Carly Fiorina stole the show at the second Republican presidential debate Wednesday night, repeating and even improving on her performance at last month’s debate.
This round she moved up onto the main stage in prime time, after being relegated to the earlier so-called “kids’ table” debate for the less popular candidates, she walked away being heralded as the “big winner.”
Like Republican front-runner Donald Trump, she’s a political outsider and was a successful businessperson before jumping into the presidential race.
READ MORE: Donald Trump in the Republican presidential debate: How did he do?
Time will tell if the 61-year-old former chief executive officer for computer giant Hewlett-Packard will be able to capitalize on her performance and rise from “long shot” to Republican presidential nominee.
Here’s what you need to know about Fiorina.
WATCH: Highlights from Carly Fiorina’s appearance in the Republican presidential debate Wednesday night.
The basics:
- Born Cara Carleton Sneed* in Austin, Texas on Sept. 6, 1954
- Married to tow truck driver-turned-AT&T executive Frank Fiorina in 1985
- Started her business career as a secretary for a real estate firm and went on to become the head of Fortune 500 company Hewlett-Packard
Her stance on drugs draws from the loss of her stepdaughter to addiction
Amid a back-and-forth between the GOP candidates on medical marijuana and state laws concerning marijuana use, Fiorina said she and her husband “buried a child to drug addiction.
READ MORE: Jeb Bush admits he smoked pot; sparks Internet memes
It was in October 2009 that her stepdaughter Lori died at the age of 35, after struggles with alcohol and prescription drug abuse and bulimia.
Fiorina detailed the loss in her book Rising to the Challenge: My Leadership Journey.
“As anyone who has loved someone with an addiction knows, you can force someone into rehab, but you can’t make her well,” she wrote. “Only the addict can do that. Lori couldn’t — or wouldn’t — take that first step of admitting she was powerless over her addiction. And ultimately her body just gave out,” the Washington Post quoted her writing in the book.
Fiorina said the country “needs to invest more in the treatment of drugs” and reiterated her stance that “drug addiction shouldn’t be criminalized.”
She battled cancer the same year her stepdaughter died
Fiorina learned she had breast cancer in 2009 and had to undergo a double mastectomy and chemotherapy.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Michael Hiltzik pointed out Fiorina has an advantage over many other Americans fighting and/or surviving cancer.
“If she were an average person who lost that AT&T coverage and had to replace it in an individual market where the insurers could sell it to her on their own terms, subject to the rules of the most lenient and consumer-unfriendly states … as a cancer survivor, she’d be uninsurable.”
Fiorina is an opponent of The Affordable Care Act, also referred to as Obamacare, and wants to repeal it.
Steve Jobs called her when she was fired from Hewlett-Packard. Why did she lose her job?
Fiorina got axed as Hewlett-Packard CEO in 2005. It was at that time, she said during Wednesday night’s debate, that late-Apple co-founder Steve Jobs consoled her over the phone.
“Hey, been there, done that — twice,” she recounted. She also pointed out Tom Perkin — “the man who led my firing,” she said —took out an ad in the New York Times asserting he made “a mistake” in voting to oust her.
Trump, in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, called her time at HP’s helm “a disaster.”
“Under Fiorina’s reign at HP shareholders took a beating. During her tenure, HP shares lost 42% while the broader market slid just 6%,” Forbes reported.
According to Fortune, she got a $21-million severance package and the company’s shares jumped seven per cent the day she was terminated.
Has she run for office before?
Yes. Fiorina ran for a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2010, challenging and losing to incumbent Democratic Senator from California Barbara Boxer. Boxer won 52.2 per cent of the vote, compared to Fiorina’s 42.2 per cent.
What is with Fiorina and ‘demon sheep’?
In 2009, when she was vying for the Republican nomination in the senate race, Fiorina released this attack ad accusing rival Tom Campbell of being a FCINO (a fiscal conservative in name only) and a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
The advert actually features someone dressed as a wolf, dressed as a sheep, with glowing red eyes, hiding among a heard of actual sheep. Slate referred to it as “Violence of the Lambs.” Enjoy.
She’s been involved in a controversy about looks before
Interestingly, it was at that time that Fiorina wound up on the other side of a debate about a candidate’s looks.
Early on in Wednesday night’s debate, Fiorina shot back at Trump when asked about the billionaire’s earlier comments about her face and his backtracking that he wasn’t criticizing her looks. To a round of applause, Fiorina said: “I think women all over this country heard very clearly what Mr. Trump said.”
But five years ago, Fiorina made no apologies for a caught-on-camera comment about Boxer’s appearance, saying: “God. What is with that hair? So yesterday.”
She passed off the gaffe as her quoting a friend, which it was.
WATCH: Trump front and center at GOP debate as Fiorina makes impression
Boxer, following Thursday’s GOP debate, told MSNBC host Chris Matthews that she admitted having “many bad hair days” but called it “sort of crazy” that Fiorina “attacked” her for her hairstyle and is now responding to comments about her own appearance.
The Democratic senator also questioned Fiorina’s abilities to lead the country and criticized her record as Hewlett-Packard CEO.
*CLARIFICATION:An early version of this post stated Carly Fiorina was born Cara Carleton Fiorina. Her birth name is Cara Carleton Sneed; Fiorina is her married name.