Fiorina Makes It Official
While she's been running for months, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina made her bid for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination in California official Monday by filing papers to run in June's Republican primary election against former Rep. Tom Campbell and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. The winner will face Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in the fall.
In a statement, Fiorina said if elected she would work to create more jobs by lowering taxes and reducing regulations on small businesses, while also cutting government spending. "I don't come from Washington; I come from the real world. From that real-world experience I know firsthand how to create jobs, and I have been on the receiving end of job-killing government regulation," she said. "Changing Washington starts with changing the people we send there."
Fiorina's effort to portray herself as a successful businesswoman, however, came under fire Monday after a letter from Arianna Packard, the granddaughter of HP co-founder David Packard, was obtained by the conservative blog Red State. In the letter to Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who recently endorsed Fiorina, Packard sharply criticized Fiorina's conservative credentials and tenure at HP, in which she oversaw a controversial merger with Compaq opposed by a member of the Hewlett family.
"You write that she is a 'proven business leader.' This may be how she spins her career, but most business commentators consider Fiorina's tenure at HP to be a disaster," Packard wrote. "The stock price dropped by 50 percent only to rally 10 percent on the announcement of her firing." Packard went on to credit Fiorina's successor, Mark Hurd, with the firm's recent success.
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