Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina: 'I am running for president'
Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina officially launched her bid for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination on Monday.
She made the announcement on ABC's "Good Morning America" and on Twitter.
"I am running for President," Fiorina wrote.
Though her candidacy is widely viewed as a bit of a long shot, Fiorina is likely to make at least a little bit of a splash in 2016. She will probably be the only female Republican running for the White House, and she has generated headlines by being one of the most vocal critics of the Democratic front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Fiorina's new campaign website features a video of the former CEO briefly watching Clinton's own announcement before turning it off.
"Our founders never intended us to have a professional political class. They believed that citizens and leaders needed to step forward," Fiorina says in the video. "We know the only way to imagine our government is to reimagine who is leading it."
Fiorina's campaign faces some notable obstacles, however. Her tenure at HP earned poor reviews and she lost her only other political campaign: a 2010 Senate race. In that contest, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California) relentlessly attacked Fiorina's record at HP, which included everything from layoffs to sales to Iran.
Fiorina, who says her critics have mischaracterized what she accomplished as CEO, also used her campaign website to defend her HP record.
"Carly didn't always make the most popular decisions at HP - but, time and time again, they would prove to be the right ones," the site declares. "But even though her record as CEO speaks for itself, Carly faced headwinds from people who did not want to see HP change. They wanted to double-down on a flawed agenda that simply wasn't sustainable against the new challenges of the 21st Century."
Fiorina has also been willing to throw barbs at her fellow business leaders. Earlier this month, she called Apple CEO Tim Cook a hypocrite for speaking out against Indiana's controversial "religious freedom" law, which critics claimed would have allowed for businesses to discriminate against gays and lesbians.
"When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he's in, including China and Saudi Arabia," she told The Journal. "But I don't hear him being upset about that." (Cook didn't call for a boycott of Indiana).
Another Republican, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, also plans to officially announce his presidential campaign on Monday. They join Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). A number of other candidates are expected to join them in the coming weeks and months.
Last updated 7:46 a.m. with additional context.