The 2016 Presidential Candidates: Carly Fiorina
Cara Carleton Fiorina (née Sneed), better known as Carly, celebrated her 61st birthday yesterday. She was born on September 6, 1954. The former business executive is the only female among those seeking the Republican nomination for President who register above 1% in most recognized national polls. She currently chairs the non-profit philanthropic organization Good360.
Fiorina rose through the ranks to become an executive at AT&T and served as chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Corporation (HP) from 1999 to 2005. She was the first woman to lead a top 20 company as ranked by Fortune magazine. In 2002, Fiorina oversaw the biggest high-tech merger in history up to that time, with rival computer company Compaq, which made HP the world's largest personal computer manufacturer. The deal was controversial and was publicly opposed by several board members and shareholders who were not convinced that it would be successful. HP gained in market share as a result of the merger, but Fiorina then laid off 30,000 U.S. employees of the merged companies. By 2004 the number of HP employees was about the same as the pre-merger total of HP and Compaq combined. On February 9, 2005, the HP board of directors forced Fiorina to resign as chief executive officer and chairman over disagreements about the company's performance and disappointing earning reports. The company's stock price had fallen by approximately half its value compared to when Fiorina had started, though stock prices had generally dropped within the industry.
After leaving HP, Fiorina served as an adviser to Republican John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. She won a three-person race for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in California in 2010, but lost the general election to incumbent Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer by 10 points. She spent a great deal of her own money in the race. Fiorina has never held public office.
On May 4, 2015, Fiorina announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Her announcement was made with a video message posted by Fiorina's campaign. Earlier, in November 2014, The Washington Post had reported that Fiorina was "actively exploring" a run for President. Her business background and status as the only woman in a "sea of suited men" among other prospective candidates, were mentioned as positives. Her unsuccessful 2010 Senate campaign, unpaid campaign debt and dismissal from HP were seen as "considerable challenges." On March 29, 2015, Fiorina told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace there was a "higher than 90 percent" chance that she would enter the race to be the Republican Party nominee in the 2016 presidential election.
In the weeks leading up to her campaign announcement, Fiorina made numerous strategic appearances in the key battleground states of Iowa and New Hampshire. After she announced her candidacy on May 4, 2015, she made appearances on ABC's Good Morning America, The Kelly File, Today and Late Night with Seth Meyers. After days of national media appearances, she returned to campaign in Iowa on May 7.
Fiorina's tenure as HP's CEO and Chair has been used as one of her leading credentials for her run for President. Her critics have challenged Fiorina's claims of success, citing the high number of US job cuts and of jobs sent offshore during her tenure at HP, along with the high compensation bonuses she received from the company, and the events surrounding her firing from HP. Her Campaign manager, Sarah Isgur Flores, responded to the criticism, saying that Fiorina "worked hard to save as many jobs as possible."
On the afternoon of May 4, 2015, a website appeared under the domain name CarlyFiorina.org stating that Fiorina's organization had failed to register the domain. It criticizes her for laying off 30,000 people while CEO of HP. According to The Hill, the site was created by an employee of the Service Employees International Union, a labor union representing over 1.9 million US service industry employees. On May 10, Fiorina appeared on Meet the Press; responding to host Chuck Todd's question asking if Fiorina has "regrets about those layoffs". Fiorina said that they doubled the the size of the company, grew it from 2% to 9%, tripled the rate of innovation to 11 patents a day, and grew jobs in the U.S. and abroad. She added "I had to make tough calls during tough times. Tough times that many technology companies didn't survive at all."
Fiorina, in many of her campaign speeches, has directed much of her criticism at Hillary Clinton, seeking to contrasts her background the differences between the two of them. She casts herself as a problem solver while portraying Clinton as a professional politician. A writer in The Nation commented, "With so-called women’s issues poised to play an unprecedented role in the upcoming election, Republicans need someone who can troll Hillary Clinton without seeming sexist."
On July 6, the Fiorina campaign announced that it had raised $1.4 million in donations and the Carly for America super PAC reported raising $3.4 million.
On July 16, Fiorina starred in a Buzzfeed video about sexism in the workplace. Fiorina became the second presidential hopeful to shoot a video with Buzzfeed, after Ted Cruz. The video was both praise (for being bold and funny) and criticized (for being too liberal.)
On August 6, Fiorina participated in Fox News's first GOP debate. She failed to qualify for one of the Fox News prime-time debate slots, and was relegated to a debate among the "second tier candidates" which aired earlier the same day. Fiorina's performance led news sources to conclude she had won the early debate and some pundits correctly predicted that her polling numbers would surge. On August 9, Fiorina reported an uptick in fundraising support. In an online poll by NBC and SurveyMonkey on August 10, Fiorina came in fourth of the seventeen Republican contenders with 8% of Republican primary voters saying they would support her in a primary or a caucus. This reflects a gain in support of six points from previous polling data. An article on the Wall Street Journal in the aftermath of the debate, noted Fiorina's surge, but focused on challenges facing her campaign, citing the US$1.7 million she raised during her first two months of her campaign ( and the $3.4 million from her super PAC), which is far less than other candidates.
Every national poll that was released after the first debate held on August 6th, 2015 all showed Carly Fiorina to be firmly within the top ten of Republican candidates. However, because CNN chose to include all national polls after July 10, 2015 (multiple weeks before the debate), and before September 10, before the September 16th debate, Fiorina consistantly polled under 2%. Because a significantly larger amount of polls were released before the debate Fiorina is projected to not qualify for the CNN debate, which follows the same top ten formula as the first FOX debate to decide which candidate goes into which debate. Fiorina publicly requested that Republican National Committee, or RNC, force CNN to change their standards. On September 3, 2015 CNN decided to amend the criteria stating any candidate who ranks in the top 10 in polling between August 7 and September 10 will be included.
Following are some of the political positions taken by Carly Fiorina:
Abortion: Fiorina is pro-life, and suports the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act that would ban abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, with an exception for cases of rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother. Fiorina supports overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Climate change: Fiorina acknowledges the scientific consensus that climate change is real and caused by human activity, but has expressed skepticism that government can affect the issue and has said that "targeting the coal industry will not solve the problem".
Economy: Fiorina opposed the 2009 federal stimulus act, calling it a waste of taxpayer money. She has said she would cut the pay of federal workers and base their compensation on performance.
Drugs: Fiorina believes that "drug addiction shouldn't be criminalized." She opposes legalization of marijuana, but says that she believes in states' rights and that as president she will not enforce the federal ban on marijuana in Colorado, where voters have legalized marijuana as a matter of state law.
Education: Fiorina is a critic of the Common Core State Standards, and has called for metric-based accountability in schools. She praised No Child Left Behind as setting high standards and Race to the Top for using internationally-benchmarked measures." In 2015, Fiorina wrote that she supported a school choice or voucher program for all students. At the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference she said that President Obama's proposal for free community college was intended "to distract us from the fact that we have too many failing high schools".
Foreign policy: Fiorina has criticized the Iran nuclear agreement, saying that Iran did not negotiate in good faith. She said that the U.S. cannot trust the verification components of the deal because Iran does not allow access to military sites and Iran has broken sanctions and inspection agreements in the past. On Russia-U.S. relations and the Ukraine crisis, Fiorina has said that as president, she would "stand up and arm Ukraine" and conduct more aggressive military exercises in the Baltic nations to "send a very clear message to Vladimir Putin." In January 2015 she said of the Chinese: "They're not terribly imaginative. They’re not entrepreneurial. They don't innovate. That's why they're stealing our intellectual property."
Health care: Fiorina has stated that the Affordable Care Act is a vast legislative overreach that did not fix the problem it started out to fix and created problems for everyone else. Under the Affordable Care Act, she argues that the number of uninsured is not coming down fast enough, deductibles have gone up, and the amount of paperwork has increased. She supports its repeal. Fiorina has proposed establishing federally-subsidized but state-run "high-risk pools to help those who are truly needy."
Immigration: In California, Fiorina supported the Dream Act, which would allow children brought to the U.S. by their parents when they were under the age of 16 to secure permanent U.S. residency and a path to citizenship if they graduate from college or serve in the armed forces. In a May 2015 interview with Katie Couric, Fiorina said that she does not support a path for citizenship "for those who came here illegally and who have stayed here illegally." Fiorina drew a distinction between people in that category and those who came legally but overstayed their visas. She states that there is a need to improve border security before undertaking comprehensive immigration reform.
LGBT issues: Fiorina said that she voted in favor of Proposition 8, a California ballot proposition which banned same-sex marriage in that state, but noted that "she created a strong program of domestic partner benefits while at HP". In August 2010, Fiorina said that she opposed enforcing the 1993 law banning homosexuals in the military. In 2010, Fiorina stated that she supported the Defense of Marriage Act, but also supported civil unions. In 2015, Fiorina reaffirmed her support for civil unions and stated that those in such unions should receive the same government benefits accorded to married persons. Of the recent Supreme Court decision supporting same sex-marriage, she said "I think the Supreme Court ruling will become the law of the land, and however much I may agree or disagree with it, I wouldn't support an amendment to reverse it." Fiorina said the decision was "only the latest example of an activist Court. I do not agree that the Court can or should redefine marriage. I believe that responsibility should have remained with states and voters where this conversation has continued in churches, town halls and living rooms around the country."
Maternity leave: Fiorina believes employers should decide whether they should provide paid maternity leave to their employees and it should not be mandated by the government.
Minimum wage: Fiorina believes that the federal minimum wage is "a policy that is best carried out in the states" saying a national minimum wage does not make sense because economic conditions in New Hampshire varies significantly from more expensive economic conditions in Los Angeles or New York. She also believes that raising the federal minimum wage would "hurt those who are looking for entry-level jobs."
Net neutrality: Fiorina opposes net neutrality rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission and has said she would "roll back" that policy.
Regulation: Fiorina has said that she "generally believes that reducing government regulations helps to spur the economy." She criticized the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, saying in April 2015 that "We should get rid of Dodd-Frank and start again."
Taxation: During her 2010 Senate campaign, Fiorina "called for eliminating the estate tax and capital gains taxes for investments in small businesses, and lowering marginal tax rates." She opposes proposals to increase the federal gas tax or state gas taxes in order to fund the Highway Trust Fund. In February 2015 she said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that "Any gas tax hike, big or small, will harm American families and hurt economic growth."
Fiorina rose through the ranks to become an executive at AT&T and served as chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Corporation (HP) from 1999 to 2005. She was the first woman to lead a top 20 company as ranked by Fortune magazine. In 2002, Fiorina oversaw the biggest high-tech merger in history up to that time, with rival computer company Compaq, which made HP the world's largest personal computer manufacturer. The deal was controversial and was publicly opposed by several board members and shareholders who were not convinced that it would be successful. HP gained in market share as a result of the merger, but Fiorina then laid off 30,000 U.S. employees of the merged companies. By 2004 the number of HP employees was about the same as the pre-merger total of HP and Compaq combined. On February 9, 2005, the HP board of directors forced Fiorina to resign as chief executive officer and chairman over disagreements about the company's performance and disappointing earning reports. The company's stock price had fallen by approximately half its value compared to when Fiorina had started, though stock prices had generally dropped within the industry.
After leaving HP, Fiorina served as an adviser to Republican John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. She won a three-person race for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in California in 2010, but lost the general election to incumbent Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer by 10 points. She spent a great deal of her own money in the race. Fiorina has never held public office.
On May 4, 2015, Fiorina announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Her announcement was made with a video message posted by Fiorina's campaign. Earlier, in November 2014, The Washington Post had reported that Fiorina was "actively exploring" a run for President. Her business background and status as the only woman in a "sea of suited men" among other prospective candidates, were mentioned as positives. Her unsuccessful 2010 Senate campaign, unpaid campaign debt and dismissal from HP were seen as "considerable challenges." On March 29, 2015, Fiorina told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace there was a "higher than 90 percent" chance that she would enter the race to be the Republican Party nominee in the 2016 presidential election.
In the weeks leading up to her campaign announcement, Fiorina made numerous strategic appearances in the key battleground states of Iowa and New Hampshire. After she announced her candidacy on May 4, 2015, she made appearances on ABC's Good Morning America, The Kelly File, Today and Late Night with Seth Meyers. After days of national media appearances, she returned to campaign in Iowa on May 7.
Fiorina's tenure as HP's CEO and Chair has been used as one of her leading credentials for her run for President. Her critics have challenged Fiorina's claims of success, citing the high number of US job cuts and of jobs sent offshore during her tenure at HP, along with the high compensation bonuses she received from the company, and the events surrounding her firing from HP. Her Campaign manager, Sarah Isgur Flores, responded to the criticism, saying that Fiorina "worked hard to save as many jobs as possible."
On the afternoon of May 4, 2015, a website appeared under the domain name CarlyFiorina.org stating that Fiorina's organization had failed to register the domain. It criticizes her for laying off 30,000 people while CEO of HP. According to The Hill, the site was created by an employee of the Service Employees International Union, a labor union representing over 1.9 million US service industry employees. On May 10, Fiorina appeared on Meet the Press; responding to host Chuck Todd's question asking if Fiorina has "regrets about those layoffs". Fiorina said that they doubled the the size of the company, grew it from 2% to 9%, tripled the rate of innovation to 11 patents a day, and grew jobs in the U.S. and abroad. She added "I had to make tough calls during tough times. Tough times that many technology companies didn't survive at all."
Fiorina, in many of her campaign speeches, has directed much of her criticism at Hillary Clinton, seeking to contrasts her background the differences between the two of them. She casts herself as a problem solver while portraying Clinton as a professional politician. A writer in The Nation commented, "With so-called women’s issues poised to play an unprecedented role in the upcoming election, Republicans need someone who can troll Hillary Clinton without seeming sexist."
On July 6, the Fiorina campaign announced that it had raised $1.4 million in donations and the Carly for America super PAC reported raising $3.4 million.
On July 16, Fiorina starred in a Buzzfeed video about sexism in the workplace. Fiorina became the second presidential hopeful to shoot a video with Buzzfeed, after Ted Cruz. The video was both praise (for being bold and funny) and criticized (for being too liberal.)
On August 6, Fiorina participated in Fox News's first GOP debate. She failed to qualify for one of the Fox News prime-time debate slots, and was relegated to a debate among the "second tier candidates" which aired earlier the same day. Fiorina's performance led news sources to conclude she had won the early debate and some pundits correctly predicted that her polling numbers would surge. On August 9, Fiorina reported an uptick in fundraising support. In an online poll by NBC and SurveyMonkey on August 10, Fiorina came in fourth of the seventeen Republican contenders with 8% of Republican primary voters saying they would support her in a primary or a caucus. This reflects a gain in support of six points from previous polling data. An article on the Wall Street Journal in the aftermath of the debate, noted Fiorina's surge, but focused on challenges facing her campaign, citing the US$1.7 million she raised during her first two months of her campaign ( and the $3.4 million from her super PAC), which is far less than other candidates.
Every national poll that was released after the first debate held on August 6th, 2015 all showed Carly Fiorina to be firmly within the top ten of Republican candidates. However, because CNN chose to include all national polls after July 10, 2015 (multiple weeks before the debate), and before September 10, before the September 16th debate, Fiorina consistantly polled under 2%. Because a significantly larger amount of polls were released before the debate Fiorina is projected to not qualify for the CNN debate, which follows the same top ten formula as the first FOX debate to decide which candidate goes into which debate. Fiorina publicly requested that Republican National Committee, or RNC, force CNN to change their standards. On September 3, 2015 CNN decided to amend the criteria stating any candidate who ranks in the top 10 in polling between August 7 and September 10 will be included.
Following are some of the political positions taken by Carly Fiorina:
Abortion: Fiorina is pro-life, and suports the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act that would ban abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, with an exception for cases of rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother. Fiorina supports overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Climate change: Fiorina acknowledges the scientific consensus that climate change is real and caused by human activity, but has expressed skepticism that government can affect the issue and has said that "targeting the coal industry will not solve the problem".
Economy: Fiorina opposed the 2009 federal stimulus act, calling it a waste of taxpayer money. She has said she would cut the pay of federal workers and base their compensation on performance.
Drugs: Fiorina believes that "drug addiction shouldn't be criminalized." She opposes legalization of marijuana, but says that she believes in states' rights and that as president she will not enforce the federal ban on marijuana in Colorado, where voters have legalized marijuana as a matter of state law.
Education: Fiorina is a critic of the Common Core State Standards, and has called for metric-based accountability in schools. She praised No Child Left Behind as setting high standards and Race to the Top for using internationally-benchmarked measures." In 2015, Fiorina wrote that she supported a school choice or voucher program for all students. At the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference she said that President Obama's proposal for free community college was intended "to distract us from the fact that we have too many failing high schools".
Foreign policy: Fiorina has criticized the Iran nuclear agreement, saying that Iran did not negotiate in good faith. She said that the U.S. cannot trust the verification components of the deal because Iran does not allow access to military sites and Iran has broken sanctions and inspection agreements in the past. On Russia-U.S. relations and the Ukraine crisis, Fiorina has said that as president, she would "stand up and arm Ukraine" and conduct more aggressive military exercises in the Baltic nations to "send a very clear message to Vladimir Putin." In January 2015 she said of the Chinese: "They're not terribly imaginative. They’re not entrepreneurial. They don't innovate. That's why they're stealing our intellectual property."
Health care: Fiorina has stated that the Affordable Care Act is a vast legislative overreach that did not fix the problem it started out to fix and created problems for everyone else. Under the Affordable Care Act, she argues that the number of uninsured is not coming down fast enough, deductibles have gone up, and the amount of paperwork has increased. She supports its repeal. Fiorina has proposed establishing federally-subsidized but state-run "high-risk pools to help those who are truly needy."
Immigration: In California, Fiorina supported the Dream Act, which would allow children brought to the U.S. by their parents when they were under the age of 16 to secure permanent U.S. residency and a path to citizenship if they graduate from college or serve in the armed forces. In a May 2015 interview with Katie Couric, Fiorina said that she does not support a path for citizenship "for those who came here illegally and who have stayed here illegally." Fiorina drew a distinction between people in that category and those who came legally but overstayed their visas. She states that there is a need to improve border security before undertaking comprehensive immigration reform.
LGBT issues: Fiorina said that she voted in favor of Proposition 8, a California ballot proposition which banned same-sex marriage in that state, but noted that "she created a strong program of domestic partner benefits while at HP". In August 2010, Fiorina said that she opposed enforcing the 1993 law banning homosexuals in the military. In 2010, Fiorina stated that she supported the Defense of Marriage Act, but also supported civil unions. In 2015, Fiorina reaffirmed her support for civil unions and stated that those in such unions should receive the same government benefits accorded to married persons. Of the recent Supreme Court decision supporting same sex-marriage, she said "I think the Supreme Court ruling will become the law of the land, and however much I may agree or disagree with it, I wouldn't support an amendment to reverse it." Fiorina said the decision was "only the latest example of an activist Court. I do not agree that the Court can or should redefine marriage. I believe that responsibility should have remained with states and voters where this conversation has continued in churches, town halls and living rooms around the country."
Maternity leave: Fiorina believes employers should decide whether they should provide paid maternity leave to their employees and it should not be mandated by the government.
Minimum wage: Fiorina believes that the federal minimum wage is "a policy that is best carried out in the states" saying a national minimum wage does not make sense because economic conditions in New Hampshire varies significantly from more expensive economic conditions in Los Angeles or New York. She also believes that raising the federal minimum wage would "hurt those who are looking for entry-level jobs."
Net neutrality: Fiorina opposes net neutrality rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission and has said she would "roll back" that policy.
Regulation: Fiorina has said that she "generally believes that reducing government regulations helps to spur the economy." She criticized the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, saying in April 2015 that "We should get rid of Dodd-Frank and start again."
Taxation: During her 2010 Senate campaign, Fiorina "called for eliminating the estate tax and capital gains taxes for investments in small businesses, and lowering marginal tax rates." She opposes proposals to increase the federal gas tax or state gas taxes in order to fund the Highway Trust Fund. In February 2015 she said in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that "Any gas tax hike, big or small, will harm American families and hurt economic growth."