Carly Fiorina's claims of motherhood and rise to the top under fire

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Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett-Packard CEO, is the only woman in Republican White House race
She is campaigning on her 'secretary to CEO' resume and has talked about how she and her husband were hit by death of 'their younger daughter' Lori
But her husband's ex-wife - who was Lori's mom and had custody of her and her sister - tells Daily Mail Online: 'That's not how I remember it'
Fiorina also claims a 'modest' family upbringing - but her father was a federal judge and her parents gave her 'baby grand piano' as a gift
Her ex-husband says of her 'rags to riches' story: 'She settled on business school, it was all planned'

By Laura Collins In Portland, Oregon, For Dailymail.com

Published: 10:37 EST, 14 July 2015 | Updated: 23:16 EST, 14 July 2015

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She has staked her claim to the American dream on her rise from secretary to CEO and made it the platform from which she has launched countless speeches as a would-be presidential candidate.

But now Carly Fiorina's story has been put in doubt by the man she was with at the very start of her rise.

Todd Bartlem, who went on to become Fiorina's first husband, accuses her of creating a misleading mythology and 'losing her humanity' for a 'pathological' pursuit of power.

Speaking exclusively to Daily Mail Online, he said: 'It's not like she was a secretary for 15 years and rose up. She dropped out of law school, she settled on business school. It was all very planned.

'She's a very calculating person and her risks paid off but whenever I read descriptions about her life there'd always be this bit that she rose from a secretary at a real estate company to the head of AT&T…

'I mean she had a part-time position when she quit law school and she had to have money to pay the rent, so she worked as a secretary to a real estate firm in Palo Alto, but it was incidental.'

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Carly Fiorina greeting potential voters earlier this month at a town hall event in Barrington, New Hampshire

Indeed, Fiorina, 60 - who claimed to have 'lived the American dream' with a seamless rise from secretary to the upper echelons of AT&T and then CEO of Hewlett Packard - had a very comfortable upbringing.

Fiorina's mother, Madelon, was an abstract artist and her father, Joseph Sneed, was a legal academic who went on to be appointed a federal judge by Richard Nixon. Carly was their middle child of three.

On the Carly For America campaign website - run not by her staff but by a political action committee that supports her candidacy - she is quoted as saying her childhood was 'modest' and 'middle class'.

In fact her childhood saw her travel from California to North Carolina to London and Ghana as her father took up academic positions at Cornell, Yale, Stanford and Duke. Carly then attended Stanford University in California, where she majored in medieval history and philosophy.

It was there that she met Bartlem, now 61.

After graduating, Fiorina enrolled at UCLA Law School to please her father. But she had no interest in law and hated every minute of it.

Much to her father's dismay – she has recounted that he worried she would 'never amount to anything' – she quit after a few months. And then for the next few months she worked as a secretary before marrying Bartlem in 1977 and moving with him to Italy, where he had a job teaching with Johns Hopkins University.

Carly's parents Joseph and Madelon Sneed. Joseph was a distinguished legal academic appointed to the federal judicial circuit in 1973 by Richard Nixon. However Carly has said her childhood was 'modest'

Carly and her sister Clare as children. They had a peripatetic upbringing, with her father taking up a succession of appointments around the US and abroad including in Ghana

Joseph Sneed was a federal judge on US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Looking back, Bartlem said: 'I was useful to her then. I got her through graduate school and broke her out of going to law school. She tried to go to law school but she hated it and it was a big problem because her father wanted her to be a lawyer but I was her rebellion - her alternate lifestyle.'

Fiorina had no interest in politics or big business but, as she considered her options while living with him in Italy, she settled on business school - and the balance of their relationship began to shift.

The couple were married for seven years and they have had no contact since shortly after their divorce was finalized in 1984.

Bartlem has since remarried, and says his life has been happy and filfiling. But it is clear he is still not reconciled to the 'brutal' way his first wife behaved towards the end of their marriage.

He claims she had an affair with senior AT&T executive Frank Fiorina while they were still married - while she has always maintained she was divorced when her new romance began.

After she attended the University of Maryland's Robert H Smith School of Business, Carly was accepted into AT&T's management development program – the real seat of her rise to prominence.

According to Fiorina, her marriage started to fail as her career bloomed. Writing in her memoir Tough Choices, she said: 'While we were married we were not peers… After I left graduate school and had entered the workforce something changed in my marriage.

'As my career at AT&T progresses, I became surer of myself. As I came into my own I grew up - Todd and I grew apart.'

Their marriage had begun happily, with their return from Italy marked by moving into a house in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her parents sent her a baby grand piano as a gift.

From Bartlem's perspective the marriage began to founder as Carly became more and more fixated with power, the corporate world - and Frank Fiorina.

He said of her career: 'That became her whole life because of the power thing that went with it, and, at the end of the day, everything got judged according to how useful it was towards allowing her to get ahead.

'I assume Frank was useful.'

Carly Fiorina in Jordan High School's yearbook of 1972. The school is in Durham, North Carolina

Carly has implied that Bartlem, who had taken a job with the World Bank and was travelling a great deal for work, was unfaithful to her.

But Bartlem believes she was unfaithful to him with Frank.

He told Vanity Fair in 2002 that Carly was having an affair with Fiorina, saying there had been times when he called home at night and there was no answer.

Certainly neither account backs up the civilized, seamless march to divorce and remarriage with Frank that Carly has described in her own memoir.

Divorce papers seen by Daily Mail Online reveal a muddy truth of overlapping divorces.

Frank was married to Patricia Easler with whom he had two daughters, Lori, who died aged 34 in 2009, and Tracy, now 44.

Carly joined AT&T in 1980. According to her later account of the ages of Frank's daughters when she met them, she was introduced to Frank the following year - 1981.

That was the same same year Frank's wife Patricia filed for divorce, in a case that dragged on for two years.

Carly and her first husband Todd Bartlem shared this comfortable home in Silver Spring, Maryland

Carly filed for divorce from Bartlem in April 1983, eight months before Frank's divorce was finalized.

Carly's divorce was finalized in November 1984 but documents filed in May that year show she and Frank were already living together. She gives her address as Frank's – the home he once shared with Patricia and their daughters.

Frank and Carly married in 1985 when his youngest daughter Lori was ten and Tracy was 14.

'There are two sides to every story. That's not how I remember it. Lori was my daughter and I grieve her every day.'

Patricia Fiorina, Frank's first husband

The wedding took place in the home of Carly's friend and former AT&T mentor Carole Spurrier in Howard County, Maryland. The intimate ceremony had just six guests, including the caterer and Lori and Tracy, who both played a role. Carly and Frank exchanged vows they had written themselves.

In her version of her life, just as she moved seamlessly from secretary to CEO, she moved seamlessly from being Frank's wife to the 'mother' of his two girls.

There is no doubt that Carly became incredibly close to the girls. But in her account the girls' birth mother, Patricia, has no role in their lives following her own entry on to the scene.

In her most recent book Rising to the Challenge: My Leadership Journey, Carly tells the tragic tale of her stepdaughter Lori, who died from prescription drug addiction.

Nowhere in the grim narrative does Fiorina reference Lori's mother, Patricia - leaving the impression that she left her children's lives the day their father married Carly.

In fact on her campaign website she goes further, calling Lori 'their younger daughter'.

Carly for President, the official campaign website (pictured), states that she and her second husband lost 'their younger daughter'. Lori was Carly's stepdaughter - her birth mother was Patricia

Carly Fiorina watches the California senate election results in 2010 with her husband Frank and his granddaughters Kara Tribby, then seven and Morgan Tribby, 11.

Her use of the phrase has been reported elsewhere; she used it in an interview with the Des Moines Register, while her campaign website for the California senate shows how she mentioned it in 2010, saying of she and her husband: 'They have a daughter and two granddaughters. Another daughter is recently deceased.'

Yet it was Patricia who was granted custody of the girls following her divorce from their father.

When approached by Daily Mail Online, Patricia would only say: 'There are two sides to every story. That's not how I remember it. Lori was my daughter and I grieve her every day.'

According to Todd Bartlem, there is nothing surprising in Carly's tendency to place herself at the front and center of every narrative.

'She is pathologically narcissistic and all she cares about is her,' he said. 'Nothing holds together with her.

'I got kind of suspicious of her towards the end of the marriage because she had no old friends. She had nobody that she knew in the past, and I thought, "God that's kind of weird."'

Today Bartlem believes the reason lies in Carly's 'modus operandi' of 'dropping people' as soon as they have fulfilled their useful purpose in her life. Certainly it's what he believes happened to him.

'I had no utility and that's what the judgment was,' he said. 'If you aren't useful to her, your time is over. She learned that in business school. I was heartbroken. It was brutal.'

Bartlem claims that when Carly walked out on him she did so without leaving so much as a forwarding address or phone number. A year after the divorce, he claims, she pulled up in the driveway of their former home and calmly said, 'I will never see you again.'

True to her word, all contact ceased.

Carly Fiorina explains why she is qualified to be President

Fiorina in 2002, when she was Hewlett-Packard Chairman and CEO. Her former husband has raised questions over her narrative of 'secretary to CEO', saying she was focused, ambitious and business-school educated

Make or break: Fiorina will find out later this month whether she is in the top ten of the Republican field according to an average of national polls, which will be used to decide which of the 16 candidates will be on stage for the first televised debate, to be broadcast on Fox News

He said: 'She only had one interest and that was to get ahead. When we were together she didn't have a political bone in her body.

'The only thing she cared about was herself. I assume that's all she's ever cared about since then. Why else would you subject yourself to the ridicule of trying to run for president?'

In 2005 Fiorina was fired by the board of Hewlett Packard. Her tenure had seen a controversial merger with PC maker Compaq and a company restructuring that resulted in 30,000 people losing their jobs - while she tripled her own salary and bought a $1million yacht and five corporate jets.

She was worth a reported $120million at the time of her departure.

The following year, 2006, saw Fiorina's first foray into politics, when she worked for Senator John McCain's presidential campaign.

In 2008 she was tipped as a possible vice presidential running mate before Sarah Palin's selection. But when asked during a radio interview on September 15 2008 if she thought Palin had the ability to run a major company like Hewlett Packard, Fiorina answered: 'No I don't.'

When questioned about her answer she said 'I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation [either],' leaving McCain 'furious' and ensuring that she 'disappeared' from his campaign.

By the end of this month it will be clear if Fiorina has crossed the crucial hurdle for Republican White House hopefuls - being in the top ten in an average of polls to qualify for the first debate between candidates.

Her ex-husband Bartlem noted: 'She's never held a political office. She has no experience whatsoever and it boggles the imagination, but that is pretty indicative of the Republican Party. It's like watching the Hindenburg go down - basically a flaming mess.

'She's a plutocrat. Her net worth is high and she sees herself as a member of that class. She's got spare money in her piggy bank and she's trying to buy an office.

'Most normal people would take a county thing, a state office or something, but no. She doesn't have the ability to see that she's so got into this thing of mind-over-matter that she can will it.

'But there are some things in life that you can't will, and becoming president has got to be one of them. Carly can't see that because she's a corporate person. She views herself as a corporation. There's no humility or humanity left.'

Fiorina's campaign declined the opportunity to comment.

Republican Carly Fiorina announcing her run for President

THE 2016 FIELD: WHO'S IN AND WHO'S THINKING IT OVER

A whopping 20 people from America's two major political parties have declared themselves candidates in the 2016 presidential election.

The field includes two women, an African-American and two Latinos. All but one in that group – Hillary Clinton – are Republicans.

A few Democrats are still assessing their chances. And although the GOP field is deeper than ever, at least two more contenders could still join the race.

REPUBLICANS IN THE RACE

Jeb Bush Former Florida governor

Age: 62

Religion: Catholic

Base: Moderates

Résumé: Former Florida governor and secretary of state. Former co-chair of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.

Education: B.A. University of Texas at Austin.

Family: Married to Columba Bush (1974), with three adult children. Noelle Bush has made news with her struggle with drug addiction, and related arrests. George P. Bush was elected Texas land commissioner in 2014. Jeb's father George H.W. Bush was the 41st Presdient of the United States, and his brother George W. Bush was number 43.

Claim to fame: CJeb was an immensely popular governor with strong economic and jobs credentials. He is also one of just two GOP candidates who is fluent in Spanish.

Achilles heel: Bush has angered conservatives with hsi permissive positions on illegal immigration (saying some border-crossing is 'an act of love) and common-core education standards. His last name could also be a liability with voters who fear establishing a family dynasty in the White House.

Chris Christie New Jersey governor

Age: 52

Religion: Catholic

Base: Establishment-minded conservatives

Résumé: Governor of New Jersey. Former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. Former Morris County freeholder and lobbyist.

Governor of New Jersey. Former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. Former Morris County freeholder. Former statehouse lobbyist.

Education: B.A. University of Delaware, Newark, J.D. Seton Hall University.

Family: Married to Mary Pat Foster (1986) with four children.

Claim to fame: Pugnacious and unapologetic, Christie once told a heckler to 'sit down and shut up' and brings a brash style to everything he does. That includes the post-9/11 criminal prosecutions of terror suspects that made his reputation as a hard-charger.

Achilles heel: Christie is often accused of embracing an ego-driven and needlessly abrasive style. His administration continues to operate under a 'Bridgegate' cloud: At least two aides have been indicted in an alleged scheme to shut down lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge as political retribution for a mayor who refused to endorse the governor's re-election.

Carly Fiorina Former CEO

Age: 60

Religion: Episcopalian

Base: Conservatives

Résumé: Former CEO of Hewett-Packard. Former group president of Lucent Technologies. Onetime U.S. Senate candidate in California.

Education: B.A. Stanford University. UCLA School of Law (did not finish). M.B.A. University of Maryland. M.Sci. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Family: Married to Frank Fiorina (1985), with one adult step-daughter and another who is deceased. She has two step-grandchildren. Divorced from Todd Bartlem (1977-1984).

Claim to fame: Fiorina was the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company, something that could provide ammunition against the Democratic Party's drive to make Hillary Clinton the first female president. She is also the only woman in the 2016 GOP field, making her the one Republican who can't be accused of sexism.

Achilles heel: Fiorina's unceremonious firing by HP's board has led to questions about her management and leadership styles. And her only political experience has been a failed Senate bid in 2010 against Barbara Boxer.

Mike Huckabee Former Arkansas governor

Age: 59

Religion: Southern Baptist

Base: Evangelicals

Résumé: Former governor and lieutenant governor of Arkansas. Former Fox News Channel host. Ordained minister and author.

Education: B.A. Ouachita Baptist University. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (did not finish).

Family: Married to Janet Huckabee (1974), with three adult children. Mrs. Huckabee is a survivor of spinal cancer.

Claim to fame: 'Huck' is a political veteran and has run for president before, winning the Iowa Caucuses in 2008 and finishing second for the GOP nomination behind John McCain. He's known as an affable Christian and succeeded in building a huge following on his weekend television program, in which he frequently sat in on the electric bass with country & western groups and other 'wholesome' musican entertainers.

Achilles heel: Huckabee may have a problem with female voters. He complained in 2014 about Obamacare's mandatory contraception coverage, saying Democrats want women to 'believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar.' He earned more scorn for hawking herbal supplements in infomercials as a diabetes cure, something he has yet to disavow despite disagreement from medical experts.

George Pataki Former New York governor

Age: 69

Religion: Catholic

Base: Centrists

Résumé: Former governor of New York. Former New York state senator and state assemblyman. Former mayor of Peekskill, NY.

Education: B.A. Yale University. J.D. Columbia Law School.

Family: Married to Libby Rowland (1973), with four adult children.

Claim to fame: Pataki was just the third Republican governor in New York's history, winning an improbable victory over three-term incumbent Mario Cuomo in 1994. He was known for being a rare tax-cutter in Albany and was also the sitting governor when the 9/11 terror attacks rocked New York CIty in 2001.

Achilles heel: While Pataki's liberal-leaning social agenda plays well in the Empire State, it won't win him any fans among the GOP's conservative base. He supports abortion rights and gay rights, and has advocated strongly in favor of government intervention to stop global warming, which right-wingers believe is overblown as a global threat.

Rand Paul Kentucky senator

Age: 52

Religion: Presbyterian

Base: Libertarians

Résumé: US senator. Board-certified ophthalmologist. Former congressional campaign manager for his father Ron Paul.

Education: Baylor University (did not finish). M.D. Duke University School of Medicine.

Family: Married to Kelley Ashby (1990), with three sons. His father is a former Texas congressman who ran for president three times but never got close to grabbing the brass ring.

Claim to fame: Paul embraces positions that are at odds with most in the GOP, including an anti-interventionist foreign policy, reduced military spending, criminal drug sentencing reform for African-Americans and strict limits on government electronic surveillance – including a clampdown on the National Security Agency.

Achilles heel: Paul's politics are aligned with those of his father, whom mainstream GOPers saw as kooky. Both Pauls have advocated for a brand of libertarianism that forces government to stop domestic surveillance programs and limits foreign military interventions.

Rick Santorum Former Penn. senator

Age: 57

Religion: Catholic

Base: Evangelicals

Résumé: Former US senator and former member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. Former lobbyist who represented World Wrestling Entertainment.

Education: B.A. Penn State University. M.B.A. University of Pittsburgh. J.D. Penn State University Dickinson School of Law.

Family: Married to Karen Santorum (1990), with seven living children. One baby was stillborn in 1996. Another, named Isabella, is a special needs child with a genetic disorder.

Claim to fame: Santorum won the 2012 Republican Iowa Caucuses by a nose. He won by visiting all of Iowa's 99 states in a pickup truck belonging to his state campaign director, a consultant who now worls for Donald Trump.

Achilles heel: As a young lobbyist, Santorum persuaded the federal government to exempt pro wrestling from regulations governing the use of anabolic steroids. And the stridently conservative politician has attracted strong opposition from gay rights groups. One gay columnist held a contest to redefine his name, buying the 'santorum.com' domain to advertise the winning entry – which is too vulgar to print.

Scott Walker Wisconsin governor

Age: 47

Religion: Christian (nondenominational)

Base: Conservative activists

Résumé: Governor of Wisconsin. Former Milwaukee County Executive. Former member of the Wisconsin State Assembly.

Education: Marquette University (did not finish)

Family: Married to Tonette Tarantino (1993), with two children. One of Mrs. Walker's cousins is openly lesbian and was married in 2014, with the Walkers attending the reception.

Claim to fame: Walker built his national fame on the twin planks of turning his state's past budget shortfalls into surpluses and beating back a labor-union-led drive to force him out of office through a recall election. Both results have broad appeal in the GOP.

Achilles heel: Wisconsin has suffered from a shaky economy during Walker's tenure, which makes him look weak compared with other governors who presided over more robust job-creation numbers. He promised to create 250,000 private sector jobs but delivered less than 60 per cent of them. Also, he led an effort in the state legislature to enact $800 million in tax cuts – putting the Badger State back on the road to government deficits.

Ben Carson Retired Physician

Age: 63

Religion: Seventh-day Adventist

Base: Evangelicals

Résumé: Famous pediatric neurosurgeon, youngest person to head a major Johns Hopkins Hospital division. Founder of the Carson Scholars Fund, which awards scholarships to children of good character.

Education: B.A. Yale University. M.D. University of Michigan Medical School.

Family: Married to Candy Carson (1975), with three adult sons. The Carsons live in Maryland with Ben's elderly mother Sonya, who was a seminal influence on his life and development.

Claim to fame: Carson spoke at a National Prayer Breakfast in 2013, railing against political correctness and condemned Obamacare – with President Obama sitting just a few feet away.

Achilles heel: Carson is inflexibly conservative, opposing gay marriage and once saying gay attachments formed in prison provided evidence that sexual orientation is a choice.

Ted Cruz Texas senator

Age: 44

Religion: Southern Baptist

Base: Tea partiers

Résumé: U.S. senator. Former Texas solicitor general. Former U.S. Supreme Court clerk. Former associate deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush.

Education: B.A. Princeton University. J.D. Harvard Law School.

Family: Married to Heidi Nelson Cruz (2001), with two young daughters. His father is a preacher and he has two half-sisters.

Claim to fame: Cruz spoke on the Senate floor for more than 21 hours in September 2013 to protest the inclusion of funding for Obamacare in a federal budget bill. (The bill moved forward as written.) He has called for the complete repeal of the medical insurance overhaul law, and also for a dismantling of the Internal Revenue Service. Cruz is also outspoken about border security.

Achilles heel: Cruz's father Rafael, a Texas preacher, is a tea party firebrand who has said gay marriage is a government conspiracy and called President Barack Obama a Marxist who should 'go back to Kenya.' Cruz himself also has a reputation as a take-no-prisoners Christian evangelical, which might play well in South Carolina but won't win him points in the other early primary states and couls cost him momentum if he should be the GOP's presidential nominee.

Lindsey Graham South Carolina senator

Age: 59

Religion: Southern Baptist

Base: Otherwise moderate war hawks

Résumé: U.S. senator. Retired Air Force Reserves colonel. Former congressman. Former South Carolina state representative.

Education: B.A. University of South Carolina. J.D. University of South Carolina Law School.

Family: Never married. Raised his sister Darline after their parents died while he was a college student and she was 13.

Claim to fame: Graham is a hawk's hawk, arguing consistently for greater intervention in the Middle East, once arguing in favor of pre-emptive military strikes against Iran. His influence was credited for pushing President George W. Bush to institute the 2007 military 'surge' in Iraq.

Achilles heel: Some of his critics have taken to call him 'Grahamnesty,' citing his participating in a 2013 'gang of eight' strategy to approve an Obama-favored immigration bill. He has also aroused the ire of conservative Republicans by supporting global warming legislation and voting for some of the president's judicial nominees.

Bobby Jindal Louisiana governor

Age: 44

Religion: Catholic

Base: Social conservatives

Résumé: Governor of Louisiana. Former congressman. Former Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation. Former Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

Education: B. Sci. Brown University. M.Litt. New College at Oxford University

Family: Married to Supriya Jolly (1997), with three children, each of whom has an Indian first name and an American middle name. Bobby Jindal's given name is Piyush.

Claim to fame: Jindal's main source of national attention has been his strident opposition to federal-level 'Common Core' education standards, which included a federal lawsuit that a judge dismissed in late March. He is also outspoken on the religious-freedom issues involved in mainstreaming gay marriage into the lives of American Christians.

Achilles heel: JindaDuring his first term as governor, Jindal signed a science education law that requires schools to present alternatives to the theory of evolution, including religious creationism. Similarly, his staunch defense of businesses that want to steer clear of providing services to same-sex couples at their weddings will win points among evangelicals but alienate much of the electorate.

Rick Perry Former Texas governor

Age: 65

Religion: Christian (nondenominational)

Base: Conservatives

Résumé: Former Texas governor, lieutenant governor, agriculture commissioner and state representative.

Education: B.Sci. Texas A&M University

Family: Married to Anita Thigpen (1982) with two afult children. His father was a former Democratic county commissioner in Texas.

Claim to fame: Perry boasts that while he was governor between the end of 2007 and the end of 2014, the Texas economy created 1.4 million new jobs while the rest of the U.S. lost close to 400,000. A Perry-led Texas also had the nation's highest high school graduation rate among Hispanics and African-Americans.

Achilles heel: Perry has a tough hill to climb after his 2012 presidential campaign spectacularly imploded with a single word – 'Oops' – after he couldn't remember one of his own talking points during a nationally televised debate. He also faces an indictment for alleged abuse of power in a case that Republicans contend is politically motivated and meritless.

Marco Rubio Florida senator

Age: 43

Religion: Catholic

Base: Conservatives

Résumé: US senator, former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, former city commissioner of West Miami

Education: B.A. University of Florida. J.D. University of Miami School of Law.

Family: Married to Jeanette Dousdebes (1998), with two sons and two daughters. Jeanette is a former Miami Dolphins cheerleader who posed for the squad’s first swimsuit calendar.

Claim to fame: Rubio's personal story as the son of Cuban emigres is a powerful narrative, and helped him win his Senate seat in 2010 against a well-funded governor whom he initially trailed by 20 points.

Achilles heel: Rubio was part of a bipartisan 'gang of eight' senators who crafted an Obama-approved immigration reform bill in 2013 which never became law – a move that angered conservative Republicans. And he was criticized in 2011 for publicly telling a version of his parents' flight from Cuba that turned out to appear embellished.

Donald Trump Real estate developer

Age: 69

Religion: Presbyterian

Base: Conservatives

Résumé: Chairman of The Trump Organization. Fixture on the Forbes 400 list of the world's richest people. Star of 'Celebrity Apprentice.'

Education: B.Sci. Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Family: Married to Melania Trump (2005). Divorced from Ivana Trump and Marla Maples. Five grown children. Trump's father Fred Trump amassed a $400 million fortune developing real estate.

Claim to fame: Trump's niche in the 2016 campaign stems from his celebrity as a reality-show host and his enormous wealth – $8.7 billion, according to Trump. Because he can sef-fund an entire presidential campaign, he is seen as less beholden to donors than other candidates.

Achilles heel: Trump is a political neophyte who has toyed with running for president and for governor of New York, but shied away from taking the plunge until now. His billions have the potential to alienate large swaths of the electorate. And his Republican rivals are already labeling him an ego-driven celebrity and an electoral sideshow because of his past enthusiasm for anti-Obama 'birtherism.'

REPUBLICANS IN THE HUNT

Jim Gilmore, former Virginia governor

Gilmore is no political neophyte, having been Virginia's governor and attorney general. He would also bring military credentials through his service as an Army intelligence agent. He is also a board member of the National Rifle Association and president of the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative think tank.

John Kasich, Ohio governor

Kasich is a popular governor in the battleground Buckeye State, but has little name-recognition elsewhere. He has accommodated liberals on some issues and could be seen as a more palatable version of Jeb Bush for Republicans who fear electing a family dynasty.

DEMOCRATS IN THE RACE

Lincoln Chafee Former Rhode Island governor

Age: 62

Religion: Episcopalian

Base: Centrists

Résumé: Former Rhode Island governor. Former U.S. senator. Former city councilman and mayor of Warwick, RI.

Education: B.A. Brown University. Graduate, Montana State University horseshoeing school.

Family: Chafee is married to Stephanie Chafee (1990) with three children. Like him, his father John Chafee was a Rhode Island governor and US senator, but also served as Secretary of the Navy. Lincoln was appointed to his Senate seat when his father died in office.

Claim to fame: While Chafee was a Republican senator during the George W. Bush administration, he cast his party's only vote in 2002 against a resolution that authorized military action in Iraq. Hillary Clinton, also a senator then, voted in favor – giving him a point of comparison that he hopes to ride to victory.

Achilles heel: Chafee's lack of any significant party loyalty has turned allies into foes throughout his political career, and Democrats aren't sure he's entirely with them now. He was elected to the Senate as a Republican in 2000 but left the party and declared himself a political independent after losing a re-election bid in 2006. As an independent, he was elected governor in 2010. Now he's running for president as a Democrat.

Martin O'Malley Former Maryland governor

Age: 52

Religion: Catholic

Base: Centrists

Résumé: Former Maryland governor. Former city councilor and mayor of Baltimore, MD. Former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Education: B.A. Catholic University of America. J.D. University of Maryland.

Family: O'Malley is married to Katie Curran (1990) and they have four children. Curran is a district court judge in Baltimore. Her father is Maryland's attorney general. O'Malley's mother is a receptionists in the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski.

Claim to fame: O'Malley pushed for laws in Maryland legalizing same-sex marriage and giving illegal immigrants the right to pay reduced tuition rates at public universities. But he's best known for playing guitar and sung in a celtic band cammed 'O’Malley’s March.'

Achilles heel: O’Malley may struggle in the Democratic primary since he endorsed Hillary Clinton eight years ago. If he prevails, he will have to run far enough to her left to be an easy target for the GOP. He showed political weakness when his hand-picked successor lost the 2014 governor's race to a Republican. But most troubling is his link with Baltimore, whose 2016 race riots have made it a nuclear subject for politicians of all stripes.

Jim Webb Former Virginia senator

Age: 69

Religion: Christian (nondenominational)

Base: War hawks and economic centrists

Résumé:Former U.S. senator from Virginia. Former U.S. Secretary of the Navy under Ronamd Reagan. Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs.

Education: B.A. US Naval Academy (transferred from the University of Southern California). J.D. Georgetown University.

Family: Married to Hong Le Webb (2005). Divorced from Jo Ann Krukar (1981-2004). Divorced from Barbara Samorajczyk (1968–1979).

Claim to fame: Webb is the rare Democrat who can bring both robust defense credentials and a history of genuine bipartisanship to the race. He served in Republican president Ronald Reagan's defense directorate as Navy secretary, and earned both the Navy Star and the Purple Heart in combat. Webb is also seen as a quiet scholar who has written more than a half-dozen historical novels and a critically acclaimed history of Scots-Irish U.S. immigrants.

Achilles heel: Webb has a reputation as a bit of a quitter. He resigned his Navy secretary post over a budget-cut dispute just 10 months after taking the job, and he declined to run for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2006. He also attracted bad press for defending the use of the Confederate flag as a heritage symbol for American southerners. Amid a nationwide clamor to remove the flag from the South Carolina statehouse grounds, he wrote that Americans should 'respect the complicated history of the Civil War. ... Honorable Americans fought on both sides.'

Hillary Clinton Former sec. of state

Age: 67

Religion: United Methodist

Base: Liberals

Résumé: Former secretary of state. Former U.S. senator from New York. Former U.S. first lady. Former Arkansas first lady. Former law school faculty, University of Arkansas Fayetteville.

Education: B.A. Wellesley College. J.D. Yale Law School.

Family: Clinton's husband Bill (1975) was the 42nd President of the United States. Their daughter Chelsea is married to investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, whose mother was a 1990s one-term Pennsylvania congresswoman.

Claim to fame: Clinton was the first US first lady with a postgraduate degree and presaged Obamacare with a failed attempt at health care reform in the 1990s.

Achilles heel: A long series of financial and ethical scandals has dogged Clinton, including recent allegations that her husband and their family foundation benefited financially from decisions she made as secretary of state. Her performance surrounding the 2012 terror attack on a State Department facility in Benghazi, Libya, has been catnip for conservative Republicans. And her presdiential campaign has been marked by an unwillingness to engage journalists, instead meeting with hand-picked groups of voters.

Bernie Sanders* Vermont senator

Age: 73

Religion: Jewish

Base: Far-left progressives

Résumé: U.S. senator. Former U.S. congressman. Former mayor of Burlington, VT.

Education: B.A. University of Chicago.

Family: Sanders is married to Jane O’Meara Sanders (1988), a former president of Burlington College. He has one child from a previous relationship and is stepfather to three from Mrs. Sanders' previous marriage. His brother Larry is a Green Party politician in the UK and formerly served on the Oxfordshire County Council.

Claim to fame: Sanders is an unusually blunt, and unapologetic pol, happily promoting progressivism without hedging. He is also the longest-serving 'independent' member of Congress – neither Democrat nor Republican.

Achilles heel: Sanders describes himself as a 'democratic socialist.' At a time of huge GOP electoral gains, his far-left ideas don't poll well. He favors open borders, single-payer universal health insurance, and greater government control over media ownership.

* Sanders is running as a Democrat but has no party affiliation in the Senate.

DEMOCRATS IN THE HUNT

Joe Biden, U.S. vice president

Biden would be a natural candidate as the White House's sitting second-banana, but his reputation as a one-man gaffe factory will keep Democrats from taking him seriously.

Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts senator

Warren is a populist liberal who could give Hillary Clinton headaches by challenging her from the left, but she has said she has no plans to run and is happy in the U.S. Senate.