Carly Fiorina's poll surge is killing Chris Christie

(Image credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

published 18 August 2015

Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, has surged ahead in Republican primary polls, bumping Chris Christie from where he was hanging on to the 10th position in the sea of GOP runners. Huckabee, polling at 4.3 percent, replaces him in the running; Fiorina, meanwhile, charts in at 6.3 percent in Real Clear Politics' poll. Christie is down to 3.3 percent.

Chalking up Fiorina's success in part to her performance at the first Republican debate, where she was an agreed-upon standout, financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin writes in The New York Times' Dealbook that Fiorina's popularity is also a testament to burying — or reframing — her less than stellar past:

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Even more striking, Mrs. Fiorina, the only former female chief executive among the candidates, continues to promote her business experience on the trail, yet she was fired by Hewlett-Packard after the company's stock dropped by half in 2005. She has long blamed her failings at running the technology giant on the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the deepening recession in Silicon Valley after the Sept. 11 attacks.In an essay published late last week, Mrs. Fiorina also said she lost her job because of her maverick management style. "When you lead and when you challenge the status quo, you make enemies," she wrote in the essay published on CNN's website. "It's why Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney and Mike Bloomberg have all been fired." [The New York Times]

Chris Christie, meanwhile, scrambles to make up ground ahead of the CNN Republican primary debate on September 16, where the top 10 contenders will participate in the primetime discussion. He'll likely need more than a "really good pony" to save his chances.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.