NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — For a political rookie whose announcement that she was thinking of running for president got a cool response from many Republicans, Carly Fiorina has been turning heads early.
The Republican former CEO of Hewlett Packard and failed 2010 Senate candidate has taken a rhetorical knife to Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, and her record as President Obama’s first secretary of state. She’s spoken eloquently about abortion, offering the rest of the likely 2016 GOP field — all men — pointers about how to discuss being pro-life without turning off female voters.
Currently a Virginia resident, Fiorina got many Republican insiders’ eyes rolling when she said she was considering a White House bid. Her only previous experience running for office amounted to getting walloped by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., a little more than four years ago.
But in early appearances, including Thursday during an address to the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, Fiorina brought a crowd of activists to its feet, impressing the party faithful with calls for a more muscular U.S. foreign policy that reasserts America’s global hegemony and conservative economic reforms to boost economic growth and job creation.
The Washington Examiner caught up with Fiorina at CPAC and asked her about 2016. The interview is edited for length and clarity.
Examiner: Should Republicans consider voting for you because you’re a woman and the Democrats are probably going to nominate a woman?
Fiorina: I’ve never been a token in my life, and, if I run, I’m not running because I am a woman. The facts are, I am a woman, and as a woman, I think I bring the perspective of 53 percent of voters today who are also women and a voice that is too often missing.
Examiner: Do the men thinking of running for president need to take cues from you in terms of how they discuss abortion and other womens issues?
Fiorina: I can only speak for myself. I will play my own game and speak with my own voice. I can’t advise other candidates. I would only say that I think it’s important to be authentic.
Examiner: What do you bring to the race?
Fiorina: I actually think a lot of Americans are looking for someone who hasn’t been in politics all their life. It is true that I lost the general election in California, although I won a three-way primary with 56 percent of the vote; in other words I unified the party. And, despite the fact that I lost the general, I won more Republican votes, more Democratic votes and more independent votes than virtually anyone running in 2010 anywhere in the country; that’s how big California is. So I think I’ve demonstrated that I can unify the party and then reach beyond the party.
Examiner: Obama didn’t have much experience in government when he entered the White House. How are you different?
Fiorina: I’m completely different. He didn’t know what he was doing when he got in there because he had no executive, decision-making experience … The experience I have making tough decisions, experience in the economy, whether it was as a secretary in a small business or a chief executive in a really big business, experience I’ve had in philanthropy where I’ve seen how people get trapped in a web of dependence from which they cannot escape and my experience in and around the world. I think all of that qualifies me.
Examiner: How do you get political donors to take a chance on someone who has never won a general election in a field with so many candidates who have experience weathering political fire?
Fiorina: I actually think business fire is a lot harder because in business you actually have to produce results. You can’t just give a speech and get your way out of it. I’m not saying that governors aren’t qualified — of course they’re qualified, and I’m not saying that there aren’t a lot of qualified candidates in this field. But what I am saying is there are plenty of donors and plenty of voters who say, you know what, we’re actually kind of tired of the folks who’ve only done politics all their life because there isn’t as much accountability in the political sphere as in the business sphere.
