Boxer Attacks on Bush Help Re-election Bid
Monday, March 03, 2003
URL:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,80060,00.html
WASHINGTON — Sen. Barbara Boxer would rather have a president with whom she agrees on environmental issues. Instead, the California Democrat has a campaign issue she believes is ready-made for home-state politics.
Once a week, Boxer stands before reporters and cameras and blasts away at Republican moves on clean air, water and cleanups of toxic sites.
Sometimes she awards a "toxic trophy" to a governmental agency for bad work on the environment. On one occasion, her staff unfurled a 32-foot scroll that Boxer said listed 235 anti-environmental actions taken by the Bush administration.
Officially, Boxer is the Senate Democrats' leader on environmental issues, charged with designing a legislative strategy to stop some of President Bush's proposals and advance Democratic alternatives.
But as Boxer acknowledged in a recent interview, the news conferences and props have a role to play in her bid for a third Senate term next year. The environment "is going to be a huge issue in my race," she said. "It's going to be even bigger now because the environment is under such assault."
Helped by an array of environmental interest groups, Boxer can point to numerous California and national issues on which she differs with the White House and that polls consistently show are important to her state's voters.
The list includes administration proposals to harvest more trees in California forests, its refusal to buy out leases to drill off the central California coast and its opposition to the state's requirement that automakers produce low-emission cars or improve fuel efficiency.
She also wrote legislation to have industry pay for cleaning up Superfund toxic waste sites by reimposing a fee that expired in 1995 and a bill to give wilderness protection to 2 million acres of California land.
Not even Boxer's opponents suggest the senator is experiencing an election-related conversion.
"It's a sincerely held conviction of environmental extremism," said Michael Hardiman, a private-property-rights advocate who formerly worked for Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif.
Dan Allen, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Boxer will be vulnerable in the 2004 election "because she persists in partisan political attacks rather than in getting things done."
Prospective Republican challengers who are trying out possible campaign themes are unlikely to dwell on the environment, choosing instead to highlight defense issues and her vote against giving Bush authority to use military force against Iraq.
"She's way too liberal," said Rep. Doug Ose, R-Calif., who is considering a Senate campaign. "The fact of the matter is that Barbara spent her entire career voting against appropriate levels of defense, against appropriate levels of intelligence-gathering apparatus.
"And as a consequence, pairing up with any number of colleagues, we find ourselves in a position where we have inadequate early warning or early detection of threats in the nature of Sept. 11."
Boxer, 62, is routinely called one of the Senate's most liberal members, a label she does not reject or embrace.
However described, her views have been sufficiently popular to win two Senate elections, five races for the House of Representatives and two terms as a Marin County supervisor.
She doubled her margin of victory in her 1998 re-election and expects that 2004 will be a good year for Democrats in California, where Republicans last year lost every statewide race. Bush ran more than 1.2 million votes behind Al Gore in 2000.
Boxer is among Democrats who blame the party's poor national showing last year on the failure to draw sharp contrasts with Republicans.
She said her environmental stands are in the mainstream of California politics. "I don't think fighting for clean air is extremist," she said. "If you neglect your environment, you're going to lose one of the biggest engines of growth, tourism."
Boxer also will try to deflect criticism over Iraq by noting she voted for a Democratic alternative to the Iraq resolution that would have required endorsement by the United Nations before taking action. She also backed use of military force in the Balkans and after the Sept. 11 attacks. |
