Carly Fiorina, former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, announced her candidacy for the US Senate on Wednesday, putting her in the running for the Republican nomination in California.

Ms Fiorina’s announcement came in a newspaper opinion article that argued the country was suffering from “too few jobs for Americans and too much spending in Washington”. She sounded traditional Republican themes in complaining that taxes were too high and that “government mandates” would make the quest for affordable health insurance harder.