Ted Cruz announced on Wednesday that if he becomes the Republican nominee for president, former presidential rival Carly Fiorina will be his running mate.
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Fiorina, 61, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard, dropped out of the running for the nomination in February.
Once she took the stage, Fiorina said she was honored to accept Cruz’s offer.
The Texas senator recounted Fiorina’s rise in the corporate world, calling her “brilliant and capable” and someone who has “shattered glass ceilings”.
You know the line on Fiorina here – she failed at HP, she failed in her 2010 bid to beat Barbara Boxer for her Senate seat, she failed again when she tried to run for president this past year.
After Trump’s Northeastern sweep on Tuesday night, it’s mathematically impossible for Cruz to net enough delegates to win on the first ballot if Trump doesn’t reach the requisite 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.
Trump has amassed 987 of the 1,237 Republican national convention delegates he needs to secure the nomination, to 562 for Cruz and 153 for Ohio Governor John Kasich, 63, the third remaining candidate, according to the Associated Press.
Ted Cruz announced on Wednesday during a rally in Indianapolis that Carly Fiorina would be his vice president, looking to unite the conservative, family-oriented base. “People who were going to go for Cruz would be going anyway”.
Second, he positions his campaign to make a strong play for that grand prize on the horizon, the California primary on 7 June – a battleground that could decide whether Mr Trump secures the Republican nomination without a convention fight.
Asked earlier on Fox & Friends about Cruz potentially naming a running mate, Trump said, “To me it looks ridiculous, he’s not going to get the nomination”. If the presidential nominating contest were a battle of PowerPoint presentations, Cruz-Fiorina would win in a walk. “She is also a woman of deep principal”.
It’s Cruz and Carly time. He highlighted her takedown of Trump in an early Republican debate, after the GOP frontrunner told Rolling Stone that he didn’t think anyone would vote for a woman with “that face”.
Mr Trump was quick to criticise Mr Cruz’s decision to name a vice presidential candidate. His best hope is to keep Donald Trump from winning a majority of delegates and being able to win at a contested convention – with the help of someone like Fiorina.
In her acceptance speech, Fiorina explained that she’s not afraid of a fight, especially with two candidates – Hillary Clinton and Trump – she described as political insiders.
“She did a awful job at Hewlett-Packard. Would anyone vote for that?” – she sternly rebuked him in a debate.
“Our country is being taken away from us by the elites, by the crony capitalists, by the special interests who have captured both parties”, she said.
During his recent campaign swing in Wisconsin, Cruz was joined on the stump by Fiorina.
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Mr Cruz and Mr Trump have high negative ratings even within their own party. She was sacked six years later, after leading a major merger with technology firm Compaq and laying off 30,000 workers.
