Carly Fiorina Courting Clinton Supporters
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Hillary, McCain, Republicans
The more and more I think about it, the more sense it makes for former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina to be McCain’s Veep. She’s like a female Mitt Romney, but without the religious baggage or fake veneer.
Maybe that’s why he’s having her meet with former “Hillraisers”…
Amy Siskind, a former Wall Street executive who helped organize the meeting, declined to identify most the attendees, citing their desire for privacy. She said that some of the recently formed pro-Hillary organizations that have been critical of Sen. Obama–such as Together4Us.com, which officially hosted the event, and JustSayNoDeal.com had representatives there. Together4Us.com lists its founders as Jill Iscol, Lady Lynn de Rothschild, Gretchen Glasscock, “and 50 more to be added very soon.â€Fiorina and participants said the town-hall style meeting covered a variety of issues, from health care to foreign policy to workplace rights. While many of the subjects could be described as of particular interest to women, many were not. One topic that got little attention: abortion rights. “John McCain has a very strong record of being pro-life, as do I,’’ Fiorina said. “They knew that. This was not a one-issue crowd.’’
Siskind said Fiorina agreed to provide details regarding McCain’s stances on mandating health insurance coverage for birth control pills, federal mandates for paid maternity leave and a reinvigoration of federal legislation aimed at giving women equal pay for comparable work.
Siskind said the group told Fiorina that if McCain would give some concrete assurances of support on such issues, the people in the room and the organizations they represented could help deliver “hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of votes†to the presumptive Republican nominee.
Honestly, I don’t think assurances would be enough. Fiorina would have to actually be on the ticket and represent a moderate Republican “Hillary”…which some argue Clinton tends to be anyway. Then I think those organizations could deliver “hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of votes.†But until a woman is on McCain’s ticket…don’t count on that many Clinton supporters swinging McCain’s way.
Who thinks Fiorina is on the really short list?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Hillary, McCain, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:11 am
McCain could do worse. In fact, Carly Fiorina is very intelligent and articulate. She knows what she believes about economic opportunity for young and women (among others) entrepreneurs. She has wowed them already – the positive feedback is incredible. The problem is the HP history, which the Dems would use against her; I believe the facts about HP’s longterm success vindicated her emphasis on R&D, Innovation, Merger, and getting into PCs and Laptops. She also isn’t a Neocon; she radiates with a certain decency that is both honest and warm. Yet her instincts are sharp – she can answer any question put to her brilliantly. I think she shows a “with-it” approach and could help rebuild the conservative brand for the future, either as VP, Cabinet Secretary, Senator, or Governor of California.
July 17th, 2008 at 2:49 am
She’s like a female Mitt Romney without the business savvy, too.
July 17th, 2008 at 9:12 am
Actually they were one issue voters. “Hillary lost and I’m gonna get Obama and the Democratic Party.” is their one issue. They aren’t bothering to consider that should they succeed in their goal any future Presidential ambitions Senator Clinton might have would be doomed.
July 18th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Rachel, Carly Fiorina is a phenomenal businessman who campaigned across America to get investors to approve an unpopular merger with Compaq that both Walter Hewlett (a board member at the time) and the Packard family were actively campaigning against. In the end, she took a board that was unanimously against the move and turned it into a unanimous approval of the merger.
Today HP is the #1 personal computing company and has made its money-sucking server products profitable all thanks to that merger. She also transformed their company culture, which had been so engrained since it was the original Silicon Valley company.
In all fairness to Mitt Romney, he never encountered a situation as tough as Fiorina did with HP. For what she was able to accomplish, especially looking back in it now, Fiorina should be considered one of the best visionary CEO’s of the last 50 years. That’s why Tom Peters named her CEO of the Year in 2007 – 2 years after she left HP.
I’m hoping that McCain does select her because she has the most potential to win over independents and women voters – not just because she’s a woman, but because she’s Carly Fiorina, the most famous businesswoman in the world.