Why Sen. Boxer's campaign is on the ropes
By Susan F. Rasky
Hill News
No doubt Boxer's media consultants can find more deft and appealing ways to package such
legislative handiwork. Health care and the environment are not top-tier issues in this state at
the moment, but framed properly, Boxer's record in these areas would certainly reveal her to be
pursuing an agenda that mainstream Californians support. It also wouldn't hurt to have it known
that she now holds a seat on the Appropriations Committee and to explain why that can benefit
Californians.
But with less than two weeks to Election Day, California voters, or more particularly the
Democrats on whose enthusiasm, or lack of it, her fate will rest, have little notion of anything
Boxer has been doing in Washington for the past six years. To the extent they have an
impression, it's the one Republicans have been carefully nurturing since the day she was sworn
in and one she has done little back home to counter. Narrow, partisan, abrasive,
uncompromising and difficult to do business with is the usual litany.
Or, as an uncharacteristically succinct Fong declared during the debate, “My opponent
constantly puts politics over principle. She's a divider who uses fear to fight against welfare
reform, tax reform, budget reform, education reform and even a stronger national defense.”
None of this should have been surprising to Boxer, whose overall approval rating has remained
below the 50 percent threshold since her election in the 1992 “Year of the Woman.” Democratic
insiders here complain that she should have been on TV sooner, with bolder “senatorial” spots
touting some accomplishments and taking credit for a prosperous economy and a balanced
budget.
Her ads, which began in late September with a vague recitation of her commitment to
education, currently feature one campaign spot attacking Fong for not backing new bans on
assault weapons and Saturday Night Specials and another charging that he wants to roll back
abortion rights.
With the race so tight, the worry is that the attacks on Fong are driving up Boxer's negatives
while not giving supporters any reason to turn out for her. “Who at this point does not know
Barbara Boxer's position on abortion?” says one Democratic consultant, part of a legion who
are second-guessing her campaign strategy and nervously watching the tracking polls.
Fong, who spent the GOP Senate primary campaign struggling to articulate an abortion
position that would not alienate the pro-life activists in his party, has countered with an ad that
says he “respects” a woman's right to choose in the first trimester of pregnancy but opposes
“indiscriminate late-term abortions.”
That may not be enough to satisfy voters with a strong focus on abortion rights, but in a state
where the polls do not show abortion as a subject of great concern, it's likely to be enough to
keep moderate Republican women in Fong's camp. Men, including 20 percent of Democrats,
according to a recent Field poll, are already there.
Boxer invariably suffers, perhaps unfairly, by comparison to her more-moderate Senate
colleague, Dianne Feinstein (D), who was also first elected in 1992 to finish out Pete Wilson's
term. Running against a much weaker opponent, Feinstein was coasting easily to victory. Her
broad appeal was critical to Boxer as the two stumped the state side by side, comparing
themselves to “Cagney and Lacy,” but it also promoted the fiction of a close relationship.
Despite often identical voting records on both California and major national issues, it is
Feinstein, the model of a modern woman senator, who gets the face time on national television
and the plaudits for tending to the state's bread-and-butter needs behind the scenes. Boxer in
fact ceded much of the limelight to her colleague during their first two years in the
then-Democratic Senate and campaigned tirelessly for Feinstein's reelection in the much more
difficult year of 1994.
This time around, Feinstein has been slow to return the favor. Her first appearance on Boxer's
behalf came at a rally last week in Southern California. Her more- noteworthy appearance
during this campaign came months earlier, when she chose to mount a high-profile criticism of
President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, seemingly oblivious to how it might affect
Boxer.
Boxer's leading role in the fight against the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence
Thomas and the ouster of Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) probably made her the one incumbent
genuinely vulnerable to a charge of hypocrisy for failing to speak out sooner and more forcefully.
Although the scandal has not proven particularly marketable for the GOP in a state where the
president's approval rating remains high, responding to questions about it has cost Boxer
valuable time in focusing her own campaign message. Fong also has been able to use the
Clinton affair to embellish the image of Boxer as a strident partisan.
For now, Boxer appears to be through the worst of it, no thanks to Feinstein, and may in fact
benefit from the public backlash against congressional impeachment proceedings.
Fong's strategists and some Bay Area pollsters have made much of the fact that he is likely to
pick up votes from Chinese-Americans who might otherwise have supported Boxer. In theory
that would cut into Boxer's margin in a part of the state where she is strongest and where she
needs a big win to offset GOP strongholds like the Central Valley. In reality, the number of
such votes for either candidate is negligible and Boxer has a bigger worry — turnout.
In an election as partisan as this one has become, Boxer's chances are hurt if the turnout is
low. She has enough money to saturate the airwaves over the next two weeks, but she will also
be crisscrossing the state in hopes of actually getting Democrats to show up at the polls.
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Susan F. Rasky, who reported on Congress for The New York Times, teaches political and
governmental reporting at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at
Berkeley. |
