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| FILE - In this Jan. 24, 2015 file photo, Carly Fiorina speaks in Des Moines, Iowa. Fiorina, the lone Republican woman eying the White House, wants to block Hillary Rodham Clinton from playing the “gender card” in the 2016 presidential race. A former business executive with limited political experience, Fiorina argues that if Republicans nominate her, it would neutralize any advantages Democrats might get from having a woman at the top of their ticket. |
NASHUA, N.H.
(AP) -- Carly Fiorina, the lone Republican woman eying the White House,
wants to block Hillary Rodham Clinton from playing the "gender card" in
the 2016 presidential race.
But to do so, Fiorina is taking a page from the gender politics playbook herself.
A
former business executive with limited political experience, Fiorina
argues that if Republicans nominate her, it would neutralize any
advantages the Democrats might get from having a woman at the top of
their ticket.
Speaking of Clinton in an
interview with The Associated Press, Fiorina said, "She wants to make it
a gender-based campaign; she wants to talk about the war on women; she
wants to talk about being the first woman president. She can't do any of
that with me."
Clinton, who launched her
campaign last weekend, has been playing up her life experience as a
mother and grandmother, along with her policy work on women's and
children's issues. She's not yet directly highlighted the prospect she
would be the first female president, something she played down in her
failed 2008 campaign.
While Fiorina has yet to
declare her own candidacy, she has been positioning herself for weeks
as a foil to Clinton, the clear Democratic front-runner. She's been
among the sharpest Clinton critics in the emerging Republican field,
going after the Democrat's trustworthiness in light of revelations about
her private email use as secretary of state, as well as her record as
the nation's chief diplomat.
"Like Mrs.
Clinton, I, too, have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles," Fiorina
said this week, reprising a favorite line. "But flying and traveling is
an activity, it's not an accomplishment and unfortunately she didn't
accomplish anything as secretary of state."
The
60-year-old Fiorina says she plans to announce whether she's running
for president in late April or early May. She's put the likelihood of
her running at "higher than 90 percent" and has been making stops in
Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina - all states that vote early in
the primary process.
Fiorina is back in New
Hampshire this week, joining a multitude of potential GOP presidential
candidates at a two-day forum that could be an early test of who has
breakout potential in the state that holds the nation's first primary.
Fiorina
says she doesn't want to run based on her sex, but rather to focus on
another factor that makes her an outlier in the Republican field: the
fact that nearly her entire career has been in business, not the
political arena. She was one of the country's highest-ranking female
executives during her nearly six years as chief executive at
Hewlett-Packard, but was forced out of the company in 2005.
Democrats
say Fiorina's real legacy in business is the thousands of jobs lost at
Hewlett-Packard during the merger she oversaw with Compaq. Democratic
officials also contend that she supports policies that are bad for
women, including the repeal of President Barack Obama's health care law,
which expanded coverage for many preventive services for women.
As
for her own political experience, she ran for the U.S. Senate in
California in 2010 but was easily defeated by incumbent Democrat Barbara
Boxer. She was an adviser to Sen. John McCain's unsuccessful 2008
presidential campaign.
Fiorina remains unknown
to many Americans. But Steve DeMaura, executive director of the super
PAC Carly for America, said she can use Clinton's presence in the race
to "leverage additional attention" for her own candidacy.
"People say, `Well, Hillary's running, what does the Republican woman think?'" DeMaura said.
So
far, Fiorina seems at ease playing the Clinton foil, said David Carney,
a longtime New Hampshire political strategist, particularly compared
with male candidates who can find it awkward criticizing female
politicians - not that the GOP hopefuls have been shy about going after
Clinton.
"You see some candidates when they
attack a woman come across very badly," said Carney, who is not aligned
with a candidate in 2016 but whose wife is working for Fiorina. "But
it's not very awkward for Carly. She seems to pull it off very well."
Fiorina
has also started criticizing fellow Republicans, recently calling
likely candidate Jeb Bush "dead wrong" on issues such as immigration and
the Common Core education standards.
One of
Fiorina's biggest challenges may be raising the money she'll need to
stay in the race long enough to build up more name recognition. She
contributed $5 million of her own money to her Senate campaign, but left
behind more than $500,000 of debt.
DeMaura said Fiorina would have to run an "insurgent campaign" that focuses on "surviving to the next round."
"Staying in the race is a big part of the process," he said.
