The 2016 presidential campaign of Carly Fiorina was announced in a video message posted on May 4, 2015. Fiorina was formerly chief executive officer of the technology company Hewlett-Packard, and was the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in California in 2010.
Fiorina suspended her campaign for the Republican presidential nomination on February 10, 2016. On April 27, 2016, Ted Cruz announced that Fiorina would be his running mate should he win the nomination. She joined his campaign days before the Indiana Primary, which he lost. Cruz suspended his campaign that evening, effectively ending Fiorina's vice-presidential bid. After the election, however, Fiorina received one electoral vote for vice president from a faithless elector from Texas; the other 37, as pledged, voted for Mike Pence.
Background
A candidate for the United States Senate in 2010, Fiorina ruled out running for the U.S. Senate in 2016, but did not rule out running for President in 2016. In November 2014, The Washington Post reported that Fiorina was "actively exploring" a run for president. Her business background and status as the only CEO and the only woman in a "sea of suited men" were mentioned as positives, with Republican strategists pointing to her unsuccessful 2010 Senate campaign, unpaid campaign debt and dismissal from HP 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.
Campaign
Announcement and media blitz In the weeks leading up to her campaign announcement, Fiorina made numerous strategic appearances in the key battleground states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Fiorina announced her candidacy on May 4, 2015, via an online video posted by her campaign, followed by appearances on ABC's Good Morning America and The Kelly File. On May 5, Fiorina made publicized appearances on Today and Late Night with Seth Meyers. After days of national media appearances described as a "media blitz," Fiorina returned to campaign in Iowa on May 7.
Controversy over tenure at Lucent and Hewlett-Packard Shortly after Fiorina announced her entry into the 2016 presidential race, and in a replay of her 2010 senatorial race, social media and editorial outlets referenced her tenure as HP's CEO and chair as a basis for her run for president. Commentators challenged Fiorina's claims of success, citing dozens of examples and anecdotes of why Fiorina had allegedly failed in her business leadership roles at both Hewlett-Packard and Lucent. The discussion revolved around the 30,000 U.S. job cuts as well as offshoring, which Fiorina directed during her tenure at HP, contrasting it with the high compensation bonuses she received from the company, and the events surrounding her resignation from HP. Campaign manager Sarah Isgur Flores deflected the criticism saying, Fiorina "worked hard to save as many jobs as possible", and her defenders argued that Fiorina made difficult and unpopular decisions to turn around a struggling firm.
Other discussions focused on her well-documented public record, including coverage of risky vendor financing programs that Fiorina was said to have supported during her time as Lucent's president of consumer products. The programs, which allegedly inflated the company's revenue figures to the benefit of Fiorina's bonus payout, were said to have contributed to the downfall of the company, formerly part of the iconic AT&T Bell Labs organization.
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 and criticizing her tenure as CEO."CarlyFiorina.org", Retrieved May 6, 2015. 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 [that occurred while she was CEO of HP]", Fiorina said that they doubled 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. Andrew Sorkin, from The New York Times, challenged Fiorina's assertions about her success as a businesswoman, writing that these percentages refer to revenue and not profit, and that the revenue growth was a result of acquisitions.
In August 2015, and in what was reported as a rebuttal to Sorkin's article, Tom Perkins, who was one of the HP board members who voted to oust Fiorina, published a full-page ad in the form of a letter in The New York Times, paid for by a pro-Fiorina super PAC "CARLY for America", in which he commented on the firing from HP by saying: "Critics often claim Carly was fired at HP because she was unsuccessful. As a member of the board, I can tell you this is not true. In truth, it was the Board I was a part of that was ineffective and dysfunctional."
In mid-September 2015, Fiorina addressed previous criticism from Yale business management scholar Jeffrey Sonnenfeld who had said in 2008 that Fiorina used a "street bully" style of management, and that she had been a failure as HP's CEO. He also described in August 2015 how Fiorina was saying she had doubled revenue at HP, but Sonnenfeld said this was an empty metric; the real gauge was that HP had lost 52% of its value during her tenure. Donald Trump, a Republican contender against Fiorina in the 2016 presidential race, used Sonnenfeld's analysis against her during the second televised debate in 2015, and she countered by calling Sonnenfeld a "Clintonite". Sonnenfeld wrote back in Politico magazine that problems with Fiorina's leadership style were what caused HP to lose half its value during her tenure. He said she does not admit mistakes and thus does not learn from them, that she manipulates statistics, that she makes poor executive decisions, and that she turns to ad hominem attacks when others oppose her plans. Sonnenfeld responded that four of the 2016 Republican presidential candidates had requested and received his advice, and that he had never been a "Clintonite".
Meg Whitman, the current CEO of Hewlett Packard, who endorsed Governor Chris Christie during the primaries, stated that in her opinion while Fiorina was a good CEO, she was not qualified to be President of the United States, stating that a business background is important but that having worked in government is also important, and that "it's very difficult for your first role in politics to be President of the United States".
June–July campaigning
Fiorina's presidential campaign had provoked both praise and criticism. The National Review pointed out her foil to Hillary Clinton (also a female presidential candidate), saying "Carly Fiorina is no doubt getting attention because of her unique background, but more and more people are staying to listen because she has something fresh to say", and that "Fiorina also seems to relish the role of being the most pointed critic of Hillary Clinton…. She contrasts her background as a 'problem solver' with Clinton's record as a professional politician." 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 generated praise for being bold and funny, as well as criticism that the video was divisive, pandering, and overtly liberal.
Performance in the first GOP debate On August 6, Fiorina participated in Fox News's first GOP debate. Failing to qualify for one of the Fox News prime-time debate slots, she was relegated to the debate airing earlier the same day. Fiorina's performance led news sources to conclude she had won the early debate. Following the debate, 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 and described the challenge she will face in translating the post-debate bounce into a viable campaign for the nomination, citing the 1.7 million she raised during her first two months of her campaign (3.4 from her super PAC), which is far less than other candidates, and her difficult tenure at HP.
Second GOP debate On every national poll that was released after the first debate held on August 6, 2015, all showed 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 16 debate, Fiorina consistently polled under 2%; and because a significantly larger number of polls was released before the debate Fiorina was projected to not make the later of the debates, which follow 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, and her Deputy Campaign Manager, Sarah Isgur Flores, wrote an article on the website Medium expressing annoyance with CNN's 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 would be included.
Fiorina's appearance on September 16, 2015, in the second debate at the Reagan Presidential Library was generally seen by the press as improving her standing in the Republican field. The New York Times described her performance as: "steely, self-assured and at times deeply personal", and as one which may "help correct a problem that her party has struggled with in recent elections: how to appeal more effectively to women".Jeremy W. Peters – "Carly Fiorina Gains Traction in Debate, Helping G.O.P. Reach Out to Women", The New York Times, September 17, 2015. Retrieved 2015-09-17 The Washington Post commented on how what they described as her "polished showing" and "widely praised performance" in the second televised Republican debate, "lit up social media and cable news".Sean Sullivan and Jose A. DelReal – "Carly Fiorina wins lots of praise for debate, but she’s not bragging", The Washington Post, September 17, 2015. Retrieved 2015-09-17 Time magazine called her performance a "strong showing" in which "Fiorina laid out detailed foreign policy visions, made an impassioned speech against Planned Parenthood and sparred with Donald Trump...."Tessa Berenson – "Carly Fiorina 'Very Satisfied' With GOP Debate Performance", Time, September 17, 2015. Retrieved 2015-09-17 For her own part, Fiorina commenting to ABC's Good Morning America about her performance, said: "When I went into the debate, almost half the audience didn't know my name, and I introduced myself successfully."