Boxer Ad Fires First Shot in TV Battle for Senate Seat : Politics: Democratic congresswoman from Marin County begins airing spots a year before Election Day.

A year to the week before Election Day 1992, the first television advertisements in California’s convoluted races for the U.S. Senate will hit the airwaves this weekend.

U.S. Rep. Barbara Boxer of Marin County, who is running against two other Democrats for the party nomination to the seat now held by retiring Alan Cranston, will begin running advertisements Sunday in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The 30-second spots draw renewed attention to the heated controversy over the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment by his former co-worker, Anita Hill. Boxer and other women members of the House played a prominent role in the tumult by lobbying members of the Senate to hold Judiciary Committee hearings on the Hill allegations.

The Boxer ads represent the first snow flurries before a blizzard, for next year Californians will be inundated by commercials for as many as 10 U.S. Senate candidates running for two seats, presidential candidates and assorted initiatives and ballot measures.

In the ad, which opens with a shot of Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Boxer tells the audience that there are only two women in the U.S. Senate.

“I don’t think that helps when you’re dealing with real problems of real people, real families,” she says. “It’s time to change the way the Senate works, because I gotta tell you, it’s just not working now.”

Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, one of Boxer’s Democratic foes, criticized Boxer for missing House votes while filming the advertisements. Actually, this particular commercial was filmed on a Saturday, a Boxer aide said. But during earlier filming, she missed two votes.

One vote delivered $250 million in disaster relief to victims of the recent Oakland fire and another $300 million for victims of 1989’s Bay Area earthquake. The second was on an amendment for Head Start, childhood immunization and nutrition programs.

“He wouldn’t miss anything as important as that,” said McCarthy’s campaign manager, Roy Behr.

Boxer’s campaign initially plans to spend $100,000 on advertising to place the ad on Los Angeles and San Francisco TV stations and on cable television.

While it is the first television advertising of the campaign season, the ad is nowhere near the massive purchase that Dianne Feinstein engineered in the spring of 1990 to catapult herself into contention for the governor’s race.

Rather, the Boxer effort is aimed at potential donors who are upset by the Thomas hearings. At the end of the commercial, viewers are asked to call her campaign office.

“You need to talk to voters when they are ready to listen to you,” said Boxer campaign manager Rose Kapolczynski, referring to the early timing of the ad.

Boxer’s speech at a Beverly Hills fund-raiser Thursday night also emphasized the Thomas hearings, particularly the new justice’s statement that he had never discussed his opinion of the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision that guaranteed abortion rights.

She also chided members of the Judiciary Committee, to whom Thomas made the statement, for failing to press him for details.

“Where are the voices? Where’s the spine? Where’s the anger?” she said. “This isn’t about some theory. This is about women’s lives. This is about life and death.”