Campaign

Super-PAC debuts pro-Fiorina documentary

by Jonathan Swan - 09/22/15 8:46 PM ET

Carly Fiorina’s super-PAC is now in the movie business.

The outside spending group CARLY for America — which is not legally allowed to coordinate with Fiorina’s presidential campaign but can spend millions on her behalf — hosted Fiorina’s family, roughly 100 supporters and more than a dozen journalists at the Arlington Cinema & Drafthouse for the debut screening of “Citizen Carly,” a documentary that doubles as an hour-long campaign commercial.

The film begins and is salted throughout with testimonials from friends and former colleagues of Fiorina’s. Fiorina, they say, is “indefatigable,” “enormously compassionate” and always “standing up for the little people.” Hers is a “classic American story.” As the testimonies are told, large words circle in the background: “strength,” “leader,” “compassion.”

{mosads}But the film, narrated by actor James Woods, is also intimate, sometimes surprisingly so. Sitting on a chair beside her husband Frank, Carly’s voice breaks as she recalls the 2009 death of their daughter due to drug addiction. “Her poor little body. She was always a little girl. I think it just gave out,” Fiorina said. She said her “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” saved her.

The section of the film that deals with Fiorina’s cancer diagnosis shows a photograph of her, bald-headed and incapacitated, on a hospital bed. Another scene tells the story of Fiorina sobbing in a restroom on her 40th birthday when she realizes she won’t have a biological child of her own.

Much of the documentary is dedicated to answering questions about Fiorina’s business career, particularly her controversial six years as CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Former board members sympathetic to Fiorina, including vocal media supporter Tom Perkins, said it was the board and not her that was to blame for HP’s troubles during that period.

“Citizen Carly” was made in a hurry. The super-PAC only registered itself in February and the shooting began in spring, said Katie Hughes, a spokeswoman for the outside group.

Also unusual was that the star talent could not talk to the directors for most of the shooting. Due to campaign coordination laws, the scenes featuring Fiorina all had to be shot before she announced she was running for president, Hughes said.

Most super-PACs in the 2016 cycle have been testing the boundaries of the law, with outside groups supporting Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry and Fiorina all staging events they describe as their own. They then “invite” the candidate to address the event as the featured speaker. But while these super-PACs are finding more innovative ways to spend their millions without breaking the law, documentary filmmaking is still newer territory.

The “Citizen Carly” filmmakers are both in-house employees at CARLY for America, Hughes said. She said they shot and edited the film in only a few months and wrapped very recently.

The filmmakers are producing all videos for the outside spending group, including the “Faces” spot, which rebuked Donald Trump’s attack on Fiorina’s appearance and has already been viewed more than half a million times on YouTube.

Tags Carly Fiorina