Orange County Register

Republican political logic says that Carly Fiorina is a better candidate than Chuck DeVore because she can spend more money on a campaign challenging incumbent Democratic U.S Senator Barbara Boxer. Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is a multi-millionaire. DeVore, an Orange County Assemblyman, has a reputation as a weak fundraiser.

So why is it that DeVore reported spending $5,000 within a week of announcing his candidacy while Fiorina, with her phalanx of consultants, says she hasn’t hit that mark in six weeks?

At this point, Fiorina says she is only exploring a run for the Senate, but federal election rules state that an individual can no longer claim to be testing the waters once she advertises, or conducts “activities over a protracted period of time” or authorizes statements referring to her as a candidate. And once that happens, a potential candidate becomes an actual candidate and is required to start reporting her campaign finance activity the moment $5,000 has been raised or spent.

In case you haven’t heard, Fiorina has a Web site with the slogan “carlyfornia dreamin’!!!” and states “It’s Carly vs. Boxer.” That certainly sounds like a statement referring to her as a candidate. Signs, brochures and t-shirts touting Fiorina have been seen. And she’s been doing campaign-looking things for weeks, including touring the central San Joaquin Valley this week.

So in other words, you could argue that Fiorina is no longer exploring anything, but is actually a candidate.

And if that’s case, well, then, where are her campaign finance statements? She has to have spent more than $5,000 by now, she’s got all sorts of people on staff. She’s retained the Hollywood PR firm Strategic Perceptions Inc. and worked with the Washington D.C. consultancy of Dresner, Wickers and Associates. She has a spokeswoman in Beth Miller and a campaign consultant in Marty Wilson. These people do not work for free.

What may be at play here is a simple political gamesmanship. Fiorina is perceived as the stronger candidate from a financial perception. If she publicly announces breaching the $5,000 mark, she will be required to file reports with the Federal Elections Commission. But as it stands now, she can wait on making her financial activity public. Meanwhile, DeVore reported yesterday that he has raised more than $330,000 in the last three months for a total raised of more $700,000 from about 14,000 donors — “more money from more donors than any Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in California this decade.”

Fiorina could be intentionally waiting to announce she’s breached the $5,000 limit because she doesn’t want to open up her books and show that her undoubted financial superiority isn’t as pronounced as people perceive.

But that’s just musings. We’ve got a call in to Miller for asking for comment. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Spoke with Miller and she said Fiorina has not, legally, taken that step from testing the waters towards becoming an actual candidate. “Everything we do is signed off by a legal review, so we’re in the legal definition of testing the waters,” she said.

In other words, Miller says Fiorina is not an actually candidate and hasn’t reported spending any money because she doesn’t have to. Yet.

Miller said if a decision is made to run, Fiorina’s recent fundraising activities will then become public.

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