http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-07-16/why-aren-t-more-women-s-groups-fighting-to-get-carly-fiorina-into-the-gop-debate- Why Aren’t More Women’s Groups Fighting to Get Carly Fiorina Into the GOP Debate?
Jul 16, 2015 4:00 AM CDT
by
Emily Greenhouse
It's a gender-blind approach or an aperture in Republican strategy, depending on where you’re standing.
Yes, the presidential election is more than a year out, but how quickly now do we approach the first winnowing. On Aug. 6, 10 Republican candidates will take the stage in Cleveland for the first primary debate of the 2016 election cycle. Fox News, which is hosting the debate with Facebook, says it will determine which 10 candidates will participate based on an average of five as-yet-unspecified national polls.
There is a top tier of candidates we can safely say will be there: former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, for instance, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. But below the handful of front-runners, as Bloomberg's Steven Yaccino wrote last week, many microphones are up for grabs. Single percentage points may decide the fates of contenders such as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, former New York Governor George Pataki, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.
Fiorina is the only woman in the jam-packed GOP presidential field. She has worked at every step of the process to situate herself in direct opposition to Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee and the woman treated practically like a presidential incumbent. Fiorina has found that she can talk to (and about) Clinton as no other Republican can. And yet she may not pass the threshold to get onto the debate stage—which would make the event “all men in dark suits,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Imperfect optics, for a party trying to show how inclusive it is.
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