EX-HP chief Fiorina announces candidacy
Former CEO touts résumé, criticizes Clinton
Former Hewlett-packard Co. CEO Carly Fiorina said Monday she will seek to become the United States’ first female president, joining a crowded field for the Republican presidential nomination.
“Yes, I am running for president,” Fiorina said on ABC’S “Good Morning America,” adding she’d be the best person for the job because she understands how the economy and world work.
Fiorina is set to speak at a Techcrunch event in New York this week, then swing through the key early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, spokeswoman Anna Epstein said.
Fiorina, who never has held elected office, served as an executive at AT&T and Lucent before assuming the leadership role at HP, then America’s largest computermaker, in 1999. That business experience, along with her leading role at a number of charitable organizations — such as the micro-financing nonprofit Opportunity International and Good360, which helps coordinate corporate donations — will serve as a centerpiece of a campaign that is expected to portray Fiorina as the antithesis of the career politician, and the only Republican who can neutralize Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton’s advantage among women voters.
“We have to have a nominee who can take punches, but we have to have a nominee who will throw punches,” Fiorina told the National Review Ideas Summit on Saturday. “We’ve got to take that fight to Hillary Clinton.”
Fiorina, 60, routinely cited her corporate experience and lack of government jobs in the months leading up to her announcement. “People who have been in politics all their lives are somewhat disconnected from the rest of us,” she told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in April.
Her greatest corporate achievement, her rise to lead one of the country’s most prominent tech companies, is also something of an Achilles’ heel, as the HP board ousted her in 2005. A merger with rival Compaq that Fiorina oversaw led to earnings stagnation, massive layoffs and a plunging stock price for HP.
During Fiorina’s only other attempt at seeking elected office, in the 2010 California Senate race, incumbent Barbara Boxer repeatedly criticized her record at the company. Boxer ended up winning by double digits.
In the months leading up to her presidential announcement, Fiorina has worked to position herself as one of Clinton’s fiercest critics, noting her gender offsets one of Clinton’s perceived advantages.
“If Hillary Clinton were to face a (Republican) female nominee, there are a whole set of things that she won’t be able to talk about,” Fiorina said at the April Christian Science Monitor breakfast. “She won’t be able to talk about being the first woman president. She won’t be able to talk about a war on women without being challenged. She won’t be able to play the gender card.”
Politically, Fiorina is a small-government conservative who, like many in her party, favors a host of tax cuts. She has supported building the Keystone XL pipeline while opposing capand-trade measures meant to curb greenhouse gas emissions. A strong gun-rights supporter, Fiorina has criticized 1994’s assault weapons ban.