He liked Schwarzenegger's agenda — four ballot measures that would have curbed the power of unions and their Democratic allies.

http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-adv-munger-20150304-story.html#page=1

[Smithryee]

1. I hope the idiot keeps trying to spend millions/billions

ineffectively trying to elect more Republicans.

Californians knows best.

Now if they can get rid of Issa and a few other insane Republicans, California will be set.

[LunaSea]

2. "He liked Schwarzenegger's agenda"

[Renew Deal]

3. A rich guy without a job wants to tell other people how to live