Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina announced on Monday she is running for president, becoming the only woman in the pack of Republican candidates for the White House in 2016.
"Yes, I am running for president. I think I'm the best person for the job because I understand how the economy actually works. I understand the world, who's in it, how the world works," Fiorina said, announcing her bid on ABC News' "Good Morning America."
The number of announced Republican candidates for president is expected to double from three to six this week as Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee also make their intentions known.
Already officially in the fight are three U.S. senators: Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida.
At least a dozen people with a real chance are expected to enter the GOP fray, while a total of about 20 are mulling a run.
Carson, a retired pediatric neurosurgeon will officially announce in his hometown of Detroit on Monday, but he let the cat out of the bag a day early in a TV interview on Sunday.
Neither Carson nor Fiorina has held elective office.
Fiorina ran an unsuccessful campaign to unseat California Democrat Barbara Boxer. Carson gained political fame when he criticized President Barack Obama at the 2013 National Prayer Breakfast while the president was sitting a few feet away.
Fiorina served as an executive at AT&T and Lucent before assuming the leadership role at HP, then America's largest computer maker, in 1999. That business experience, along with her leading role at a number of charitable organizations—such as the micro-financing non-profit Opportunity International and Good360, which helps coordinate corporate donations — will serve as a centerpiece of a campaign that is expected to portray Fiorina as the antithesis of the career politician, and the only Republican who can neutralize Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton's advantage among women voters.
“We have to have a nominee who can take punches, but we have to have a nominee who will throw punches,” Fiorina told the National Review Ideas Summit on Saturday. “We’ve got to take that fight to Hillary Clinton.”
Huckabee is a former two-term governor of Arkansas and Fox News Channel host. He has run for president before, in 2008, and won the Iowa caucuses and seven other states. He is set to announce on Tuesday.
Despite Huckabee's political experience and previous presidential primary successes, he's considered a "fringe" candidate by some this time around, along with Carson and Fiorina.
Politico's Ben Schreckinger notes that Huckabee is using his platform this time around to make statements that get him press, much like so-called fringe candidates have been doing since former Godfather's Pizza CEO Hermain Cain did in 2008.
Speaking of President Barack Obama, Huckabee told "Fox and Friends" in February, "Everything he does is against what Christians stand for, and he’s against the Jews in Israel… The one group of people that can know they have his undying, unfailing support would be the Muslim community. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the radical Muslim community or the more moderate Muslim community."
Long-shot candidates don't get the money of their top-tier counterparts, so they often get their name out by making statements sure to garner media attention, Politico notes. Fiorina, for instance, criticizes Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton by saying that Clinton has no more foreign policy experience than she since all Clinton has done is fly to various countries during her tenure as secretary of state.
Still, Fiorina has been getting positive reviews of her appearances.
Carson is much more low-key, but has made statements that inflame proponents of same-sex marriage by talking about bestiality and pedophilia when he discusses the issue.
The three senators already in the race are thought to have better odds of winning than any of the three announcing this week, though even they – all first termers – have had to grab attention among the bigger money people such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
Huckabee still carries strong evangelical support from his first run at the presidency, The Wall Street Journal notes.
Donald Trump is also expected to stop his flirtations and actually run this time, though he is considered an even longer shot. Most likely, the dark horse candidates are angling for gigs such as commentators, talk show hosts and the like, Politico says.
"In a world without cable or the Internet, everybody writes a fun story about Donald Trump running for president and then they go back to work," former GOP strategist Dan Schnur told Politico. Coverage subsided, he said, because, "there just wasn’t room in The Washington Post for them."
Now, the Internet and social media offer all space they want.
Republican campaigner Ed Rollins, who worked for Huckabee's 2008 campagin and Rep. Michele Bachmann's 2012 effort, calls any hope for victory among the trio announcing this week "delusionary."
"It’s a very strong field this time," Rollins said. "Some of these people could have given Romney a run for his money had they run four years ago. There’s no real shot for them now."
Material from Reuters and The Associated Press was used in this report.
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