Aug. 08--Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina bristles at the suggestion that she gets any special treatment as the sole woman among the 17 Republicans running for president. But at the same time, as she seeks to shore up support in the polls, she also has made a point of vocally wading into GOP gender controversies.
Fiorina was among the first candidates to slash at Donald Trump over his attacks against Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly following their testy exchanges in this week's debate. It was the second time in recent days that Fiorina has seized upon a gender-based controversy, as she tries to raise her profile to qualify for the next presidential debate.
"Mr. Trump. There. Is. No. Excuse," Fiorina tweeted late Friday after Trump said "there was blood coming out of [Kelly's] eyes, blood coming out of her wherever," widely interpreted as Trump saying Kelly's aggressive questioning was driven by menstruation, though Trump's campaign denied it.
On Thursday, she said that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's questioning of the amount of federal spending on women's healthcare offered ammunition to Democrats who want to paint Republicans as anti-women.
"It's disappointing," Fiorina told reporters. "I spent all of last year with a lot of other conservatives pushing back effectively against the war on women. It's really disappointing when a front-runner gives the Democrats an ad and a talking point."
Bush later said he misspoke and was talking only about federal funding of Planned Parenthood.
For Fiorina, it's an opportune time to be in the spotlight. She didn't make the cut to be on the prime-time debate stage Thursday, but she shone in the undercard debate for second-tier candidates and is seeking a bump in the polls in order to win a spot on the main stage at the next debate, in September at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.
Some Republican leaders would like to see Fiorina, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in California in 2010, in the prime-time debate. Controversies such as these could help as they draw attention to Fiorina, who is a sharp critic of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and likes to point out that her gender separates her from the rest of the GOP field.
"I'm not running because I'm a woman, but the facts are: I am a woman," she said in an interview this year. "If Hillary Clinton wants to bring gender into this race, if she wants to run as the first woman president, she can't do that if she faces me."
