{"id":29838,"date":"2016-04-28T08:01:45","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T15:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/cruz-taps-fiorina-to-serve-as-running-mate\/"},"modified":"2016-04-28T08:01:45","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T15:01:45","slug":"cruz-taps-fiorina-to-serve-as-running-mate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/cruz-taps-fiorina-to-serve-as-running-mate\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruz taps Fiorina to serve as running mate"},"content":{"rendered":"
INDIANAPOLIS<\/strong> \u2014 In need of momentum after a five-state shutout, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Wednesday tapped former technology executive Carly Fiorina \u2014 a woman who he said has repeatedly \u201cshattered glass ceilings\u201d \u2014 to serve as his running mate.<\/p>\n The Texas senator announced his pick for vice president at an Indianapolis rally, an unusual move for an underdog candidate that reflects the increasing urgency for the fiery conservative to reverse his downward trajectory.<\/p>\n Cruz praised Fiorina\u2019s path from secretary to CEO and her past willingness to challenge GOP front-runner Donald Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cCarly isn\u2019t intimated by bullies,\u201d he declared, adding, \u201cOver and over again, Carly has shattered glass ceilings.\u201d<\/p>\n The 61-year-old Fiorina, a former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, has been a prominent Cruz ally since shortly after abandoning her own presidential bid earlier in the year. She was the only woman in the Republican Party\u2019s crowded 2016 field.<\/p>\n \u201cOf all the people who didn\u2019t make it far in the race, she was one of the best about laying out her plan, talking about who she is and her accomplishments,\u201d said Doug De Groote, a fundraiser for Cruz based near Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Fiorina\u2019s selection marked another extraordinary development in the 2016 Republican campaign, particularly for a candidate who is far from becoming his party\u2019s presumptive nominee. Cruz was soundly defeated by GOP front-runner Donald Trump in all five primaries contests on Tuesday, and he\u2019s been mathematically eliminated from winning the nomination before his party\u2019s national convention in July.<\/p>\n Some Cruz allies praised Fiorina\u2019s selection, but privately questioned if it would change the trajectory of the race. Trump has won 77 percent of the delegates he needs to claim the nomination, and a win next week in Indiana will keep him on a firm path to do so.<\/p>\n Cruz was to appear Wednesday afternoon with Fiorina in Indiana\u2019s capital city, having staked his candidacy on a win in the state\u2019s primary contest next Tuesday. Fiorina\u2019s California ties could also prove valuable in that state\u2019s high-stakes primary on June 7.<\/p>\n \u201cCarly has incredible appeal to so many people, especially in California,\u201d De Groote said. \u201cShe can really help him here.\u201d<\/p>\n Her first major foray into politics was in 2010, when she ran for Senate in California and lost to incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer by 10 percentage points. She has never held elected office.<\/p>\n Trump criticized a Fiorina pick as \u201cridiculous\u201d and \u201cdumb\u201d even before it was announced.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst of all, he shouldn\u2019t be naming anybody because he doesn\u2019t even have a chance,\u201d the New York billionaire said in a Wednesday interview on Fox News.<\/p>\n \u201cNaming Carly\u2019s dumb, because Carly didn\u2019t do well. She had one good debate \u2014 not against me by the way, because I had an unblemished record of victories during debates \u2014 but she had one victory on the smaller stage and that was it,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n He added, \u201cShe\u2019s a nice woman. I think that it\u2019s not going to help him at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Throughout her presidential bid, Fiorina emphasized her meteoric rise in the business world. A Stanford University graduate, she started her career as a secretary, earned an MBA and worked her way up at AT&T to become a senior executive at the telecom leader.<\/p>\n She was also dogged by questions about her record at Hewlett-Packard, where she was hired as CEO in 1999. She was fired six years later, after leading a major merger with Compaq and laying off 30,000 workers.<\/p>\n Democrats quickly attacked the Cruz-Fiorina alliance.<\/p>\n \u201cThe best way to describe that ticket is mean and meaner,\u201d said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who beat Fiorina for Senate in 2010. \u201cHe wants to throw people out of the country and she threw thousands of jobs out of the country. Perfect match.\u201d<\/p>\n In an Associated Press-GfK poll conducted in December 2015, Republican voters were more likely to say they had a favorable than an unfavorable view of Fiorina by a 47 percent to 20 percent margin, with 32 percent unable to give a rating.<\/p>\n Among all Americans, 45 percent didn\u2019t know enough about Fiorina to rate her, while 22 percent rated her favorably and 32 percent unfavorably.<\/p>\n By contrast, both Cruz and Trump have high negative ratings even within their own party, according to an April AP-GfK poll. Among Republican voters, 52 percent have a favorable and 41 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Cruz, while 53 percent have a favorable and 46 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Trump.<\/p>\n Among all Americans, 59 percent had an unfavorable opinion of Cruz and 69 percent said that of Trump.<\/p>\n Cruz supporter Jim McAdams, who was wearing a homemade \u201cTed Cruz 16\u201d shirt to the announcement event in Indianapolis, predicted the Fiorina pick would generate badly needed momentum. But the 74-year-old retired mechanical engineer conceded that Cruz is a longshot at this point.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only way he\u2019s going to get in office is divine intervention,\u201d McAdams said. \u201cWe pray for his campaign every day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 In need of momentum after a five-state shutout, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Wednesday tapped former technology executive Carly Fiorina \u2014 a woman who he said has repeatedly \u201cshattered glass ceilings\u201d \u2014 to serve as his running mate. The Texas senator announced his pick for vice president at an Indianapolis rally, an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"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-29838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29838","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=29838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29838"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=29838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}