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Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina brought her campaign for the U.S. Senate in the June 8 California primary to Pleasanton, promising that if elected she would work to hold the line on federal regulations and taxes while working to focus the Senate’s attention on incentives for the private sector—not Washington—to create jobs for Americans.
In her bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer next year, Fiorina, 55, said her business experience makes her the GOP candidate best able to defeat Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer in next year’s general election.
She said increased federal spending and record-high deficits were sapping the financial strength of the country and adding to the long-term tax obligations for all Americans. She vowed to never vote for any tax increase as a senator and to focus her energies on job-creation, “which is the No. 1 concern in this country today.”
She said Boxer has no understanding of the needs of the private sector, has never met a payroll and that in her 13 years as a senator has only seen three of her co-sponsored bills passed into law.
Her remarks were made at an invitation-only presentation at Goal Line Productions in Hacienda Business Park, which was sponsored by the Tri-Valley Business Council. The same organization also sponsored a campaign stop by California gubernatorial candidate and Republican Meg Whitman two months ago.
More than 150 filled Goal Line’s large production studio with Mayor Abram Wilson of San Ramon the most prominent local official to attend. No elected leaders from Pleasanton, Dublin or Livermore attended, although Anne White of the Livermore school board joined the meeting. Several from the Danville town council were on the invitation list, including Mayor Newell Arnerich, but none stood up to be recognized when the business council’s executive director Toby Brink introduced them.
Fiorina surprised some at the rally who had not seen her since her surgery last March and subsequent treatments for breast cancer. With her hair cropped short compared to her pre-cancer campaign photos given out at the Goal Line reception desk, she talked about her “crazy hair-do,” adding that after nine months of chemotherapy, “Barbara Boxer just isn’t that scary.”
“She has always taken the low road to higher office, so get ready,” said added. “But it’s OK, I can take a punch and I can throw a punch.”
Boxer has the edge in Democratic-leaning California, but Fiorina’s entry means that she could face her greatest challenge since first elected to the Senate in 1992. That’s of course if the charismatic former business leader wins the GOP nomination in June.
So far, her only opponent is Chuck Devore, 47, of Irvine, a long-term conservative. Well-known in state GOP circles, he has little name recognition across the state and lacks the financial campaign war chest that Fiorina brings to the race.
I worked with Carly at Lucent. She was personally responsible for running that company into the ground…. She then jumped ship and ran HP into the ground…… She is another example of corporate leadership that accomplish nothing, but get rich from stock options that then decide to seek public office. Arnold was going to “do thing differently” when he took over…. No business as usual in Calif. etc…. He learned very quickly what politics is like and what kind of crap you end up supporting in order to get support for your agenda in return.
I hope Carly wins her battle with Breast Cancer. I hope she loses her battle to be a politician.
Carly Fiorina is another vanity candidate. Let her cut her teeth at the local level first. Schwarzenegger, another vanity candidate cost California a great deal of money, in spite of what he has stated publicly.
So Carly Fiorina ruins HP, gets fired, and now she thinks she can fix California. Sorry, I’ll stick with Boxer on this one.
Also..
“Her remarks were made at an invitation-only presentation at Goal Line Productions in Hacienda Business Park, was sponsored by the Tri-Valley Business Council. The same organization also sponsored a campaign stop by California gubernatorial candidate and Republican Meg Whitman two months ago.”
Nice to know the Tri-Valley Business Council is an arm of the GOP. No wonder they are so irrelevant.
Jake, WAY, Way off base !!. Don’t compare Fiorina and Whitman. Slick trick to try tho. Check their length and level of service….not comparable. E-Bay CEO Meg Whitman has a huge following of devoted, everyday successful small business people who worship her. They’re the root of a real economy which she helped create. Meg majored in ECONOMICS…CA needs a Governor who understands economics.. Fiorina is going for being one of 100 senators….all Boxer has to do is vote the way her major contributors like Sierra CLub tell her to vote.
Jake…to set the record straight, the Tri-Valley Business Council’s mission, my guess, is to create a favorable business climate in the Tri-Valley area and to actually provide incentives for business in this region.
That mission seems to be the exact opposite of the mission of the Democrat Party, especially the Obama Democrats. The party that actually is interested in job creation is the Republican Party.
Is that too much of a stretch for you to understand?
Punctuation mark person always works Obama into the debate. We are ALL in favor of creating jobs, my friend…
Dear Obama Democrat:
My fault. You’re absolutely right. You Obama Democrats definitely ARE in favor of creating thousands of jobs across America. However, I was talking about the types of jobs the Tri-Valley Council is presumably interested in.
PRIVATE SECTOR jobs vs. Govt Jobs.
Jake,
Before you make blanket statements, it is important that you know the facts.
1. The TVBC hosted a presentation by these two candidates. We did not spursue these candidates nor pay them to come to the Tri-Valley. They contacted us and asked if we would host them.
2. Both these events were open to the public.
3. We have recently hosted events for John Garamendi and Jerry Mcnerny, both Democrats
4. The Tri-Valley Business Council believes in the importance of an informed electorate. We also believe it is beneficial to the Tri-Valley when statewide candidates visit our region.
5. Lastly, if you think supporting initiatives focused on the economic vitality and quality of life in the Tri-Valley are irrelevant, then I would encourage you look at the unemployment numbers and do some basic research before you make assumptions.
Sincerely,
Toby Brink
CEO
Tri-Valley Business Council
Read her lips: No new taxes. Yeah, right, like we haven’t heard that one before.
Fiorina is utterly unqualified for the job, period. Her high tech business resume is marginal, and her ability to work toward consensus is seriously lacking. I’m sticking with Boxer, the devil I know, rather than Carly, the devil I don’t know and don’t trust.
Do any republicans even buy that tired old line of no new taxes anymore? She needs another shtick. Maybe she could campaign on her great business acumen…or not.
that’s it folks, stick with the democrats that have ruled this state for over 20 years and have run CA into the ground. Keep doing what your doing (voting dems into office) and you’ll keep getting what your getting (high unemployment, inept government, and the destruction of bread belt central valley to protect a fish)…
No Boxer for me, I will support Carly, she may have her flaws but has more values in her pinky than the agenda driven, self-serving Boxer…
She has my vote, BOXER WANTS CAP AND TRADE TO KILL WHATS LEFT OF OUR PRIVATE SECTOR JOBS. LETS ALL RETIRE BOXER AND ELECT CARLY.
Kay and other Democrats…
Were you aware that Barbara Boxer has the authority alone to turn on the water valves to the devastated San Joaquin Valley where the water is shut off to protect that Delta Smelt vs. producing thousands of farming jobs?
One of the elected state officials called this government water shut off an act of “domestic terrorism” .
So Kay…are you in favor of Boxer’s refusal to turn on the water here? It would not surprise me if you supported this devastation of jobs and commerce, however. Most Democrats are opposed to business development.
Here is a videoclip of the San Joaquin devastation if you are not aware of this problem’s severity… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twd59PrqCNg
Wasn’t Fiorina forced to resign from HP? And HP’s stock lost about 50% value between the time Fiorina joined and the time she left? Didn’t she leave HP with a “golden parachute” in compensation?
I don’t like the democrats right now, but the GOP has to be kidding with these candidates. Don’t let Fiorina do to California what she did to HP.
Last year, many voted for Obama because of the GOP ticket (Palin as VP), so unless the GOP comes up with a good candidate, the democrats will continue to win, and that is not such a good idea.
Resident, my guess is that you do not have much experience in business. I don’t intend that as a personal criticism. However please understand that businesses require different skill sets at the executive level depending on the growth stage of the business. Carly planned and engineered the most successful large scale merger in history…the merger of Compaq and HP. That required unbelievable foresight and strategic planning, not to mention management skills.
After the merger, the enterprise required a different skill set to take it to a different level. Carly had the perfect executive talent and problem-solving skills for the incredibly daunting business challenge she faced. And she was a tremendous success.
!, Buying Compaq _really_ nothing more than an elaborate stategy to take the analysts eyes off of HP’s core business (which was suffering pretty badly at the time), that buy some time, distance and distraction. All Carly did was to buy some marketshare and eliminate one of her largest competitors.
She used a similar strategy at Lucent, after using money raised from its IPO to go an a spree to acquire data networking companies, to hopefully allow Lucent to be percieved as a serious competitor to Cisco in the Networking marketplace. Cisco has gone on to eat Lucents lunch, and render them almost insignificant as a serious player in the marketplace.
If these 2 examples constitute Carly’s “leadership capability”, I think I’d come up with some other examples of why and how she might be qualified. Her practical experience would leave me to believe she’ll simply run things into the ground then walk away with a huge gov’t pension……
Private sector jobs?! Under Fiorina, HP moved thousands of American tech support jobs to India! Whenever my HP computer crashed, which was often, I’d call HP support and have to try to understand their instructions in broken English! So I don’t want to hear about how the Republican business owners want to create jobs for working class Americans–they’ve already shown they only want to create big bonuses for their CEO’s. As for Whitman, she has no government experience either. I am leaning towards Brown.
Janna…what you are failing to recognize is that an outsourcing of jobs (e.g. customer support or whatever) to a country like India is because the company has determined that it can maximize operational efficiency while reducing its operating costs. Bottomline, any company that outsources believes it will be stronger and more successful in a given timeframe. It is not because the company specifically wants to cut jobs because it is “anti-jobs” … wow!
My company…a global consulting firm outsourced thousands of customer support jobs to India several years ago. Today this company is much stronger for doing so…and is achieving astronomical success, including a huge rise in stock value. In addition, the number of high paying positions within the company has increased after the outsourcing began.
So…you are being very shortsighted to automatically conclude that an outsourcing of jobs by a company will result a net negative growth for that company and hence, for the US economy.
As far as your prospective vote for Brown and/or Boxer, I would challenge you to list each of their major accomplishments and compare them against their conservative competitor.
How about this…can you post on a new thread what you believe Boxer’s 5 main accomplishments have been, as well as Brown’s? I am sincere in my request because I would genuinely like to know.
I totally disagree with !. the outsourcing is simply to cut as much cost as possible from operations. The company that does this cares NOTHING about customer service, but simply doing something that resembles customer service at the very lowest cost possible. It is a crime that any of these companies that outsource to India and other places are so bold as to even call the department “customer service”. It should be called “customer frustration”. I can’t think of a single person ever telling me that had a good let alone great customer service experience in any industry being assisted by someone that barely speaks english providing customer service for any company.
You make think on the balance sheet your company looks “stronger”, but you are certainly not understanding that you’ll lose customers over such poor service. This is an industry trend that will kill companies in the grand scheme of things. Ever hear of Tom Peters? Its all about customer service when it comes to customer loyalty.
Outsourcing is an interesting subject. Remember when Henry Ford paid his workers enough to turn them into consumers? What happens to the market when the consumers are no longer local? Outsourcing (or more appropriately, offshoring) causes the market opportunities to move on to those offshore locations. As purchasing power increases in India and China, no one will care if there’s a few more higher paying jobs in the US and less lower paying jobs. Companies will probably move out of the US too. In the US, purchasing power has probably stalled and the credit bubbles were just borrowed time.
The only good that can come of a falling dollar is if the Chinese finally stop pegging the Yuan to it and when the Yuan appreciates, there will no longer be that artificial cost incentive for US companies to offshore there. They’ve been gaming capitalism for years.
To Stacey,
You said,
“They’ve been gaming capitalism for years.”
And the US isn’t gaming capitalism? Each country is twisting “free markets” to its own ends.
Only that the Chinese have been beating the US at it.
A very interesting subject indeed. If a company “exports”jobs, then its screweing the country, if it doesn’t then its screwing the company.
We MUST get to apoint where its profitable (again) to make, package and sell products wholly within this country. There are companies that make their product here, then ship it to China to be packaged, then ship it back to the US to sell. Its scary to think that model is profitable, but it is and that mist be changed for the US to regain any sort of economic solidity.
Even as a registered Democrat I am seriously concerned with the legislation that will be forced upon us with this Administration. I am voting for any Republican that challenges Boxer. Change will only happen if we vote out these politicians that simply follow the party line at all times and never show any sign of independent thought or action.
How wonderful. Another “stealth” republican running on empty promises of no new taxes, private sector job creation pushing the old anti-establishment line. I too was at Ascend/Lucent during Carly’s reign of terror. Saw LU go from 150,000 to 55,000 employee’s in under a year & the stock go from $56 down to $4. She is NOT the answer to unseat Bab’s & will do nothing but hurt the GOP as her dirty laundry, failed corporate leadership & lack of any political experience gets aired during the campaign.
Just why, WHY can’t the GOP get it right & put a candidate up that has some real conservative beliefs, a solid business platform, can stand up to the likes of Bab’s, The Pearl (sorry, Pelosi) Henry Reid & the chosen one aka. B.H.O.? Oh I remember, that’s why. There IS NO such thing as a “conservative” element within the GOP anymore. How silly of me.
…we are sooooooo screwed.
Please don’t mistake any of my complaints or perspecitives on Carly as in any way supporting “Bab’s”. I personally think she (Boxer) is the singular most incompetent politician on the planet. Just the sight of her mug on TV immediately gives me a gag reflex.
She was the CEO of HP when the spy scandal broke out…
Gee, no tax increase – how big of her.
HOW ABOUT A TAX CUT DIPSTICK?!
Just another reason to leave this screwed up state.
What a waste. We used to be the envy, now the joke.
A 30 year exercise of Liberal social engineering.
http://www.cafepress.com/rightwingstuff