Super-rich, sucker-punched by a "September surprise" and still stuck courting a hard-to-please conservative base while trying to connect with everyone else.

That's been the story of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in recent weeks, but it also was the story of the 2010 California gubernatorial campaign of Meg Whitman, whom Romney hired three decades ago at the Boston-based Bain & Co. consulting firm.

For Whitman's campaign, the story ended with a crushing, 13-point defeat at the hands of Democrat Jerry Brown. That's a fate Romney desperately wants to avoid as he heads into his first debate with President Barack Obama on Wednesday.

Awash in campaign cash -- in Whitman's case, a record-shattering $142 million of her own money -- and their images molded by armies of consultants, both were cast by Democrats as aloof, out-of-touch rich people with hidden tax returns, offshore bank accounts and luxurious lifestyles, making it hard to convince middle-class and minority voters that they could ever understand the common American's plight.

Read more at the Mercury News