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Washington: Republican John McCain on Saturday enlisted the high-profile help of Carly Fiorina, once the most powerful businesswoman in the United States, in a bid to get women behind his campaign for the White House.
Arizona Senator McCain makes no secret of his wish to attract women who backed New York Senator Hillary Clinton's failed presidential bid, regularly praising her and noting their work and travel together as members of the US Senate.
Fiorina, a top economic adviser, empathised with the former first lady's experience when she took questions from across the country during a McCain campaign "virtual town-hall meeting".
She said, "Having started as a secretary and eventually become a chief-executive officer, I not only have great admiration and respect for Hillary Clinton and her candidacy and her leadership, but I also have great empathy, I must tell you, for what she went through."
She added, "I also believe though, if we are striving for a gender-blind, colour-blind society, that we really ought to be focused on the person that we think will make the right judgments, the right decisions and have the right positions."
That person is John McCain, she said.
The McCain camp hopes to secure the support of independent and Democratic Clinton supporters, some of whom say they will not back the presumptive nominee Illinois Senator Barack Obama.
Texas-born Fiorina has become an increasingly visible advocate for McCain, speaking publicly about his economic positions and ripping into Obama over tax policies and Iraq.
Fiorina became the head of Hewlett-Packard Co. in 1999 and in 2002 oversaw the then-largest merger in the US technology sector when Hewlett-Packard bought rival computer maker Compaq
Computer Corp. The company's poor performance forced her exit as chairman and chief executive in 2005.
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