Kashkari Bets on U.S. Rescue to Fuel Challenge of Brown

Neel Kashkari, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive chosen by ex-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to help rescue the U.S. banking system, is readying a challenge to California Governor Jerry Brown even as the world’s 10th-largest economy reaches its highest level in more than three decades.

Kashkari, 40, who ran the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program under President George W. Bush, has assembled a team of Republican campaign strategists and is talking to potential donors about taking on the 75-year-old Democrat, said Aaron McLear, a spokesman for Kashkari. Brown has raised more than $10 million for a possible re-election run after defeating Meg Whitman, the former EBay Inc. chief executive officer who now runs Hewlett-Packard Co., in 2010.