Prometheus 6

Ousted Executive Provides a Feminine Face to the McCain Campaign
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON — Three years ago, Carleton S. Fiorina was the celebrity C.E.O. who was spectacularly fired by the Hewlett-Packard board. She produced a best-selling memoir, “Tough Choices,” but for the most part spent the years after her ouster in relative self-imposed exile from public life.

No longer. Ms. Fiorina, universally known as Carly, is back, this time reincarnated as a telegenic, take-no-prisoners surrogate for Senator John McCain.

On MSNBC on Thursday, Ms. Fiorina praised Mr. McCain’s fund-raising prowess with the announcement that he had raised $21.5 million in May. Last month on the ABC program “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” she pushed Mr. McCain’s proposal for a gasoline-tax holiday and brushed past the fact that she could not name a credible economist who supported it.

In the months before that, Ms. Fiorina tirelessly promoted Mr. McCain’s economic proposals in round tables and news media interviews across the country.

“When people were picking apart our tax cuts and saying, ‘This will cost a gazillion dollars,’ she’s very good about saying, ‘Come on, guys, let’s get the numbers and push back,’ ” said Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers. “She’s a very smart woman.”

Ms. Fiorina’s official title is chairwoman of the Republican National Committee’s “Victory ’08” committee dedicated to electing Mr. McCain as president, and she is typically described as an economic adviser to the candidate. To some extent, she is. But Mr. McCain’s campaign advisers say her real role within their testosterone-heavy circle matters more: A high-profile female face for a candidate whose support among women lags substantially behind that of his Democratic rivals.

“She has a great feeling for the economy, for technology and probably what women think about these things, and she’s wired in,” said Thomas J. Perkins, a pioneer venture capitalist and a leader on the Hewlett-Packard board in Ms. Fiorina’s ouster. (In the past, Mr. Perkins acknowledged, “we’ve had words and we’ve sort of attacked each other in print.”)