Whitman was a supporter of the Mitt Romney 2008 presidential campaign and was a member of his national finance team. She was also listed as finance co-chair of Romney's exploratory committee. After Romney stepped out of the race and endorsed John McCain, Whitman joined McCain's presidential campaign as a national co-chair. McCain mentioned Whitman as a possible secretary of the treasury during the second presidential debate in 2008, but lost the election to Barack Obama. During the 2012 Republican primaries, Whitman endorsed Mitt Romney, who praised her. Whitman's name was mentioned as a possible cabinet member in a Romney administration before he lost to Obama. During the 2016 Republican primaries, Whitman was finance co-chair of the Chris Christie 2016 presidential campaign. After Christie withdrew from the race and subsequently endorsed Donald Trump, Whitman criticized it as "an astonishing display of political opportunism" and called on other Christie donors to reject Trump, whom she compared to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In August, Whitman endorsed the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign, stating that to vote for Trump "out of party loyalty alone would be to endorse a candidacy that I believe has exploited anger, grievance, xenophobia and racial division". Acknowledging policy differences with Clinton, Whitman nonetheless praised her "temperament, global experience and commitment to America's bedrock national values". She called on all Republicans "to put country first before party" and added that she would support the campaign financially. Whitman spoke at the 2020 Democratic National Convention in support of the party's presidential nominee Joe Biden. 2010 gubernatorial campaign On February 10, 2009, Whitman announced she would run for governor of California in the 2010 election. On June 8, 2010, Whitman won the Republican primary, becoming the first female to run on the Republican ticket and the third female overall to run for Governor of California after Dianne Feinstein in 1990 and Kathleen Brown in 1994. Her campaign was largely self-funded. She ultimately lost to Jerry Brown. According to final reports, Whitman spent $144 million from her own personal funds. As of 2010, this was more than any other self-funded political candidate in U.S. history. In June 2010, Whitman released a political ad, "A Lifetime in Politics A Legacy of Failure", which seemingly contained one image of the FAIL Blog website, making it appear in the ad as if Jerry Brown had been the subject of one of the website's namesake "fails".