Who wants Carly Fiorina?
Some say a business-savvy woman would be a welcome addition to the Republican field.
By Jonathan Topaz
Carly Fiorina knows she’s a long shot for the presidency.
She’s never held elected office and has less name recognition than several other potential GOP rivals, two things she readily concedes. Her detractors, meanwhile, note that her one past attempt at elected office was a dud and her tenure as Hewlett-Packard’s CEO — her big private-sector bona fide — was rocky.
“There is no doubt that as the only nonpolitician in the race, if I were to get in, that I have hurdles to overcome,” Fiorina, 60, said in an interview.
Yet even strategists who wonder why she’d bother running admit that, with expectations so low, a Fiorina 2016 campaign would have upsides for her image — as well as for the Republican Party as a whole.
Fiorina is positioning herself as a business-savvy outsider with a compelling personal story who can command a stage. If she avoids stumbles, a run could boost her standing in GOP circles; some speculate her real goal is the vice presidency or a Cabinet slot.
Fiorina also is the only woman so far considering running on the Republican side, a blessing for a party criticized for its dearth of female leaders.
“[T]here are a lot of voters out there who are less interested in how many times people have run for office, less interested in how many years people have held office, less interested in how many donors they have, and more interested in, ‘What are they saying to me?’” said Fiorina, who is aiming for a final decision on whether to run by March or April.
Party insiders say Fiorina has a tough sell ahead.
A dozen former and current staffers and Republican strategists were skeptical, and in some cases outright dismissive, of a Fiorina candidacy.
“Pretty much everybody else potentially running for president … is further along” in terms of public awareness and support with the base, Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak said.
Her newly hired spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, acknowledged as much: “Her name ID is a little low.”
Fiorina also finds herself in an ideological netherworld. She told POLITICO she’s “clearly not an establishment politician,” but she has held major positions within the party. She was named vice chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2011 and before that served as an economic adviser for the 2008 presidential campaign of John McCain, a tea party scourge.
Still, she holds many conservative positions, including being staunchly anti-abortion. When she ran for Senate from California in 2010, she positioned herself on the right of the GOP field. She’s decried liberal hypocrisy in forums such as the Conservative Political Action Conference and plans to appear at the upcoming Iowa Freedom Summit hosted by conservative firebrand Rep. Steve King alongside grass-roots favorites Ben Carson, Rick Santorum and Sarah Palin.
At a panel about small business this month, Fiorina sounded more like a Silicon Valley CEO than a presidential candidate. She talked comfortably about venture capital mechanics and the entrepreneurial “ecosystem.” She made only oblique references to a government “hostile” to small business. She never used the words “Obama” or “Democrat.”
Fiorina, who began her career as a secretary, was the first woman in history to run a Fortune 20 company when she took over HP in 1999. She feuded with her board and was forced to resign after 5 1/2 years. She engineered a $25 billion acquisition of Compaq, a deal criticized at the time but since hailed by some industry analysts as a success. HP stock had a net drop of more than 50 percent during her tenure, far more than that of Dell or IBM, two key competitors.
Strategists warn that Fiorina might struggle to run for the presidency on her business experience given her tumultuous tenure at HP. “It’s always a little difficult for a CEO to run for office,” said Ken Khachigian, a former adviser. “You have a lot of business decisions that aren’t always popular.”
In 2010, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California repeatedly hit Fiorina for the approximately 30,000 layoffs that followed the Compaq merger and for outsourcing jobs overseas. Boxer won that race by 10 points.
Fiorina makes no apologies for her time at HP and its effect on her campaign.
“I’m extremely proud of what I did at HP,” Fiorina said, citing increased growth rates and cash flow during her tenure. “I will run on that record all day long.”
Fiorina’s supporters say she fought tough against an entrenched blue-state incumbent and performed better than that year’s GOP gubernatorial candidate, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. Fiorina began her campaign a month after completing chemotherapy for breast cancer and was briefly hospitalized in the final week of the campaign with an infection.
Critics, however, argue that Fiorina was an awkward candidate who lost convincingly in a wave Republican midterm year.
Earlier this month, Fiorina repaid the roughly $500,000 in remaining debt from her Senate run. Before then, she had repaid less than $50,000 total since the campaign ended, according to Federal Election Commission reports. Party insiders have criticized her for taking more than four years to repay the funds, and some pointed out that she did so only after increasing her media exposure in advance of a potential presidential run.
One person who worked on her campaign noted that Fiorina and her husband, Frank, bought a $6.1 million house in northern Virginia years before paying off her debt.
“For someone who is as wealthy as she is to still have debt, it’s outrageous,” Mackowiak said days before Fiorina announced her debts were settled.
Fiorina pointed out that Hillary Clinton, the presumed front-runner for the 2016 Democratic nomination, took four years to repay about $25 million from her 2008 presidential run. “Certainly, I would rather it had been settled earlier, but campaign debt is nothing new,” Fiorina said.
Ahead of a potential run, Fiorina has spoken to donors in early primary states. She’s also visited Iowa and New Hampshire several times in recent months and participated in a September women’s leadership event in South Carolina with Sen. Tim Scott. She will be in Des Moines on Jan. 24 at King’s summit and New Hampshire in February for a “Politics and Eggs” event. She’s also a confirmed speaker for CPAC next month.
Unlocking Potential PAC, which Fiorina founded last June to engage female voters, was active in the midterm cycle, raising nearly $2 million. To the delight of other Republicans, Fiorina has repeatedly slammed Democrats for insulting women by focusing heavily on reproductive rights and claiming the GOP is waging a “war on women.”
“She is someone who Republicans need to have in the race because she is a woman and she is a successful woman,” GOP strategist Ford O’Connell said.
Former staffers describe Fiorina as a good fundraiser and an excellent retail politician willing to put in long hours.
“She knows how to connect with people,” said Jeff Corless, her 2010 political director. “She came across as genuine. She excited people. She’s ready for the campaign trail, in my mind.”
“I’ve never seen a stronger constitution in my life,” said her 2010 campaign ad-maker, Fred Davis. He added that Fiorina dealt with her cancer with such toughness that it “barely fazed her.”
When asked about her long-shot status, multiple former staffers brought up Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, underdogs who won the Democratic nominations in 1976 and 2008, respectively.
If she runs, Fiorina can at least claim to be more than a career politician. “A lot of people in political life have known only politics,” she said, smiling. “And that’s a narrow set of experiences.”
