Tag: Carly Fiorina
Schwarzenegger’s Failure Provides a Cautionary Tale about Electing Novices in Times of Crisis
After nearly six years in office, Schwarzenegger has few friends left in either party. The state budget deficit hovers around $20 billion; his approval rating has sunk below 25 percent.
“We thought he was going to be a great governor, but he has been a great disappointment,” said Geneviève M. Clavreul, a Republican activist.
As candidates in races across the country try to position themselves as the politician with the least political experience, Schwarzenegger’s troubles in California illustrate some of the possible downsides of outsiderdom. Like Whitman, the GOP’s candidate for governor, and Fiorina, the party’s Senate nominee, Schwarzenegger came to office as a non-politician who would solve problems with unconventional ideas.
He had some successes, but the movie star stumbled as he tried to navigate the state’s political establishment, with its touchy egos and endless compromises. He floundered as he tried to tame the state’s runaway budget and push through ambitious reforms such as universal health care.
“Touchy egos?” — please. This man spent his career in Hollywood, where dealing with egomaniacs is the price of admission. And while Schwarzenegger may not be “touchy,” he is saddled with an over-sized ego himself — where do you think he got the foolish notion that he could govern California?
RNC Chair Steele Insists Party Will Waste Money, Resources on California GOP Campaigns This Year
[National] Republicans, buoyed by what they see as a potential resurgence in California, pledged on Tuesday to send significant financial, logistical and strategic resources to the state in coming weeks.
[Steele], speaking to reporters on a conference call, said Republicans in years past have treated California as a “flyover” state because of Democrats’ electoral edge, or little more than fertile grounds for fundraising.
“The days of just grabbing and going or just ignoring altogether are over,” he said, after meeting with California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring in Washington. “We’re going to be full partners on the ground.”
Verbatim
Well, let me say this: I wasn’t surprised… I wasn’t surprised that she would say that.
– House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reacting to California GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina being caught on tape describing the hairstyle of her opponent, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) as “Soooo yesterday.”
CA Sen: Carly Fiorina Caught on Video Dishing about Sen. Boxer’s Hair: ‘Sooo Yesterday’
Hey, Carly, what’s with that dress?
See minute 04:00
FIORINA: [Lawter?] saw Barbara Boxer briefly on television this morning and said what everyone says, “God, what is that hair? (Cackles) Soo yesterday.”
Earlier, at the top of the video, she says she’s puzzled that her frenemy Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO who won the GOP gubernatorial spot on Tuesday, had scheduled an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
FIORINA: I find it surprising that on the first day of the general, Meg Whitman’s going on Sean Hannity. Did you hear that?
OFF-CAMERA VOICE: That’s weird.
FIORINA: It’s bizarre. I mean, she’s never been on Sean Hannity.
OFF-CAMERA VOICE: [Indistinct.]
FIORINA: I think it’s a very bad choice, actually. You know how he is.
This is so bad it’s like an unguarded moment “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” diary-cam. So much for the “year of the woman.”
A gaffe like this on day one of her campaign does not bode well for Fiorina, a political novice who is funding her campaign with the $21 million she received when she was fired as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 2005.
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CA Sen: Anti-Gay Hate Group Takes Credit for Carly Fiorina’s Primary Win
Now, in the afterglow of the Republican primary in California, the New Jersey-based group is back in the news. Despite the fact that gay rights were not an issue during the primary campaign, NOM is taking complete credit for Carly Fiorina’s victory in the U.S. Senate vote on Tuesday:
CA Primary: Don’t Buy the Beltway Pundits’ Hype, Dems Looking Good in November Matchups
By a whopping 27 points, California independent voters want a U.S. senator who supports Pres. Obama. In the governor’s race, independents support Brown over eMeg, 48%-30%.
When it comes to elections, as far as the national media is concerned, if there’s no horse race, there’s no story — so take with large measures of salt the punditry you hear on cable news tomorrow night about the supposed vulnerability of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., or the surging popularity of eMeg Whitman, the eBay billionaire who’s spent $500,000 a day in the Republican gubernatorial primary campaign.
Tea bagging has not caught on in California like it has in other parts of the country, in spite of the fact that Russo Marsh + Rogers, the Republican Party consulting firm that operates Tea Party Express, is based in Sacramento.
Granted, all the energy going into the vote tomorrow at the top of the ballot is among the Republicans, but this is because their Democratic opponents are running virtually unopposed. Other than fundraising, both Sen. Boxer and Attorney General Jerry Brown, the former governor who’s running for governor again, have hardly begun campaigning. Neither of them has yet to spend a dime on television ads, the only vehicle for getting political messages out statewide.
Based on recent polling it appears that the Republicans’ two biggest spenders, eMeg, one-time CEO of eBay, and disgraced former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, will trounce their opponents tomorrow and become the GOP candidates for governor and senator, respectively, in the general. Whitman has spent nearly $80 million of her own money, so far, and Fiorina has spent a third of the $21 million fortune she received as golden parachute when the HP board fired her in 2005.
Despite the well-publicized unrest and anger in the fly-over states, internals in a Los Angeles Times-USC poll that came out around Memorial Day show that Brown and Boxer have the wind at their backs heading into the general election:
CA Sen: Fiorina Leads Tom Campbell 38% – 23%, Campbell Campaign Goes Dark Six Days Before Vote, Tea Bagger Trails Fiorina By 22 Points
With the California primary election in less than a week, the race to unseat Sen. Barbara Boxer has taken a harrowing turn for Republicans. It appears that failed former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina now has an insurmountable lead over former Rep. Tom Campbell. The Campbell campaign reportedly ceased television advertising as of June 1.
In the 2000 U.S. Senate race, Campbell lost to incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein by 19 points, but Democrats considered him to be much more electable against Boxer this year than Fiorina, a self-financed political novice who was fired from Hewlett-Packard after a scandal that included allegations she wiretapped members of the HP board of directors.
Interestingly, in the month or so since right-wing celebrity Sarah Palin dissed the tea bagger candidate Chuck DeVore by giving her kiss-of-death endorsement to Fiorina, his polling has almost doubled, from 9 percent in early April to 16 percent now.
It’s hard to prove that Palin’s endorsement of Fiorina — whose gaffes as a McCain-Palin surrogate often dominated headlines in the 2008 campaign — has helped DeVore. It’s just as likely he’s gotten a bump among extreme right-wing voters from a web ad in which he compared himself to Jack Bauer, the lead character in the Fox terror-porn series “24.”
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