WASHINGTON, D.C. — Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Doctor Ben Carson announced they were seeking the Republican Party’s nomination.
Fiorina announced her candidacy for president on Monday, becoming the first declared female candidate.
“Yes, I am running,” Fiorina said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “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.”
The ex-Silicon Valley executive and long-shot White House contender has never held public office.
In 2010, she unsuccessfully ran for Senate in California, losing to Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer.
She is now one of only a few women ever to seek the Republican Party’s nomination for president — among them, former Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who was a candidate in 2012, and former North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who made a brief run in the 2000 cycle.
Fiorina has been laying the groundwork for a possible presidential campaign over the past few months, traveling to early states like Iowa and New Hampshire and meeting with activists and donors.
Casting herself as an outside-the-beltway candidate with years of private sector experience, she has been particularly critical of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her work in government.
On Monday, Fiorina said Clinton “clearly is not trustworthy.”
“She has not been transparent about a whole set of things that matter,” Fiorina said on ABC, ticking off Benghazi, Clinton’s use of personal emails at the State Department as well as foreign donations that the Clinton Foundation has received.
And a video posted on her newly unveiled campaign website, carlyforpresident.com, kicks off with a shot of Fiorina watching Clinton’s campaign announcement video.
“If you’re tired of the sound bites, the vitriol, the pettiness, the egos, the corruption; if you believe that it’s time to declare the end of identity politics; if you believe that it’s time to declare the end of lowered expectations; if you believe that it’s time for citizens to stand up to the political class and say enough, then join us,” Fiorina said.
Fiorina also announced the news of her campaign on various social media outlets including Twitter.
She is set to participate in an online town hall with supporters Monday afternoon, then travel to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina later in the week.
Her new book, “Rising to the Challenge,” is scheduled to be released on Tuesday.
Also on the campaign trail: Ben Carson.
“I’m Ben Carson, and I’m a candidate for president of the United States,” he told a crowd in his hometown of Detroit on Monday, making his presidential bid official to wild applause.
In a speech to a crowd that his campaign estimated at thousands, the retired neurosurgeon and unlikely conservative star introduced his wife and family and called for “the people to rise up and take the government back.”
Carson told the story of his rise from poverty, where he lived in homes infested with roaches — “in the more upscale areas, they called ’em waterbugs, but we knew what they were” he joked — and promised that he wouldn’t change his signature style, framing himself as an outsider up against the political elite.
“I’m probably never going to be politically correct because I’m not a politician,” he said. “I don’t want to be a politician. Because politicians do what is politically expedient — I want to do what’s right.”
Carson’s theatrical announcement event included a gospel choir singing a medley topped by Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,” but the celebratory tone of the day was shrouded in private sadness for the candidate.
His campaign confirmed earlier Monday that Carson’s ailing mother was growing progressively sicker, and he planned to delay his planned trip to Iowa to head to Dallas on Monday to say goodbye.
But the notoriously sharp-tongued orator maintained his calm demeanor on stage Monday, taking sharp jabs at everything from the media to the Obama administration’s policies.
He called for an end to social programs that “create dependency,” and, signaling he may seek to play in Capitol Hill battles, telling supporters that if their lawmaker voted to raise the debt limit, “you need to throw them out of office.”
Carson demanded another “wave election” this cycle, not of Republicans (who already control both chambers of Congress), but rather to elect “people with common sense who actually love our nation, and are willing to work for our nation, and are more concerned about the next generation than the next election.”
And he also weighed in on the recent unrest in Baltimore, following the death of an African American man in police custody, declaring that the “real issue is that people are losing hope” because the economy isn’t delivering for them.
“They don’t feel that life is going to be good for them, no matter what happens, so when an opportunity comes to loot, to riot, to get mine, they take it, not believing that there is a much better way to get the things that they desire,” Carson said.
Carson is so far the only African-American presidential candidate from either party.
He cuts an unusual figure for the GOP, but that’s part of his appeal for conservatives.
He made his name in medicine by becoming the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins at the head, and was played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. in a TNT adaptation of his memoir.
Carson grew up poor in Detroit and went on to get degrees from Yale and the University of Michigan, ultimately going on to become the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins by the age of 33.
He’s written six best-selling books, is a regular on the paid speaking circuit and was ranked the sixth most admired man in the world in a 2014 Gallup poll.
And he has been brazenly critical of President Barack Obama’s policies — often to the point of getting himself in trouble with his borderline incendiary comments, including times he’s compared Obamacare to slavery and the U.S. to Nazi Germany.
That unapologetic bluntness has made Carson a conservative star.
He typically polls in the middle of the GOP presidential pack, ahead of second-timers like Rick Santorum and Rick Perry, and came in fourth at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.