Trump, eggs and the CAGOP convention

Good morning and welcome to May.

California Republicans greeted all three remaining GOP presidential candidates over the weekend, a big deal for partisans in a state that rarely matters in the primary process. 

The main event, or at least the one with protests, was Donald Trump’s speech Friday. Compared to a situation where protestors were throwing eggs at police, busting through barricades and rerouting a candidate’s entrance through a hole in the fence along the 101, the appearances of Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich were quite tame.

Cruz’s VP pick — unsuccessful presidential and Senate candidate Carly Fiorina — also spoke. Like Kasich and Cruz, no one hurled eggs in her name either. 

California Republicans also changed the party’s rules to allow for up to two more terms for their popular chairman, Jim Brulte. CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• A new poll suggests that more than one-third of Bay Area residents are ready to leave within the next few years due to traffic and housing costs. The San Jose Mercury News has more. 
• Cruz has traveled the country criticizing the Obama economy. But at the CAGOP convention this weekend, he had to change his tune slightly in a state where the economy has improved during the Democratic administration of Gov. Jerry Brown, reports the Los Angeles Times.
• “The Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation is touting a new study that suggests people who see condoms in adult video are more likely to use them in their own sex lives,” reports LA Weekly.
• California voters may have to decide in November on whether to legalize recreational marijuana. But the $2.7 billion medical marijuana industry still lacks comprehensive oversight, reports The Orange County Register. 

Assembly:

• In at 1 p.m. 

Senate:

• In at 2 p.m.
• Packed Appropriations Committee agenda. 

Gov. Brown:

• At 10:30 a.m. on the west steps of the Capitol building, Brown will attend the California Peace Officers’ Memorial Ceremony. 
• At 1:30 p.m., Brown will attend a Wildfire Awareness Week event in McClellan.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

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New followers: @CASenatorJim @robviglione

Burlingame –

Earlier this week, Texas Senator Ted Cruz announced the former Hewlett-Packard CEO as his prospective running mate, in an effort to grab headlines and the Golden State, where Fiorina once unsuccessfully ran for Senate.  

Mathematically, there aren’t enough delegates left for Cruz to shore up the nomination prior to the convention, but Team Cruz hopes to stop Trump from getting the required 1,237 delegates to win the nomination outright. 

Fiorina admitted she wasn’t a football expert, but knew enough to know the presidential race “ain’t” over, as she said pundits have suggested. 

“The 30-yard line ain’t a touchdown,” Fiorina said.

Trump has 997 pledged delegates, while Cruz only has 566. In total, there are 502 delegates up for grabs through the remaining contests, including California’s 172. Trump has a commanding lead in the Golden State at the moment, although there’s a lifetime (in politics) until the June 7 primary. 

The Indiana primary is on Tuesday, where 57 delegates are up for grabs. Cruz and business tycoon Donald Trump are virtually tied in the Real Clear Politics polling average. But a big win for Trump would all but guarantee the nomination. 

Fiorina also ran for the GOP presidential nomination, but dropped out in February after her campaign failed to gain traction. In 2010, she challenged Barbara Boxer for the Democrat’s U.S. Senate seat, losing by 10 points (by nearly 1 million votes). 

Because of the large number of delegates, California is seen as the last stand for those trying to stop Trump (although Cruz has been running for president about three months longer than Trump).

“This is a fight for the soul of our party and the future of our nation,” Fiorina said. 

• Presidential campaign focus on CA
• Cruz and Carly
• Legislator pay panel can’t get quorum
• UC Davis chancellor placed on leave during investigation

Good morning. Happy Friday eve!

All eyes are on California as presidential candidates on both sides of the aisle are planning big pushes in the Golden State.

A poll last week showed Sen. Bernie Sanders within six points of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in California, with 12 percent of respondents undecided. 

Both campaigns have “zeroed in on California as a must win,” writes CalWatchdog. Although big losses on Tuesday for Sanders has the Vermonter “conceding he’d now have to focus on merely influencing the party’s agenda.”

In other news:

• Republicans are also eyeing California, as Sen. Ted Cruz announced Wednesday that he’d selected former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as his running mate. The Texas senator’s announcement seemed premature, as he’s not the nominee nor even the frontrunner. The move confused many observers as Fiorina has not been very successful as a candidate, including earlier this cycle as a presidential candidate. Plus, after losing a Senate race in 2010, she left CA for Virginia. The San Jose Mercury News has more.
• And just because: Former Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday at Stanford University that Cruz was “Lucifer in the flesh,” and the most “miserable son of a bitch” he’s ever met, reports The Stanford Daily. 

• Last month, CalWatchdog reported that the commission on state lawmaker pay was plagued by vacancies. This month, the California Citizens Compensation Commission had to cancel its annual meeting scheduled for Wednesday due to lack of quorum. The governor is supposed to appoint commissioners within 15 days of a vacancy, with the shortest of the three vacancies spanning more than a year. The CCCC’s duty — which came out of a sweeping ethics reform package, Proposition 112, in 1990 — is to decide the pay and benefits of constitutional officers (like governor and attorney general) and state legislators. CalWatchdog has more. 
• Linda Katehi, the embattled chancellor of UC Davis, was placed on administrative leave by UC President Janet Napolitano on Wednesday, to allow for an investigation into “‘serious questions’ raised about her involvement in campus jobs for family members, possible misuse of student service fee revenue and misstatements about her role in social media contracts,” according to the Los Angeles Times. And The Sacramento Bee compiled a timeline of stories about Katehi, dating back to 2011, just before the pepper-spraying-of-students incident. 
• Congressional oddities: A Republican challenger to Rep. Pete Aguilar is accusing the Redlands Democrat of stealing his campaign signs, reports The Press-Enterprise. And an ethics watchdog group “has filed complaints with two federal oversight agencies, asking officials to investigate what the group describes as a pattern of questionable campaign spending by Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Alpine,” reports The San Diego Union Tribune. 

Assembly:

• In at 9 a.m., with a few hearings today. 

Senate: 

• In at 9 a.m., full slate of budget hearings. 

Gov. Brown:

• No public events scheduled.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @Taxeconomist @ALEC_states

After a momentary surge wherein she cast herself as a corporate leader who could wrest America back from the “political class,” former California Senate candidate and HP CEO Carly Fiorina ended her bid for the White House.

The news came as a blow to supporters beguiled by Fiorina’s unusual mix of mainstream credibility and insurgent fervor, which she underscored in several prominent debate performances with ringing attacks on the country’s abortion laws and its established party leaders.

“We must fix our festering problems by holding our bloated, inept government bureaucracy accountable,” she said in a statement on Facebook suspending her campaign. “Republicans must stand for conservative principles that lift people up and recognize all Americans have the right to fulfill their God-given potential.”

But she also took a parting shot at Hillary Clinton, who has sought to make up a surprising deficit against Bernie Sanders among young women voters. “To young girls and women across the country, I say: do not let others define you. Do not listen to anyone who says you have to vote a certain way or for a certain candidate because you’re a woman,” Fiorina wrote. “That is not feminism. Feminism doesn’t shut down conversations or threaten women. It is not about ideology. It is not a weapon to wield against your political opponent. A feminist is a woman who lives the life she chooses and uses all her God-given gifts. And always remember that a leader is not born, but made. Choose leadership.”

Although Fiorina attracted her fair share of political foes on the campaign trail, as the only woman in this year’s Republican field, she has now also attracted curiosity over her next moves. She has already returned, for instance, to the lecture circuit, freshly available for booking through her speaker’s bureau. “Fiorina’s pitch to clients appears designed to feature both her business and political backgrounds,” as Michael Hiltzik noted at the Los Angeles Times. “She could do well occupying the niche of an articulate conservative with extensive experience in business. Beyond that, the lessons of Fiorina’s rapid return to the ranks of paid speakers are murky,” he added. “But they do point to a reality of modern presidential campaigning: It can be a path to a lucrative post-political business career.”

It has also proven to be a good way to recover from the costs of a campaign while maintaining a relatively public profile. Hillary and Bill Clinton were famously able to turn around their financial fortunes with the help of big paydays on a packed speakers’ schedule, although it seemed unlikely that Fiorina would follow Clinton in delivering six-figure speeches before Wall Street banks.

One lingering question facing California Republicans was whether Fiorina might eventually turn her sights back on the state. Some Golden State conservatives could welcome her as an anti-establishment woman offering an alternative to Donald Trump’s brand of insurgency, currently popular among a significant slice of the GOP electorate in California. Fiorina distinguished herself as one of the few candidates to deal Trump an early and significant blow, openly criticizing his treatment of women on the debate state in Simi Valley. “‘I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said,’ she pronounced, humbling Trump as no other candidate had to date,” as Bloomberg Politics recalled.

But that window may close depending on Ted Cruz’s performance this cycle. The Texas Senator has secured the endorsement of Rep. Tom McClintock and lined up former state party chair Ron Nehring as his California campaign chairman. Cruz also recently held a fundraiser in Beverly Hills hosted by former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, as Variety reported. Still, “Jerry Perenchio, one of the most prolific of all GOP donors, has invested heavily in a SuperPAC backing the candidacy of Carly Fiorina,” Variety noted, tallying Perenchio’s support at over $3.5 million.

After besting her rivals in the first “undercard” debate, Fiorina won a slot on CNN’s main stage event, where, again, she established a commanding presence. On and off social media, Fiorina was declared the victor — despite touching off a controversy over the accuracy of her characterization of recently released video stings on Planned Parenthood. In a survey analysis, NBC News noted, “Fiorina emerges the clear winner, with a positive 34, whereas Trump nets a positive 2 among Republican voters who watched or followed the debate coverage.” USA Today’s expert panel has placed Fiorina atop their “power rankings” list for a third straight week.

But Fiorina detractors have long heaped criticism on both her tenure at HP and her campaign against Sen. Barbara Boxer, leaving some in the Golden State’s GOP warning of a bumpy road to the nomination. Although her edge against the likes of Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton could be significant, Joel Fox of Fox & Hounds told the San Francisco Chronicle, “as the campaign moves ahead, some of the negatives that Californians knew about will move to the fore. And that’s the material that a lot of the national folks haven’t heard yet.”

Refighting old battles

Seizing the political opportunity, Boxer herself didn’t hesitate to weigh in on Fiorina’s record. “She’s very good with words,” the Senator told MSNBC, but suggested that “when people see her deeds and see her mean-spiritedness, she won’t be on the top anymore. […] I think the Republicans would have a very rough time if she was on the ticket.” Boxer went further in remarks for the Los Angeles Times, calling Fiorina “the face of income inequality and the face of corporate greed,” making “Mitt Romney look like a Democrat.” Fiorina’s track record as CEO, the Times noted, became a focal point of Democrats’ attacks during her bid for the Senate. Boxer managed to blunt Fiorina’s strengthening challenge with an ad focused intently on discrediting her time at HP, as the Washington Post observed.

In the current political climate, however, that tenure has not factored as heavily into Republicans’ assessments at a national level. It cropped up just once at the most recent debate. “Jake Tapper noted that Donald Trump had said Fiorina ‘ran HP into the ground’ during her time as CEO,” as the Post recounted. “Fiorina responded, ‘I led Hewlett Packard through a very difficult time, the worst technology recession in 25 years,’ adding: ‘We had to make tough choices, and in doing so, we saved 80,000 jobs, went on to grow to 160,000 jobs.'” The moderators and the candidates moved on.

Nevertheless, Fiorina was set to face continued criticism on the West Coast. California Democrats have proven eager to use their in-state rivals to attack the national GOP — and vice versa — with gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom training fire on Trump in order to cast aspersions at Republicans in his state.

A higher ceiling

Among GOP voters, Trump remains at the top of the heap in statewide polls, with Fiorina still trailing. Fiorina placed fifth in a recent USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll conducted before the impact of her debate victory. California Republicans’ strong preference for fresh political blood, however, indicated room for her to grow that more established candidates have fruitlessly pursued.

“Bush, Cruz and the other conventional politicians in the GOP race are all falling to the strong outsider tide: 47 percent of voters in the poll sided with three candidates who have not held elective office: Trump, Carson and Carly Fiorina,” as the Times summarized respondents’ preferences. “Leaving aside the one-fifth of respondents who were undecided, well over half of those who had a favorite candidate chose a person who had never served in office.”

But there is even more talk about her as a possible, even probable vice presidential candidate to counter the “war on women” narrative that Democrats are sure to resume using against Republicans in 2016. This is from a TIME magazine analysis Friday:

Is it possible to have a runaway favorite for vice president? If it is, then Carly Fiorina is it.

There’s one factor that would further encourage such speculation that doesn’t get much attention, however. Fiorina no longer lives in California. She’s now a Virginia resident — and it’s arguably as important a swing state as Florida and Ohio. In this 2012 NPR story about the heavy attention that President Obama and Mitt Romney were paying Virginia, it was labeled the “new Ohio.”

The old arguments about picking running mates based on their ability to bring their home states’ Electoral College votes along aren’t as potent as they used to be. Mitt Romney may have picked Paul Ryan to give him a better chance in Wisconsin, but Barack Obama didn’t pick Joe Biden because he coveted Delaware’s electoral votes. John McCain didn’t pick Sarah Palin because he was targeting Alaska. George W. Bush didn’t pick Dick Cheney with the goal of winning Wyoming.

Served as James Madison University trustee

But as part of any cumulative consideration of who would most help Republicans win in 2016, swing-state residency is a plus factor. Fiorina has lived in Virginia since buying a $6.1 million mansion in 2011 in Mason Neck, a rural area by the Potomac River that’s at the far edge of the exurbs of Washington D.C. She’s become a part of the state’s political establishment and was named by then-Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell in 2012 to serve as a trustee on the James Madison University governing board, to the disgust of some Virginia liberals.

If she still lived in California, that fact alone wouldn’t be seen as much of a plus. Romney lost California by 3 million votes in 2012. McCain lost the Golden State by 3.3 million votes in 2008.

But Fiorina might still have attracted interest for the second spot from the GOP nominee for the same reason she’s doing well in a crowded GOP presidential field: She seems better at connecting with voters than most of her much more experienced rivals and can credibly offer herself as a Washington outsider. “Vice presidential selection is much more complicated than focusing on the single factor of home state electoral votes,” writes Joel K. Goldstein, a Saint Louis University law professor who is consider the nation’s leading scholar on the vice presidency.

The new posture became official through a delegates’ vote at the state party’s semiannual convention in Anaheim. Carefully calibrated wording produced an amended statement that drew its share of criticism but ultimately passed, as the Los Angeles Times reported:

The changes say Republicans “hold diverse views” on “what to do with the millions of people who are currently here illegally.” The wording of the amendment was tweaked after a Saturday committee meeting, which used the phrase “otherwise law-abiding folks” instead of “people.” Although the new language emphasizes opposition to “amnesty,” it removes the statement that “allowing illegal immigrants to remain in California undermines respect for the law.”

Although the momentum for the changes was driven by a years-long disagreement within the party over how fiercely to oppose illegal immigration, the direct impetus came from a relatively new source: Donald Trump. Marcelino Valdez, the party’s regional vice chairman in Fresno, told the Times he spearheaded the initially proposed changes in order to formally counteract Trump’s recent remarks on the issue.

Calling Trump “an entertainer,” Valdez called the revised wording “a common-sense approach” that shows Republicans are “far from” anti-immigrant, according to the Orange County Register.

A play for votes

But Valdez left no uncertainty about the party establishment’s ambitions. “We’re absolutely trying to reach the Latino vote,” he added. GOP strategists in California have watched with alarm as polling reflected Trump’s negative impact on its view of the party. “Trump stands apart from the field,” as MSNBC observed. “A recent MSNBC/Telemundo/Marist poll of Latinos found that 70 percent of respondents had a negative view of Trump – far more than any other candidate – and 65 percent felt he was hurting the GOP’s brand.”

Although some strategists have counseled that Republican presidential candidates can succeed at the national level without making a strong play for Latino voters, that argument carries less weight in the Golden State, where California Republicans looking to expand their base often see little alternative. “Republican registration has fallen to 28 percent statewide,” the Sacramento Bee noted.

Drawing contrasts

For that reason, Carly Fiorina’s rising political stock has rekindled their hopes in shaking the state party loose of Trump’s perceived influence. In the recent presidential debate hosted in Simi Valley, “Fiorina took a measured and careful approach to how she answered questions about immigration,” the International Business Times observed. “Largely avoiding the issue as a matter of policy, she navigated between attacking Trump and President Barack Obama, making no mention of her thoughts on what to actually do with the millions of immigrants currently in the country without legal documentation.”

During that debate, Trump, by contrast, “reiterated that he would build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, then deport ‘a lot of really bad dudes in this country from outside,'” according to the Bee, which added that Democrats have shown little hesitation in trying to tie the California GOP to Trump’s most aggressive remarks on on the issue. Trump’s latest debate comments, however, seemed to represent a shift away from insinuations he made earlier in the campaign that every immigrant who entered the U.S. unlawfully would be deported if he were elected president.

Chasing attention

Analysts remained unsure, however, whether voters would pay a great deal of attention to the intra-party struggle over the finer points of its preferred immigration policy. Prof. Jeff Jarvis of Cal State Fullerton told Southern California Public Radio that, most likely, the party’s rejiggered language was “getting drowned out in the conversation by Trump and the national party moving to the right on immigration.” With presidential candidates like Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz still in the hunt, however, that dynamic could eventually change as quickly as Republican primary voters’ preferences have already shifted to date.

Heated rhetoric

Pressing ahead with the environmental emphasis characterizing his final term in office, Brown asked the presidential hopefuls to outline their own policies. “Longer fire seasons, extreme weather and severe droughts aren’t on the horizon, they’re […] here to stay,” he wrote, as the Sacramento Bee reported. “Given the challenge and the stakes, my question for you is simple: What are you going to do about it? What is your plan to deal with the threat of climate change?”

Brown’s office told the Bee he submitted his question via the Facebook page of Fox News, which solicited questions from viewers of the debates, which it hosted and televised.

This month, as the San Gabriel Valley Tribute noted, Brown hit out against the field again, using a fresh report on July temperatures to lambaste “Republicans, foot-dragging corporations and other deniers.” Surveying the damage to the fire-stricken Clear Lake area, Brown “repeated his challenge to Republican presidential candidates,” the Los Angeles Times reported, warning that “California is burning” and asking, bluntly, “What the hell are you going to do about it?”

Republican responses

So far, at least three Republican candidates have touched on environmental issues in the wake of Brown’s challenges.

Not all their remarks have been directly responsive, however. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker recently took the opportunity to critique “radical environmental policies that stop things like dams from going in so that water … can be used effectively,” according to the Bee.

But Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, who had challenged Sen. Barbara Boxer’s re-election, both addressed Brown head on, the Bee added. While Cruz dismissed “alarmists” as power-hungry schemers, Fiorina took a more nuanced approach; although she first conceded it “may well be true” that California’s drought was worsened by climate change, she also criticized policymakers for failing to prepare for the kind of droughts the state has had “for millennia.”

Shifting opinions

Republicans on the campaign trail have broadly reflected opinions among constituents nationwide. Even in California, Republicans have demonstrated consistent skepticism toward claims that human activity has fostered dangerous alterations in temperatures and weather. In a new poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, a majority of Golden State Republicans said “they don’t believe that climate change is happening and that they don’t think it will be a serious problem in the future,” as the San Jose Mercury News reported. “They also support expanding fossil fuel production — from increasing offshore oil drilling along California’s coast to expanding fracking.”

Yet the poll evinced some wiggle room on environmental policy issues. Fully 43 percent of California Republican respondents supported stricter in-state climate rules than what the federal government has passed into law. “Californians of all parties said they support increasing tax credits for electric vehicles and solar power,” the Mercury News added.

In a recent nonpartisan poll commissioned by a water policy foundation, Californians seemed to confirm that the drought had become a leading issue of worry across the ideological spectrum. According to the Los Angeles Times, “62 percent of poll subjects said they would be very willing or somewhat willing to pay $4 more a month for water if the funds were used to improve water supply reliability. Such an increase, if applied to the entire state, would generate about a billion dollars, according to poll sponsors.”

Environmentalists divided

Brown’s environmentalist policies haven’t satisfied all critics. His administration’s emphasis on reducing emissions, for instance, has led some to wonder why he hasn’t pushed harder for cheaper electricity rates, which would benefit owners of many zero-emissions vehicles. One objection, recently voiced in the San Diego Daily Transcript, warned that Brown’s policies “will systematically shift profits into a few private hands instead of building, managing and maintaining a solid and reliable electric-charging infrastructure comparable to our utility grid.”

Gov. Jerry Brown has tried to set a philosophical tone, cautioning that “we are embarked upon an experiment that no one has ever tried: 38 million people, with 32 million vehicles, living at the level of comfort that we all strive to attain. This will require adjustment. This will require learning.” But environmentalists have urged him to add water restrictions to California’s big farmers.

At the same time, environmentalism itself has become caught in the political crossfire.

Assigning blame

In recent radio remarks to The Blaze, likely GOP presidential contender Carly Fiorina castigated “liberal environmentalists” for creating a statewide “tragedy.”

“[D]espite the fact that California has suffered from droughts for millennia, liberal environmentalists have prevented the building of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades during a period in which California’s population has doubled,” she said. “There is a man-made lack of water in California — and Washington manages the water for the farmers.”

Fiorina has not been alone in teeing up environmentalists for criticism over the Golden State’s dire straits. As The Hill noted, “Republicans in California and in Congress have proposed multiple times to beef up the state’s water storage with more dams and reservoirs. Environmentalists have pushed back and questioned the impact that the projects would have on the state’s water needs.”

In a related spat, Republicans at the federal level blamed environmental interests for President Obama’s threatened veto of a bill that would pump water from California’s Delta region into Southern California. The move drew howls from California’s Republican delegation.

When the president ordered Northern California water withheld to protect the tiny Delta smelt, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., called the act a “culmination of failed federal and state policies that have exacerbated the current drought into a man-made water crisis. Sacramento and Washington have chosen to put the well-being of fish above the well-being of people by refusing to capture millions of acre-feet of water during wet years for use during dry years.”

Recently, faced with questioning on the drought, White House press secretary Josh Earnest rebuffed the matter. According to Politico, Earnest “said the Obama administration does not have any policy changes to share, and he listed steps that President Barack Obama has taken to offer relief to the state, such as sending $60 million to California food banks and $15 million for farmers and ranchers.”

“We’re going to continue to be in touch with California,” he concluded.

Fracking fight

At the same time federal water allocation has become a bone of political contention, the role of fracking in water consumption has also come under scrutiny. In furtherance of a law passed last year that requires oil and gas companies to disclose how much water they use, state officials told Reuters that last year that the figure hit some 70 million gallons’ worth.

But rather than bowing to objections from within his own party, Gov. Jerry Brown declined to crack down on the practice.

“Despite pressure from environmentalists, Brown has not called for a halt to fracking in the state, saying it is not a major drain on water supplies. ‘Hydraulic fracturing uses a relatively small amount of water – the equivalent of 514 households annually’ per well, said Steven Bohlen, the state oil and gas supervisor. About 100,000 gallons of water is used on average per well, he said.”

For environmentalists, who have been at odds with fracking for years, both in California and across the country, the drought’s intensity simply supplied yet another reason that the practice should end.

But one reason it may not be attracting even more buzz or financial support has to do with her failed 2010 California Senate race against incumbent Barbara Boxer, who is widely perceived as an ineffective hyperpartisan.

The Los Angeles Times’ editorial page shared many of Boxer’s ideological views, but it wouldn’t back her in the 2010 Democratic primary when she was running against neophytes. And it wasn’t even the Times’ first snub. GOPer Matt Fong won the paper’s support in 1998, only to lose to Boxer by 10 percent.

It may not be fair to Fiorina to fault her for not beating a Democratic incumbent in a state that loves Democratic incumbents. Nevertheless, Fiorina’s 52 percent to 42 percent loss to Boxer disappointed many on the right and puzzled many in the mainstream media.

A history of not voting

The conventional wisdom on why she lost focused on the damage done by reports that she barely voted most of her life. The fact that she was a genuine social conservative appeared to hurt her with young and independent voters.

Some pundits contended her business background may not have provided the boost Fiorina expected. This is from the Contra-Costa Times’ analysis:

There’s also the problem that the imperatives of a CEO and a politician are often at odds: Answering to stockholders is a lot different from answering to voters.

Fiorina arguably succeeded in streamlining Hewlett-Packard and making it more competitive with its peers. But that meant firing tens of thousands of workers and sending their jobs overseas — enormous baggage to carry in a political campaign. Boxer bludgeoned Fiorina on that issue.

Writing in the Washington Examiner, Hugh Hewitt didn’t fault Fiorina, instead citing Democrats’ structural advantage in statewide races:

Explanations are more plentiful than roses on Jan. 1, but the short answer is that California’s public employee unions play to win and they do. The secular tithe extracted from the paychecks of the states more than 350,000 government employees is expertly banked and deployed against any enemy, real or perceived, of the states public-sector bosses.

Latino voters disdained immigration hard-liners

An L.A. Times analysis based on exit polls concluded a big problem for Fiorina was her inability to make inroads with Latino voters because of her perceived hard line on immigration issues.

California voters backed a measure that would award citizenship to those who complete college or serve in the military. By a 19-point margin, they endorsed an immigration reform plan that would allow citizenship for those who fulfill specific requirements like paying a fine.

In all cases, those views were held more strongly by Latino voters. They supported comprehensive reform by a 58 point margin. They also opposed, by a lopsided 58 percent to 35 percent, banning illegal immigrants from emergency room treatment or public schools. Among all voters, that question drew the narrowest result, with 49 percent opposing restrictions to 44 percent supporting them.

Fiorina’s interest in a presidential bid may have other aspects than just a hope to end up in the Oval Office. She may want to raise her profile to guarantee she is considered for a Cabinet post in case a better-funded, better-positioned Republican wins the presidency in 2016.