The glow that Carly Fiorina earned in the first two Republican presidential debates has faded, but her allies say it’s too early to write off her candidacy because the former Hewlett-Packard CEO is building a campaign operation in early primary states.
The lone woman in the 15-candidate field, Mrs. Fiorina shot to near the front of the pack, reaching a high of 15 percent in a national CNN/ORC poll of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning voters.
But her support dropped to 4 percent in the latest CNN poll, even as the two other political outsiders, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, were on the rise this week.
Mrs. Fiorina has, however, climbed somewhat in polling in Iowa and held steady in New Hampshire, and her supporters say she is working to score early successes in next year’s primaries.
“Carly is campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada,” said Iowa state Sen. David Johnson, who has endorsed Mrs. Fiorina. “That is where the campaign focus is, and those should be the polls that tell a more accurate story of where we are.”
Mrs. Fiorina’s public schedule shows she has made more than a half-dozen campaign stops in New Hampshire and will have made at least a dozen stops in Iowa before the end of the month, appearing at town hall meetings, Rotary Club and similar functions, and high school football games along the way.
The 61-year-old also had four planned stops over the month in South Carolina, including a couple of town hall meetings Friday.
The Fiorina camp says it has three paid staffers in New Hampshire and two in Iowa, where the caucuses will start the nomination battle Feb. 1.
According to her official campaign committee reports from July 1 through Sept. 30, she raised $6.8 million — roughly four times the $1.7 million she pulled in from April 1 through June 30. Her campaign reported more than $5.5 million cash on hand as of the beginning of the month.
Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics and Political Library at St. Anselm College, described Mrs. Fiorina’s ground game and campaign infrastructure as “very strong” in the Granite State, which holds the first-in-the-nation primary Feb. 9.
“Early on, she hired a great staff and has great endorsements,” Mr. Levesque said.
Mrs. Fiorina also is benefiting from the support of the Carly for America super PAC, which has been creative in bolstering her image with voters.
Still, the polling slide should be troubling given the difficulty in getting noticed in the large field.
Rick Halvorsen, chairman of the Warren County Republican Party in Iowa, who is undecided in the race, said Mr. Trump and Mr. Carson have owned the news cycle and the headlines over the past month.
“I think it is because she is not making enough noise,” Mr. Halverson said. “If you get on the news, your poll ratings go up; if you are not in the news, your poll ratings go down.”
Mrs. Fiorina also began to face scrutiny over her tenure at Hewlett-Packard, where she watched over a major drop in the company’s stock and the loss of 30,000 jobs before her eventual firing.
Daniel Horowitz, senior editor of Conservative Review, downplayed Mrs. Fiorina’s dip by saying her spike in the polls was superficial.
As the campaign develops, Mr. Horowitz said, she will face questions about her conservative credentials given that she ran for the U.S. Senate in California as an establishment candidate, served as vice chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and defended legislative efforts, including on immigration and government bailouts, that are at odds with conservative ideals.
“This ’campaign conservative’ phenomena is nothing new, but I don’t think I have seen anyone else who has been this dramatic in their conversion and has not been called out on it,” he said, adding that she represented the moderate wing of the party.
“As a candidate, you have to come clean on why you are different from the others who ran on the ’campaign conservative’ platform and turned out to be very different,” he said.
Mrs. Fiorina will have a chance to bolster her standing during the third Republican presidential debate Wednesday in Colorado, where she once again has been invited to participate in the prime-time forum.
“We are very pleased with where the campaign is, and we look forward to the opportunity for Carly to introduce herself to even more voters at next week’s debate,” said Anna Epstein, a campaign spokeswoman.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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