who, what, huh?
Hey! Jim Gilmore is running for President. Because… why not?
He briefly ran for president in the 2008 cycle — announcing his candidacy in December 2006 before withdrawing in July 2007, citing the difficulty of raising money. He went on to run for the U.S. Senate in his native Virginia that year for retiring GOP Sen. John Warner’s seat. But Gilmore was trampled by more than 30 points by his successor in office, former Democratic Gov. Mark Warner. He currently serves as president and CEO of the conservative think tank, the Free Congress Foundation.
It’s a little like Rick Santorum’s run, who… in his last statewide election in Pennsylvania lost by… oh… 17 points… Except, oh… Rick Santorum lost by 13 or 15 percentage points less than Jim Gimor, and in the wacky 2012 “wack-a-mole” Republican contest was the last mole standing against Mitt Romney. (As opposed to Jim Gilmore, who — was the first mole knocked out in 2008?)
Also running for the Republican nomination… John Kasich. Because… why not? And… hm?
Kasich could be the one to watch.
Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiornia may be best known as the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, but it turns out that another candidate holds more stock in the technology firm these days.
Lincoln Chafee—the Democratic former governor of Rhode Island—owns $50,001 to $100,000 of Hewlett-Packard stock, according to a financial disclosure released Tuesday by the Federal Election Commission. (Candidates only have to classify assets and income by range.) Fiorina, who ran HP for six years and has made her tenure there a key selling point in the presidential race, said she owns just $1,001 to $15,000 worth of shares in the Palo Alto-based firm in a disclosure from Thursday.
That makes a certain amount of sense, considering that Fiorina was fired in 2005 amid a tumble in the company’s stock price following the controversial merger with Compaq. In campaign speeches, she has often called her termination the result of “a boardroom brawl” and blamed the decline on the tech bubble bursting for dooming the merger (critics say the move was doomed to begin with). Either way, Fiorina still invests in her former employer, though not heavily.