Fiorina Aide: 'This Is Ridiculous'

The deputy campaign manager said she feels "confident" they'll try to keep the former Hewlett-Packard CEO from debating.

The deputy campaign manager of Carly Fiorina's presidential effort said she feels "very confident" that CNN and the Republican National Committee will keep the former Hewlett-Packard CEO off the debate stage on September 16 despite her rising popularity.

"I think CNN and the RNC have made it very clear that they have every intention of doing that," the staffer, Sarah Isgur Flores, told Bloomberg Wednesday. "I feel very confident that they’re going to do that."

Flores, a former RNC aide, also wrote in an entry on Fiorina's Medium account Wednesday that "the political establishment is still rigging the game to keep Carly off the main debate stage next month" because CNN will use polls from before the Republican field's first debates on August 6 to determine who qualifies for its debate.

Fiorina's widely praised performance in a "candidate forum" that night helped propel her polling numbers, but the inclusion of the earlier polls and the paucity of more recent polls could keep the only woman in the 17-candidate Republican field from appearing on the debate stage.

A RealClearPolitics poll average puts Fiorina at seventh in the field, although she polls as high as second in some smaller state polls.

"I am a little surprised that the RNC and CNN feel quite so strongly to keep her off the stage yet again," Flores said Wednesday. "I’m upset because this is ridiculous."

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