The 49-year-old Checchi, the former co-chairman of Northwest Airlines, told Sacramento's Comstock Club -- a remarkable venue to launch a gubernatorial campaign, by the way -- that he spent the summer taking the pulse of California on an extended tour of the state, meeting with people from all walks of life in a quest to determine whether he should run for governor. He spent about $3 million of his personal funds on the exploratory effort.

Not surprisingly, the message he got was clear: He should run.

Until the 1990s, a candidate like Checchi -- no political experience, no organization, no public tack record on critical issues -- would have been dismissed as an interesting sidelight to governor's race, someone with no chance of winning but who could affect the outcome by siphoning votes from a major candidate.

Clearly, the elegant, urbane Checchi is fighting long historical odds. In the modern era, only one outsider with no electoral experience was ever elected governor of California, and that was Ronald Reagan. But Reagan had spent years as a political activist, serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild and later as the arch-conservative spokesman of General Electric, and he put the skills he developed as an actor to good use as a politician. Indeed, the similarities between acting and professional politics are obvious now, but at the time Reagan ran for governor of California in 1966, that linkage was not clear. In fact, he initially was dismissed as a joke.

Checchi, like Reagan, offers himself as an outsider seeking to reform the system. But he has few of the communications and media skills enjoyed by Reagan. He has wealth, but historically, that hasn't been enough. Industrialist Norton Simon and businessman Michael Huffington both ran for statewide office in California and both lost, despite their personal wealth.

Unlike Huffington, who was narrowly defeated by Dianne Feinstein in the 1994 Senate race, Checchi has the advantage of a successful business and management background. But Checchi faces the fundamental suspicion of voters that he is simply trying to buy the race. Moreover, unlike past elections, Checchi is reaping the advantage of Proposition 208, the complex reform initiative approved by voters last year to clean up campaign spending.

Among other things, Proposition 208's restrictions favor candidates with access to large amounts of personal cash. Indeed, critics of the initiative contend that the long-term impact of Proposition 208 will be to encourage a crop of wealthy, politically inexperienced candidates.

Checchi knows the image his wealth projects, and that was one reason he kicked off his gubernatorial campaign at the Comstock Club, a respected if dull group that meets monthly to hear discussions of current issues, rather than the traditional, two-day statewide tour of California's media-rich markets -- Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Sacramento.

Checchi said he chose the Comstock Club because he wants to run an issues campaign, not just another race filled with negative television advertising.

His first big test: The decision of Feinstein, who is considering a run for governor. If she runs, it will be interesting to see how Checchi, a fellow Democrat, depicts her in his advertising campaign. Can he refrain from negative attacks, the traditional style of the underdog?

We'll see.

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