I, Carly

[Valin]

The Weekly Standard:

The other woman with her eye on the White House.

MICHAEL WARREN

May 4, 2015, Vol. 20, No. 32

 

Ashland, N.H.

 

The Pemi-Baker Valley Republican Committee’s monthly all-you-can-eat spaghetti dinner isn’t the kind of place you expect to see a crowd. Especially one that includes college students, and on a Friday night, no less. But the American Legion on Main Street is hopping. Greeting guests at the door is Omer Ahern Jr., the committee’s round-faced, mutton-chopped executive vice president. And he’s ecstatic.

 

“Everybody’s excited,” Ahern says. “We’ve never had this many people here.”

 

The spaghetti is delicious, but the 100 or so people have really come for the evening’s guest speaker, Carly Fiorina. The former chief executive of technology giant Hewlett-Packard is quite a draw among Republicans these days. The woman who once graced the covers of business and tech magazines is now more likely to pop up on Fox News. More recently, she’s becoming a familiar face here in New Hampshire as she prepares to run for president of the United States. Sources close to Fiorina say she’ll make that announcement on May 4.

 

(Snip)

 

It’s an understatement to say that Fiorina has a difficult path to the White House. She’s never held public office, and her only political experience is losing the California Senate race in 2010 to Barbara Boxer. Real Clear Politics includes 12 current or likely GOP candidates on its average of primary polls, and Fiorina’s not one of them. That’s because most polling outfits don’t even ask about her. A Quinnipiac survey in late April found her support among primary voters at 1 percent, the same as two-term Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal—and the generic “someone else.” More than one Washington journalist I’ve talked with dismissed her candidacy before I could finish saying her name.

 

But there’s something intriguing about Candidate Fiorina. She’s a veteran of big business who rails against crony capitalism. She’s a modern, independent woman who’s unabashedly pro-life. Carly, as everyone knows her, is less Sarah Palin and more Ronald Reagan, a natural storyteller with a quick wit and an ear for emotional narratives.

 

“I fully expect I’ll be underestimated. I have been all my life,” she says in an interview. “What I need to do is perform.”

 

(Snip)

 

Critics—and there are legions of them, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street—say her six-year term at HP was a disaster. Falling stock prices and massive layoffs dominated her last years at the company. A controversial 2001 merger with Compaq, which was nearly killed by a shareholder uprising led by the son of cofounder Bill Hewlett, irreparably damaged her image within the company. After several quarters of disappointing stock performance, the board fired Fiorina. HP’s stock recovered considerably in the following years, though, while competitors like Dell and IBM struggled, suggesting Fiorina’s strategy may have paid off after all.

 

(Snip)