By Mitch McAndrew
[email protected]
Carly Fiorina is looking for an upset in the Hawkeye State.
With less than a week to go until the first-in-the-nation caucuses, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO is ramping up her efforts to woo Iowans. She made 25 stops in the last week with 11 more scheduled before the Feb. 1 contest.
“We’re trying to put her in front of as many undecided voters as possible at this point,” said Christopher Rants, a former speaker of the Iowa House and a senior adviser to Fiorina’s campaign.
“Trump is going to win; we’re just trying to surprise people,” he said.
Rants said that although a Fiorina victory in Iowa is unlikely, the candidate is still optimistic she can exceed expectations nationally, citing her strong ground game in New Hampshire and South Carolina.
“Iowa delivers surprises over and over again,” Fiorina told a crowd of about 100 at the University Club, 1360 Melrose Ave., on Tuesday.
But a glance at Fiorina’s poll numbers show that she has a long way to go. According to a January Iowa poll by CNN/ORC, she is currently tied with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum at 1 percent.
The poll is based on interviews with 266 Republican likely caucus goers, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percentage points.
Still, Fiorina is being careful to take the poll numbers with a grain of salt.
“If polls were right, we’d have had a President Howard Dean, a President Rudy Giuliani, and Hillary Clinton already would have been president,” Fiorina said.
Indeed, many attendees of Fiorina’s event in Iowa City had not yet picked a candidate to support.
Bob Richard, a 70-year-old Iowa City resident, is still deciding among Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and Fiorina.
“I’ve always liked her honesty and her experience,” he said.
Richard, a former hospital executive who retired five years ago, said Fiorina’s staunch opposition to Obamacare resonated with him the most.
“We need an insurance program different than Obamacare,” he said. “It needs to be free market.”
During her speech on Tuesday in Iowa City, Fiorina was flanked by blue placards that read “Carly’s Blueprint to Take Our Country Back,” which served as an outline for the speech she gave.
Missing, however, was Fiorina’s usual denouncement of abortion, an issue she has been particularly outspoken about. She often cites videos released last summer that depict Planned Parenthood officials discussing the harvest of fetal organs.
On Tuesday, a Texas grand jury brought an indictment against two anti-abortion activists responsible for the videos on charges of tampering with a governmental record and a misdemeanor related to purchasing human organs.
Instead, she quickly got down to bashing rival Hillary Clinton and the Washington elite before launching into a passionate blurb about simplifying the tax code and employing her “zero-based budgeting” plan.
“[Clinton] has escaped prosecution more times than El Chapo,” she said to roars of laughter. “Maybe Sean Penn should interview her.”
Questions from attendees covered immigration, religious liberty, health care, and Social Security reform, the Flint water crisis and the job cuts during her tenure at HP.
Cathy Grawe, a Johnson County Republican Caucus/Conventions committee member, was impressed with the answers Fiorina gave.
“She challenges the status quo,” Grawe said. “Every time I’ve heard her speak, she awes me.”
Rants chalks her appeal up to her status as an outsider candidate.
“She doesn’t talk like a politician,” he said. “Lots of folks have come up to me after events and said, ‘She’s sharp.’ ”
Regardless, Fiorina will need a big swing in the numbers to pull off an Iowa surprise, especially with this late in the game.
“Many people start abandoning low-polling candidates at this point, because they want their vote to matter,” Grawe said.