Former HP CEO Fiorina will run for U.S. Senate

GARDEN GROVE, Calif, Nov 04, 2009 (McClatchy Newspapers - McClatchy-Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- HPQ | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced Wednesday that she will run for U.S. Senate in a bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer next year.

Fiorina, 55, launched her official Senate campaign in an op-ed in the Orange County Register and a town-hall event at Earth Friendly Products, a maker of cleaning supplies based in an Orange County industrial park.

"I believe the people of California are ready to say hello to a political newcomer who actually knows how to get something done," Fiorina told a crowd of about 125 supporters.

Her candidacy sets up a June battle with Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, in the Republican primary. The two represent different sides of the GOP spectrum; DeVore yesterday won an endorsement from the Senate Conservatives Fund, while Fiorina launched her campaign at a business that touts its products as an environmental alternative. They were virtually tied in a Field Poll last month, although Fiorina is expected to raise more money and outspend DeVore.

DeVore said Wednesday he saw Fiorina's entry as a positive step, saying that her media draw would increase his own name identification among voters. He said the 2010 primary would become a battle of ideologies to define the Republican Party's direction.

"Moderate Republicans generally seek the moderate pace of liberalism and are therefore heading in the same direction as liberals, just less quickly," he said. "I see this race as a very needed discussion among Republicans. Is our standard bearer someone who epitomizes Reagan Republicanism or Rockefeller Republicanism?"

Fiorina focused most of her attacks Wednesday on Boxer.

She dismissed the Democratic senator as a forgettable representative for California and said Boxer has been preoccupied with writing novels rather than working on health care or the economy.

"What do you say we work together and give Barbara Boxer a chance next year to become a full-time novelist?" Fiorina said. "Let's work together and show our nation that California actually believes action trumps talk."

Boxer campaign manager Rose Kapolczynski said, "Clearly, they're going to be running a tough negative campaign. She left no question about that. It seemed to me that the Fiorina strategy was to deflect attention away from her own record at HP."

From 1999 to 2005, Fiorina was president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, making her one of the most prominent female business executives in history until the company's board of directors fired her in a public rebuke. Critics said her dismissal was due to the company's poor performance, but Fiorina blamed it Wednesday on a "dysfunctional" board. Among the highlights of her HP tenure was the company's 2002 merger with computer maker Compaq.

She acknowledged Wednesday that she cut jobs at HP, but she used her actions as an example of how she made the company more efficient during "tough times." She called HP "large but lethargic" when she arrived.

"So we started by leaning our cost structure to a size that we could afford," Fiorina said. "We cut billions of dollars' worth of inefficiency and waste out of our company."

Fiorina on Wednesday signed the no-new-taxes pledge circulated by Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform.

Answering reporters' questions, Fiorina acknowledged that her voting record in the past had been sparse.

"I'm not proud of my voting record. I will offer no excuse," she said. "I am a lifelong registered Republican, but I haven't always voted. And shame on me, because there are people who die around the world, literally, for the right to vote. And there are Californians and Americans who exercise their civic duty every election."

On gay marriage, Fiorina said she believes "in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. I also believe gays and lesbians should have the same legal rights and benefits as heterosexual couples."

Fiorina reestablished her public profile last year as a surrogate for McCain's campaign. She spoke at the Republican National Convention and appeared on talk shows to promote his economic policies. Though generally considered a moderate Republican, Fiorina described herself as "pro-life" on the McCain campaign trail.

Fiorina is a multimillionaire, but she is unlikely to self-finance her campaign to the same extent that Silicon Valley counterparts Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner are expected to in the gubernatorial race. While Whitman and Poizner are each worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Fiorina earned an HP severance package worth an estimated $42 million and earned $3.1 million in total compensation during her final full year in 2004, according to the New York Times.

If she survives the primary, Fiorina would face an uphill challenge in Boxer, a three-term incumbent who has held her Senate seat since 1992 in a Democratic state. The Field Poll showed Fiorina had a 49 percent to 35 percent lead over Fiorina in a hypothetical matchup.

Fiorina appeared on stage Wednesday with short, salt-and-pepper hair after having undergone chemotherapy and radiation treatments in her recent fight with breast cancer.

"Let me start with perhaps the most obvious question of all on your minds; what's with the hair?" she said. "Well, I'm happy to tell you that having been through surgery and chemotherapy and radiation, breast cancer is officially behind me."

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