Carly Fiorina is a noted failure in such fields as business, citizenship  and spying. According to Shane Goldmacher, she’s now going to give politics the ol’ college try and has formed an exploratory committee for the 2010 Senate campaign against Barbara Boxer.

While one poll had Fiorina as close as 4 points, it seems to be the outlier as the bulk of the polling shows Boxer with a double digit lead. The most recent poll, a Daily Kos/R2K poll has Boxer up 52-31.

That is not to say that this will be an easy fight for Sen. Boxer, as Fiorina can come at her with wads of self-infused cash. So, she will still need plenty of support. And plus, Fiorina has a ton of experience in planting bugs and tapping phones. So, we’ll have to use the super decoder rings to talk about the campaign amongst us Democrats.

You can find Sen. Boxer on the Calitics ActBlue Page.

UPDATE: The SJ Merc has a story on the race. It's more blather about how Fiorina is going to give a tough race.  But for another perspective, check out Josh Treviño's tweets. Treviño, a conservative blogger and strategist, is a huuuuge Chuck DeVore fan, and seems rather pissed that Sen. Cornyn and the NRSC pushed Fiorina into the race.  My favorite tweet:  

This always bears repeating: Carly Fiorina was the only person fired by the ’08 McCain campaign for incompetence. Think about that.9 minutes ago from TweetDeck

Ye ole curmudgeon decided to level his sights on Sen. Barbara Boxer today and discuss her re-election chances.  He starts out with this lede:

California’s U.S. senators tend to fall into two categories – headline-grabbers and dependable workhorses for the state’s interests.

Headline grabbers…hmm that would have to be Sen. Feinstein, who relishes her self-designated role of wise moderate woman, that determines what is or is not a deal.

Somehow, I think that Walters meant it the other way around.  He references “quixotic political frays” that have “nothing to do with California”.  Then of course he never gives any examples, leaving the reader to either scratch their head, or trust the wise man of the column.

Walters then brings up the Rasmussen poll from a few weeks ago, which was unsurprising.  Like most years Boxer looks vulnerable, tempting the Republicans to throw the kitchen sink to unseat her.

This year the national Republican hierarchy are excited about Carly Fiorina, who gets 41 to Boxer’s 45 in the matchup.  Of course she has to get past movement conservative Chuck DeVore in the primary.  Fiorina’s primary is not a shoe-in.  It would not be all that surprising to see DeVore win the wingnut vote that dominates Republican primaries.  Fiorina will have to dump a ton of cash into the primary to hold DeVore off.

Walters then does his best to weaken Boxer by providing only half of her favorability numbers.

The latest poll, true to form, found Boxer’s overall job approval rating among California voters to be fairly low, with just 21 percent holding a “very favorable” view, down six points from March.

When one normally writes about favorability numbers you add up the very favorable and somewhat favorable results to come up with an overall favorability number.  In this case, according to this Rasmussen poll, she has a 21% very favorable and a 36% somewhat favorable, for an overall 57% favorabilty rating, which while not great isn’t nearly as bad as Walters tries to make it seem.

If Fiorina wins the primary then Boxer will likely have a tougher race in 2010, certainly compared to 2004.  We need to be prepared to defend her with all guns blazing.  Fiorina certainly comes with a lot of baggage that would be great fodder for blog posts and attack ads.

There are no huge alarm bells ringing right now, no matter what Walters has written, but we need to be on alert and watch closely as we move into election season.  Early cash is better than late cash.  Give via ActBlue.

Since we’re going with the eMeg monicker, I can’t help but want to do the same with Carly Fiorina, another failed CEO who wants to enter politics.  Fiorina left HP in disgrace, dogged by charges of corporate espionage. But hey, that’s a record the people of California are going to love right? Oh…and she got thrown from Straight Talk Express at 60 mph.

Anyway, even for somebody who was super busy, and not involved in politics, you’d think that these big powerful CEOs might be thinking about their potential future. Perhaps they could get around to voting, you know, maybe sign up for vote by mail to save themselves time. I understand with all of these initiatives, it can be time consuming, but, you know, have one of your underlings prepare a memo or something.

But nope, Carla Marinucci did some digging, and neither of our failed CEOs can quite get the voting thing down. First, Fiorina, a likely Republican candidate for Senate, voted in just 25% of elections. Ouch:

Fiorina, 54, of Los Altos Hills, who recently acknowledged that she is “seriously considering” a run, has voted in about 1 in 4 of the national, state and local elections in which she was eligible to cast a ballot since she registered in the Bay Area as a Republican in 2000, according to Santa Clara County records.

She didn’t vote in presidential primaries in 2000 and 2004, the county’s Registrar of Voters database shows. Nor did Fiorina cast a ballot in the primary or general elections in 2006, when Californians last voted for a U.S. senator, re-electing Democrat Dianne Feinstein. (SF Chron 6/2/09)

Not that 2006 really mattered in the Senate election, but I’d be interested in finding out who Fiorina supported in that election. Maybe the always sleuthful Carla Marinucci will be able to pin down hCarly on that question, despite the fact that the issue wasn’t worth her five minutes.

Incidentally, I have to say, I don’t think that Fiorina is instantly the front runner if she enters the race, despite her wealth. The CA GOP primary electorate is pretty freaking crazy. And you know who else is pretty freaking crazy? Yup, that’d be Chuck DeVore. So, perhaps Fiorina needs to, um, Talk to Chuck.

As for eMeg…well, it’s even uglier. In a BusinessWeek magazine article from 2000, she was found to lack even a registration at her then current address. She did finally register as DTS in 2002 and then Republican in 2007.  I’m sure the GOP primary electorate will love that little deet.

And if you’re thinking that both of our failed CEOs can simply buy their way through the primaries, well, just ask Al Checchi how that went.

A few campaign items that will hopefully tickle your fancy this morning.

• CA-Sen: According to the San Jose Mercury News, former HP CEO Carly Fiorina is “seriously considering challenging” Barbara Boxer for the US Senate.  Yeah, that would be challenging, wouldn’t it?  What a fearsome figure she casts, as a failed corporate CEO who got a $25 million dollar golden parachute while laying off half her company!  Who was 20 points down to Boxer in the last poll!  “Corporate CEO who got giant bonus for bad work” doesn’t seem to me to be the profile of a political challenger anytime soon.

I’m still holding out the possibility that this is an April Fool’s Day joke.

• CA-Gov: When you are having major staff problems 14 months before the primary, I’d say your gubernatorial campaign is in trouble.

Lt. Gov. John Garamendi is saying goodbye to his senior adviser today. And whether he likes it or not, he is saying hello to speculation his upstart gubernatorial bid is struggling.

Senior campaign adviser Jude Barry, who formerly managed the 2006 gubernatorial campaign of then-state controller Steve Westly, let his new boss know that he would resign to pursue other opportunities on March 31.

On his Facebook page, Barry thanked Garamendi but didn’t exactly offer an upbeat assessment of the campaign.

“I like John Garamendi and appreciate the opportunity to have worked with him and many other good people on his team, both on the campaign and in the lieutenant governor’s office,” he wrote. “But at this point, I’ve done all I can to help him. It doesn’t feel right to just hang around the campaign. I wish John and the campaign good luck.”

According to CalBuzz, Garamendi has yet to find campaign co-chairs or finance co-chairs, and we all know that winning statewide costs a ridiculous amount of money and essentially a two-year campaign, if not longer.  I’m toying with the idea that California ought to have a slate of regional gubernatorial primaries, to encourage retail campaigning and keep costs down in the near term, to allow a greater multiplicity of views.  Otherwise we will keep getting the same old hacks and rich people running for these seats.  The state is big enough so that it makes a decent amount of sense.

• CA-10: Mark DeSaulnier continues to marshal institutional support for his presumed run for Congress replacing Ellen Tauscher, earning the endorsement of Senate leader Darrell Steinberg.  Though he hasn’t formally announced, DeSaulnier announced plans to walk districts as early as this week.  That’s probably a good idea, because a new poll shows that nobody has a decent name ID in the district.

A poll commissioned by potential Democratic congressional candidate and former BART Director Dan Richard shows state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier in statistical dead heat with Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan (15 and 13 percent respectively) and Richard trailing at 7 percent.

The poll showed DeSaulnier with a 19 percent favorable approval rating compared with a 9 percent unfavorable while 23 percent did not know. The remaining 49 percent said they had never heard of him. Ouch.

Buchanan received similar numbers: 16 percent favorable approval, 8 percent unfavorable, 29 percent didn’t know and 47 percent had never heard of her.

We just saw a special election in upstate New York where over 150,000 people voted.  This special election, like most in California, will be lucky to get half that many.