{"id":19291,"date":"2015-09-18T08:05:44","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T15:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/fiorina-looks-to-turn-debate-accolades-into-dollars-votes\/"},"modified":"2015-09-18T08:05:44","modified_gmt":"2015-09-18T15:05:44","slug":"fiorina-looks-to-turn-debate-accolades-into-dollars-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/fiorina-looks-to-turn-debate-accolades-into-dollars-votes\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiorina looks to turn debate accolades into dollars, votes"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2014 Propelled by her standout debate performance, Carly Fiorina sought on Thursday to turn accolades for her crisp, confident showing into actual support from voters and donors. It\u2019s a quest that will determine whether her breakthrough moment is a turning point in the Republican primary or simply a footnote.<\/p>\n

After a few hours of sleep, Fiorina blitzed through six morning-show interviews, an on-air victory lap of sorts. In early voting states, her small staff fielded calls from local officials eager to pledge their support.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter last night, I\u2019m with Carly Fiorina,\u201d said Bryan Gould, a New Hampshire lawyer who was among those reaching out to Fiorina\u2019s team. Gould had also been considering Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, or retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, but he said Fiorina displayed the maturity he\u2019s been looking for in a candidate.<\/p>\n

Fiorina\u2019s Iowa chairman Christopher Rants spent the day trying to make sure the candidate\u2019s upcoming events in the state had space for bigger crowds. \u201cWe wanted to hold 150 people, better make sure it holds 200 \u2014 maybe more,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For Fiorina, this burst of attention will spur fresh scrutiny of her business record while she ran the technology company Hewlett-Packard \u2014 and a deeper examination of her current statements and policy positions.<\/p>\n

The origin of one of her most attention-grabbing debate moments \u2014 her description of a video showing a fetus with legs kicking and heart beating \u2014 was already being questioned by abortion rights groups, given that the scene she referenced apparently was based on a verbal account rather than a video. According to both Planned Parenthood and anti-abortion activists, there is no scene matching her description in any of the undercover videos at the heart of the debate over the disposition of fetal tissue from abortions.<\/p>\n

Still, the debate\u2019s immediate results were overwhelmingly positive for Fiorina, the only woman in the Republican field. That was all the more remarkable given that her campaign had to aggressively lobby debate host CNN to change the participation criteria just so she could qualify for the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel like last night reset the race,\u201d said Keith Appell, a senior adviser to CARLY for America, a super PAC backing Fiorina.<\/p>\n

At least in the short-term, Fiorina\u2019s strong performance could jolt a Republican race that has been dominated by the unexpected rise of Donald Trump. Her sustainability will hinge on her ability to raise money for a long campaign and build a broad enough coalition of voters to have strong showings in early contests.<\/p>\n

Appell said the super PAC, which has been running the bulk of Fiorina\u2019s operations in key states, will keep trying to generate attention through free media and campaign appearances, while holding off on paid advertisements for now. The outside group is also looking to bolster its roster of \u201ccommunity captains\u201d that can help recruit volunteers and organize voter turnout next year.<\/p>\n

Even before Thursday\u2019s debate, Fiorina had quietly garnered positive reviews from voters in early voting Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. She\u2019s been among the most aggressive Republican candidate in taking on Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, arguing that if the GOP nominates a woman, it would block Clinton from being able to turn her campaign into a history-making quest to become the first female president.<\/p>\n

Still, she\u2019s struggled to translate praise into support in national polls. Just as concerning for Fiorina has been her lackluster fundraising. Her super PAC raised about $3.5 million in the first half of the year, while her campaign raised about half that.<\/p>\n

Fiorina\u2019s strong performance in last month\u2019s undercard debate for low-polling candidates and her recent critiques of Trump helped give her campaign an extra spark heading into Wednesday night\u2019s main contest. While Trump\u2019s assertive, confrontational approach has confounded some of his rivals, Fiorina has been fearless in taking him on.<\/p>\n

In one of the debate\u2019s standout moments, she delivered a sharp rebuttal to derogatory remarks Trump had made about her appearance, a comment he later tried to walk back.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said,\u201d she declared.<\/p>\n

Fiorina\u2019s broader strategy \u2014 both in the debate and moving forward in the fall campaign \u2014 is to draft off Trump\u2019s outsider appeal, while presenting herself as a more substantive alternative to the billionaire showman. She whipped through detailed answers on both domestic and foreign policy and also spoke movingly about her daughter\u2019s death during a discussion on drug policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think she is rapidly becoming the more authoritative voice for the outsiders, the one who speaks with class and dignity and details,\u201d said Mike Dennehy, who ran Rick Perry\u2019s New Hampshire campaign until the former Texas governor pulled out of the race last week.<\/p>\n

Still, Fiorina needs only to look back to the 2012 Republican primary to see how quickly a burst of momentum can fade. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann parlayed a strong debate performance into a victory in Iowa\u2019s summer straw poll, but she faded by the time actual voting got underway. A slew of other longshot candidates also had moments atop the polls before collapsing.<\/p>\n

Fiorina aides say she\u2019s realistic about the impact of a single debate, but still came off stage visibly pleased with her performance.<\/p>\n

And after the candidate stood throughout the three-hour debate, Fiorina\u2019s deputy campaign manager Sarah Isgur Flores added, \u201cShe wanted to take those heels off.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow Julie Pace at http:\/\/twitter.com\/jpaceDC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Propelled by her standout debate performance, Carly Fiorina sought on Thursday to turn accolades for her crisp, confident showing into actual support from voters and donors. It\u2019s a quest that will determine whether her breakthrough moment is a turning point in the Republican primary or simply a footnote. After a few hours of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":19292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19291"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}