Will Carly Fiorina really be on the Republican ballot next June? Inquiring minds want to know.
Sure, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard opened an exploratory committee in August to look at the possibility of seeking the GOP Senate nomination to challenge Democrat Barbara Boxer and, yeah, those “exploratory committees” are typically little more than a modesty patch for the actual campaign.
And Marty Wilson, the former aide to governors Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger who’s serving as Fiorina’s consultant in that exploratory effort, swears up and down that he’s seen absolutely nothing to suggest that the businesswoman is anything less than completely committed to running and beating Boxer.
Still, with the news coming out in recent days, you gotta wonder.
There was a story by Mike Zapler of the San Jose Mercury-News a few weeks back about how HP, through a Dutch subsidiary, sold $120 million of the company’s products to Iran, despite a US ban on doing business with the country.
Fiorina, who was CEO of the tech company from 1999 to 2005, denied any knowledge of the sales, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which asked HP earlier this year for information about the company’s dealings with Iran, Syria and Sudan, hasn’t been tossing around subpoenas or making loud threats to Fiorina or anyone else.
But perception is just as important as reality in politics, and the very fact that the questions are being asked about Fiorina’s corporate dealings with some of the bad actors on the world scene won’t help any campaign she runs.
Boxer’s people already are working to rough Fiorina up, shopping stories about how one magazine ranked as one of the worst CEOs in US history or how she shipped thousands of HP jobs overseas.
For Boxer, that’s tossing bricks in a glass house, since there are plenty of stories out there that cast her in a less-than-flattering light. But after decades in politics and nearly 18 years in the Senate, there might not be much out there that Boxer hasn’t already been hit with. But this is the first political go-round for Fiorina and she’s learning early just how nasty a business that can be.
Then there’s the recent Public Policy Institute of California poll that shows 51 percent of registered voters, including nearly a quarter of Republicans, approve of the job Boxer is doing in the Senate. At the same point before the 2004 election, which she won easily, that number was 43 percent.
Since the premise for Fiorina’s campaign is that California voters are just itching for a chance to bounce an ultra-liberal and much-disliked Boxer from the Senate, those poll numbers could send Fiorina’s campaign strategy back to the drawing board.
With Boxer above that magic 50 percent approval rating, it also means that Fiorina has to start bloodying the incumbent, a job that takes both time and money.
That’s why it was so surprising to read a post in the conservative RedState blog this week saying that Fiorina has decided not to self-finance her campaign, at least not at the multi-million dollar level of GOP gubernatorial candidates Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner.
Fiorina will be putting an undisclosed amount of her own money into the campaign at some unstated time in the future, said Beth Miller, another Fiorina consultant. But she’s going to be depending on the support of the people in the state and in the nation who believe in her campaign to provide most of the money for the contest.
That’s a great idea, but as of June 30, Boxer had $5.4 million cash on hand for her campaign and raised a few hundred thousand more when Vice President Joe Biden rolled through the state last week for fund-raisers in San Francisco and Beverly Hills.
With the federal limit of $2,400 per election for individual donations, it’s going to take a lot of work – and time – to catch up with Boxer. It was the prospect of a wealthy candidate like Fiorina putting millions of her own money into the campaign that helped make her an attractive candidate for Republicans who might otherwise have questions about another big bucks businessperson looking to start a political career at the top.
Fiorina also isn’t planning to attend the state Republican convention this month in Indian Wells, even though just about every other major GOP candidate for 2010 is expected to be there.
Fiorina’s people say she’s on-track to officially announce her candidacy sometime in the fall. Until that happens, however, the questions about her future aren’t going away.
John Wildermuth is a long-time writer on California politics.