California Watch

In her campaign for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina spins her stormy six years at the Silicon Valley tech giant as a story of unbridled success.

Carly Fiorina

Fiorina “led the reinvention of the legendary company, successfully steering it through the dot-com bust and the worst technology recession in 25 years,” she claims on her campaign web site.

Her insistence on pushing HP’s controversial merger with Compaq Computer  --  the source of so much conflict on the HP board, and the cause of mass layoffs after it went down– “is now acknowledged to be the most successful merger in high-tech history,” she also says.

Before she was fired in 2005, Fiorina had “positioned HP to become the first $100 billion information technology company, creating market leadership positions for the company in every one of its product lines,” she claims.

At the time of the merger, one of the leaders of shareholder opposition was David Woodley Packard, the son and namesake of HP’s co-founder.

On Monday, at about the time the candidate was taking out her nominating papers in Santa Clara, Packard’s daughter, Arianna, unloaded on her, telling California Republicans that Fiorina was a “greedy, out-of-touch CEO” whose tenure at HP was a disaster.

“I know a little bit about Carly Fiorina, having watched her almost destroy the company my grandfather founded,” she wrote in a withering letter posted at Redstate.com. She blamed Fiorina for a 50 percent drop in HP’s stock price and for firing 28,000 workers. The company was rescued by the man who replaced Fiorina, Mark Hurd, Packard wrote.

Packard also contended that Fiorina is closet liberal, who allegedly favors taxing internet commerce, enacting cap-and-trade legislation to check global warming, and imposing affirmative action programs. Fiorina is a pal of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Packard wrote, and once confided that she probably would haver voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor, President’s Obama’s recent Suypreem Court nominee.

Packard is a trustee of the David & Lucille Packard Foundation. She lives in New York. More to the point, she is supporting Orange County Assemblyman Chuck DeVore in the Senate race, and gave him $2,400 last year.

HP's PAC, meanwhile, contributed $5,000 to Sen. Barbara Boxer, the incumbent Democrat.

In Politico, Fiorina spokeswoman Julie Soderlund said, "It is unfortunate that Ms. Packard very clearly has been given a long list of false information and baseless attacks by Carly’s opponents.” She added:

It is important that California voters understand the success of Carly’s tenure at HP and her credentials as a fiscal conservative. This is particularly important since her opponents in this race are perennial candidates and career politicians, and have been working overtime to invent falsehoods about Carly in order to get elected to their next job. Carly welcomes an examination of her record. It is a record that will stand the test of scrutiny, particularly against Barbara Boxer’s record of failure for the last 18 years in the Senate.