Carly Fiorina: People Now Know There's 'More Than One Woman Running'

There weren't a lot of people at Thursday night's "happy hour" debate, but Carly Fiorina said Friday that she's confident that "a lot of people discovered I could do the job."

"I went into this debate with only 40 percent of Republicans knowing my name," the former Hewlett-Packard CEO told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show, which was being broadcast live Friday from Cleveland, the site of the first GOP debates of this election cycle. "I had the lowest name ID of anyone in the field because I'm not a celebrity and not a professional politician."

Story continues below video.

And part of not being known meant that there were many people wondering if she could mount a campaign, Fiorina said, but after Thursday, "a lot of people discovered there is more than one woman running for president. A lot of people discovered I could do this job."

But the race is still early, Fiorina emphasized, and then there is the Donald Trump impact on her campaign as well as on others'.

"I think when you look at the polls, when Trump started rising, everybody started falling," she said. "One of the reasons for that is because national polls measure name ID. Donald Trump is a celebrity."

The race this time, given the number of candidates, will "be a process of elimination before it is a process of selection," she said. "I think after last night I'm still in the race and I'm going to be in the race for the long haul."

Fiorina, as a businesswoman, said she wishes she'd gotten more questions on the economy.

"Honestly the time goes very, very quickly when you are up there and there are so many people," she said. "I wish I had time to talk about how I would cut the Washington bureaucracy down to size. It is a hugely important thing. We have to get citizens engaged in this process of holding the bureaucracy accountable."

And like Trump, she is not a politician, and she thinks that will be a big part of her campaign.

"I think people really underestimate how tired folks are of the sanitized sound bites and bumper sticker rhetoric," she said. "I think people are tired of it … because whatever people care about, honestly, the political class has failed them."

There have been some complaints about the Fox News line of questions, but Fiorina thought they were tough on everyone.

"I give the moderators credit for this," she said. "They were set up in a way to say, 'here is a vulnerability. How do you answer it?' I think the vulnerabilities are the characteristics of Donald Trump or Marco Rubio or anyone else were fair."

Meanwhile, Fiorina also responded to criticism about her time with Hewlett-Packard, from where she was fired during a particularly tough period for the company.

"In tough times like this, sometimes tough calls are necessary," said Fiorina. "Despite the tough times, we took a company from $44 billion to almost $90 billion. We quadrupled the growth rate and tripled innovation to 11 patents a day, and went from lagging behind to leading.

"I was fired in a boardroom brawl. When you lead, you challenge the status quo. And when you challenge the status quo, you make enemies."

Fiorina, also speaking to Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program, commented that the debate was just the start of a long process of elimination, but overall, she was sure she did well, and she was appreciative for the opportunity.

Related Stories:

• Carly Fiorina Steals the Show at GOP 'Happy Hour' Debate
• 7 Most Memorable Moments From the GOP Debate