Carly Fiorina stalks Hillary Clinton in South Carolina showdown

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham are scheduled to be almost side-by-side campaigning Wednesday in the early presidential state of South Carolina, where Mrs. Clinton lost a bitter contest against President Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.

Ms. Fiorina, who declared her 2016 presidential campaign on the Republican side earlier this month, is holding a media availability outside the Columbia Marriott at noon before a meet-and-greet event with Palmetto State Republicans at the Hilton Downtown Columbia and an event later Wednesday in Spartanburg.

Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to deliver an address to South Carolina Democrats at the Columbia Marriott at 1:45 p.m. and was also scheduled to meet with minority women small business owners.

Ms. Fiorina’s deputy campaign manager, Sarah Flores, wrote in an email to reporters that Ms. Fiorina’s events are open press and that Ms. Fiorina will take questions “because we believe the American people will not and should not elect a president that can’t answer for her record, won’t explain her positions or for whom the truth is whatever she can get away with.”

Ms. Fiorina is working to gain traction in a crowded GOP field and has made targeting Mrs. Clinton a key focus in the early stages of her own campaign, but Ms. Flores said in an email to The Weekly Standard that the campaign did not coordinate the appearance to coincide with Mrs. Clinton’s and also noted the campaign’s Google Calendar is visible to the public.

“We’ve had this event on our calendar for some time. But we were pleasantly surprised to be able to draw the contrast in such close proximity,” Ms. Flores told the magazine.

Mrs. Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential frontrunner, has mostly avoided direct engagements with the media on the trail in the early throes of her campaign, though she did take several questions during a recent stop in Iowa.