Profile: Arianna Huffington

Once described as "the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus", columnist and author Arianna Huffington says she is not running for California governor to make a statement.

Huffington has moved from right to left

The glamorous 53-year-old will be running as an independent in a race she believes she can win.

A former pin-up of the Republican establishment, Ms Huffington has dramatically shifted her political ground in recent years.

The author is now a favourite among political progressives for her columns, best-selling books lambasting the right-wing establishment and her witty remarks - made in her noticeable Greek accent - on chat shows.

Counter-feminist

The daughter of a Greek journalist, she first came to public attention as president of the Cambridge Union in the 1970s, when she was studying economics and dating the Times of London columnist Bernard Levin.

But it was through her virulent attack on Germaine Greer's seminal work The Female Eunuch that she started her career in earnest as a commentator.

The Female Woman, which attacked feminism for ignoring women's "special considerations" for their family, was hailed by right-wingers, and Ms Huffington began her ascent.

In 1986 she married Texas oil billionaire Michael Huffington. She played a major role in his congressional election in 1992, and his $28m, failed bid for a senate seat two years later.

The pair divorced, and he later announced he was gay.

Making enemies

Since their split, Ms Huffington has turned on her former allies.

One of her latest books, Pigs at the Trough, attacks US President George W Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney in particular, and calls for a grassroots action against the corruption of American politics and business.

Late last year, she also sponsored a series of adverts parodying the government's drug-control messages - which implied that drug users were somehow funding terrorists, with a series suggesting that owners of big petrol-guzzling cars were also helping out.

But where she has lost friends, she has made new ones.

Ms Huffington claims she was persuaded to run after a concerted web campaign by fans of her work and political activists desperate to see the enigmatic author in office.