“Unlike professional politicians, wealthy rookies lack a group of seasoned advisers, “so they go out and hire everybody in the Western Hemisphere and wind up with a big bloated campaign team with no real chain of command,” South said, adding that successful executives often underestimate the difficulty of running for office.”

He turned himself into a fundraising machine. I remember him saying: "I have just held the biggest fundraiser in the history of Lancaster."

Okay then.

He was perturbed that he ended up spending more of his own money than the $5 million he initially intended to spend.

Issa financed the signature gathering that qualified the recall after the various characters claiming credit couldn't do it, but most of the money that drove home the recall came from Schwarzenegger.

>Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the only self-funded candidate who’s made it to a top slot. However, he short-circuited the odds by avoiding a primary, where the Republican right wing would have battered him, to capture the governorship in the anomalous 2003 recall (funded largely by Issa) of Gray Davis.