Senator McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has twice this month embraced technology leaders in his push to become president. On March 7 Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett Packard, joined the Republican National Committee as Victory Chairman. And this last weekend Meg Whitman, the outgoing CEO of Ebay, became McCain’s campaign co-chair.
Frankly, he’ll need the help. We endorsed Senator McCain as the best “Technology President” among the Republican candidates. But he has not defined his tech policies as specifically as Senator Obama has, and he trails Obama in use of the Internet to get voter engagement and donations. Hear our recorded interview with Senator McCain here.
Fiorina and Whitman can help change all that.
I spoke to Fiorina last week for thirty minutes about her new position with the campaign and the party. We spoke both about specific policy issues where McCain either hadn’t fully worked through his policies when we spoke, or where I wanted additional clarification (net neutrality, mobile spectrum auctions, China and H1B visas, specifically). The interview is up at TalkCrunch, and embedded below. The transcript of the conversation is also copied below.
For the most part Fiorina is holding the line on tech issues. But she’s expressed a real willingness to explore new ideas when it comes to reaching out to voters on social networks, YouTube and other places on the Internet. But she wouldn’t get specific on upcoming plans, and much of what she said seems to be focused on raising cash as the first priority. As Obama has seen, simply engaging with people eventually leads to big donations. If the McCain camp wants to cut into his lead, they need to get started now.
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