Everything a presidential candidate does is open to scrutiny, and no one should get a free pass including Carly Fiorina since voters learn a lot about a candidate’s scruples, honesty, loyalty, and integrity by looking into their background.
In 2010, Fiorina’s failed attempt to unseat Barbara Boxer for the California U.S. Senate was so unnerving that she stiffed paying several vendors. According to a report published in The Washington Post, one of the “vendors” she stiffed was the widow of Fiorina’s pollster Joe Shumate, who dropped dead of a heart attack, “surrounded by sheets of polling data” for Fiorina, shortly before Election Day in 2010.
When he died, Fiorina praised Shumate as “the heart and soul” of her team. Her press release honored Shumate as an individual who believed in “investing in those he worked with” and offering “sincerest condolences” to his widow.
Records show what Fiorina did not offer Shumate’s widow: His last paycheck, for at least $30,000!
His last paycheck was one of more than 30 invoices, totaling about $500,000, that the former HP executive and multi-millionaire did not settle, although Fiorina reimbursed herself nearly $1.3 million she loaned her senate campaign! She paid most of the vendors in January, 2015 a few months before announcing her candidacy. Was this timing a coincidence?
Martin Wilson, Fiorina’s former campaign manager, found Shumate after he collapsed from a heart attack. Wilson said he “Occasionally, I’d call and tell her she should pay them. She just wouldn’t.
(h/t The Washington Post)
