every level in this year’s midterm election, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman lost big, despite bidding huge to win California’s governorship. The failed attempt cost Whitman an estimated $160 million, mostly from her own pocket, in what was by far the largest amount any person in the United States has ever spent trying to get elected to anything.

Don’t cry for Whitman, she’s still a billionaire and won’t be searching her attic for potential auction items to make ends meet.

But Whitman did outspend once-and-future governor Jerry Brown six-to-one. Despite that she now joins the ranks of some pretty wealthy people, many with zero political cred, who couldn’t paper over inexperience and an imperious CEO manner with glossy TV ads. Which, by the way, she bought about $107 million worth alone, according to California Watch, airing nothing nearly as memorable as the “Demon Sheep” spot that Carly Fiorina put on YouTube for free.

Whitman may be Queen of the Hill in personally-funded futility, but she was hardly alone. Former professional wrestling entrepreneur Linda McMahon spent $47 million of her own money losing to Richard Blumenthal in the Connecticut Senate race. Another techie, former Microsoft VP Suzan DelBene, spent $2.28 million on a losing bid for the House seat in Washington’s 8th District. In all, some $500 million was spent by 58 candidates who contributed at least $500,000 to their own campaigns, Bloomberg reports, and 30 lost or dropped out.

Fiorina doled out “only” $5.5 million in her losing bid to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer. But the former Hewlett-Packard CEO was up against a popular incumbent, while Whitman’s loss was for an open seat. And in Brown her opponent was a candidate who, though he is the state’s current attorney general, is best known as an ultra-liberal former California governor whose heyday was in the 1970s. He’s not-always-fondly referred to as “Gov. Moonbeam” and he didn’t even have enough money to run TV ads until September.

So Whitman’s loss has to hurt, just a little. While we’d never be so crass as to suggest that she was trying to buy the election, maybe Whitman’s wondering what she might have spent that $160 million on instead.

Wired.com is here to help. Here are a five back-of-the-envelope ideas:

1. Building something like Bill Gates’ house. It cost an estimated $100 million. That leaves plenty left over for …
2. A 767-200 — just like the one Sergy and Larry have. The Google founders are thought to have paid about $25 million to buy and fix it up theirs, but a new one goes for as much at $140 million. The landing rights they have at NASA’s Moffett Field? Priceless.
3. Embarrass that piker Mark Zuckerberg by going 60 percent better than the Facebook founder’s charitable contribution to the Newark, N.J. school system.
4. Commission some “big” and “reasonably expensive” boats, like former Netscape CEO Jim Clark’s Hyperion. Clark denied that his 155-foot yacht cost as much as $50 million when he got it in 1998, but even if it was that pricey, you could have still funded your own flotilla.
5. Invent and then sell the iPad for one day — no, wait, that’s how to make $150 million.
6. Buy your own private island. If you’re as savvy as Johnny Depp, you’d have had about $154 million left over to run for something else.

Got your own ideas? Leave us a comment.

Follow us for disruptive tech news: John C. Abell and Epicenter on Twitter.

See Also:

• Fiorina, Whitman $teamroll Opposition in California Primaries …
• Meg Whitman’s ‘Colossal Mistake’ on Green
• Meg Whitman Tries to Have it Both Ways With California Climate …
• Meg Whitman for U.S. Treasury Secretary?
• EBay’s Meg Whitman Out; John Donahoe Named CEO & Prez
• Carly Fiorina’s ‘Demon Sheep’ Haunts Senate Race in California …
• Carly Fiorina 2.0: The U.S. Senate Edition

Authors: John C Abell

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