Needless to say, former Hewlett Packard head Carly Fiorina has found her entrance into the elective political game to be a bit challenging. She opened up this election year with a January rollout of a website which was almost uniformly mocked. Then came the now infamous Demon Sheep, an ad so terrible that some in the political game wondered if it was bad enough to amount to a form of genius. After all, everyone was talking about it the next day.
Things, apparently, aren't getting better for the businesswoman-turned-politico:
Republican Senate hopeful Carly Fiorina touts her business resume, particularly her years as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, as the reason GOP voters should nominate her to face Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
But [Monday] morning, an heir to one of the company’s founders issued a slashing rebuttal, arguing that Fiorina nearly drove the technology firm into the ground.
Arianna Packard, the granddaughter of HP founded David Packard, unloaded on Fiorina in a letter to a right-wing website. Packard was apparently incensed by a letter circulating from a trio of the Senate's most right-wing voices (Jim Inhofe, Jon Kyl, and Tom Coburn) extolling the virtues of Fiorina, who has long been seen as the default "insider's choice" among the three U.S. Senate candidates vying for the GOP nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
That letter was being eagerly circulated this weekend by Team Fiorina, who was trying to earn the endorsement of the California Republican Assembly, a key conservative "get" for any California candidate. Apparently, it didn't have the desired effect:
Each delegate at the convention received an e-mailed copy of the senators’ letter last week, print-outs of articles and polls favorable to Fiorina stuffed underneath their hotel room doors Sunday morning and Fiorina-branded pens to mark their ballots. DeVore ended up receiving 194 votes, while Fiorina received 89.
The California primaries will be held on June 8th. Fiorina will have one notable advantage heading into the homestretch--she is the only self-funder in the Senate field (unlike the free-swinging gubernatorial primary). Whether money can trump what is obviously a sizeable reservoir of hostility among her right flank remains to be seen.
