Carly Fiorina said Wednesday that she has no plans to exit the presidential race, and announced that she was sending a letter to the Republican National Committee demanding a spot in Saturday’s prime time debate.
The Republican White House contender finished poorly in the Iowa caucuses and came in sixth place, and is polling seventh in New Hampshire. But the Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard and a 2010 candidate for Senate in California, said that she’s in the 2016 contest for the “long haul” and has budgeted her resources to last.
Since Monday’s Iowa caucuses, two low-performing candidates have dropped out of the race, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. A third, Rick Santorum, was expected to drop out Wednesday night.
“I am in this race to restore a citizen government to this great nation,” Fiorina said during a conference call with her campaign contributors. “I am in this race to win it.”
Fiorina is an underdog, and her prospects for making good on that vow are thin. Her poll numbers spiked in the fall, then quickly dropped off.
She wowed Republicans with sparkling performances in the first two debates. But after a brief couple of weeks with rising poll numbers, Fiorina bottomed out, and she hasn’t qualified for a prime time debate since December.
The Manchester debate, set for Saturday and hosted by ABC News, occurs three days before the New Hampshire primary and could impact the outcome. Right now Fiorina doesn’t meet the network’s criteria for a podium, but she said she would send a letter to the RNC demanding that the party step in. Fiorina said debate participants should be determined by the party and the voters, and she’s asking the RNC to step in on her behalf.
“We have the best candidate,” the Fiorina campaign’s New Hampshire chairman, Ovide Lamontagne, said during the conference call. “We need to make sure the best candidate in the field is recognized by the voters.”
ABC News laid out its debate criteria last Wednesday:
Here are the three different ways candidates can gain an invitation for the debate stage:
1) Place among the top three candidates ranked according to the popular vote in the Iowa Republican caucuses on Feb. 1, 2016. (OR)
2) Place among the top six candidates in an average of New Hampshire Republican presidential polls recognized by ABC News. To be included, polls must be conducted no earlier than Jan. 1, 2016, and must be released to the public before 5 p.m. ET on Feb. 4, 2016. Poll averages will not be rounded. (OR)
3) Place among the top six candidates in an average of national Republican presidential polls recognized by ABC News. To be included, polls must be conducted no earlier than Jan. 1, 2016, and must be released to the public before 5 p.m. ET on Feb. 4, 2016. Poll averages will not be rounded.
The RNC did not respond to a request for comment at press time.
Here is Fiorina’s letter to the national party, as released to the media:
Our debate process is broken. Networks are making up these debate rules as they go along — not to be able to fit candidates on the stage — but arbitrarily to decide which candidates make for the best TV in their opinion. Now it is time for the RNC to act in the best interest of the Party that it represents.
In 2012, the debate stage featured 8 candidates until the Iowa Caucus and then all declared candidates still in the race were invited from that point forward, including the ABC New Hampshire debate. As of today, I will be the only candidate kept off the debate stage.
To review, we beat Governors Christie and Kasich in Iowa this week when voters actually had their say. This campaign has the same number of delegates as Governors Bush and Kasich while Governor Christie has zero. We’re ahead of Dr. Carson in New Hampshire polling. We are 6th in hard dollars raised and have twice the cash on hand as either Governors Christie or Kasich. We are already on the ballot in 32 states, and there is a ground game with paid staff in 12 states.
Yet, all of these candidates will be invited to the ABC debate. I will not. There are only 8 candidates left. It’s time for the RNC to demand that media executives step aside and let voters hear from all of us.
