Carson, Fiorina announce bids for White House
Retired doctor asks for voters to listen to his ideas
Former technology executive Carly Fiorina and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson jump into the race for the Republican presidential nomination, both long shots who nevertheless have the potential to attract a more diverse group of supporters to the party.
Detroit — Before a packed audience at the Detroit Music Hall, Detroit native Ben Carson officially kicked off his presidential campaign Monday morning.
“I’m Ben Carson and I’m a candidate for president of the United States,” he said.
He may not have the pedigree or the political experience for the race, Carson said.
“I’m not even asking people to vote for me. I’m just asking people to listen,” he said. “The real pedigree we need to heal this country is someone who believes in our Constitution.”
Carson chose Detroit, the town in which he grew up, for the announcement and began the day with a prayer breakfast with city pastors, then spoke to an assembly at the Detroit high school that bears his name before heading to the official launch of his presidential campaign.
Carson told a Florida TV station Sunday night that he was joining the race.
From Detroit, he had been scheduled to travel to Iowa, for three days of events in the pivotal state where the first presidential caucus of the 2016 election cycle will be held Feb. 1. But, he switched up his plans early Monday and said he would go to Dallas to be with his critically ill mother, Sonya Carson.
He sprinkled his remarks throughout the morning with religious references, saying: “If God ordains that we get into White House. We’re going to change the government into something more like a wellrun business.
“People tell you you can’t do this, you don’t have any experience. But I also don’t have a lot of experience busting budgets,” Carson said at the Music Hall.
At the Charles Wright Museum of African American History before he announced his bid, Carson said he’s anxious to hear what other GOP candidates have to say.
“If they’re all saying the same thing I am, fantastic. The more the merrier, bring ’em on,” he said. “Let’s talk about what our ideals are. The only thing I’m going to be doing is to encouraging people to think for themselves. Listen and think for yourself. Don’t listen to pundits and the people who try to control everything.”
In remarks to about 100 people at the museum, Carson talked about everything from the nation’s economy to his belief in creationism to the racial unrest that’s been erupting in the wake of deaths of black men in cities across the country.
“People have lost hope and therefore an opportunity arises for to break into a place and to loot it and stuff your pocket with things,” he said of the unrest in Baltimore. “Some people actually find it easier to collect benefits than to work a minimum-wage job. So can you really blame someone who decides to take that. But what it is doing is extinguishing the can-do attitude.”
Carson grew up in Detroit, the son of a house cleaner and a father who left the family when Carson was 8. His mother had only a third-grade education, but didn’t let on to her sons.
At 33, he became the youngest director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He was the first to successfully separate a set of conjoined twins who were attached at the back of the head, and the first to successfully place an intrauterine shunt for a hydrocephalic twin.
It was during his speech at that National Prayer Breakfast in 2013 that he burst onto the political scene, using part of his 27-minute presentation to criticize the nation’s fiscal and health care policies.