Boxer Turns to Women in Quest for Funds : Politics: Democratic candidate for Senate brings in $50,000 at Beverly Hills fund-raiser. She says she will reach out to men, Republicans and independents as well.

Rushing to collect as much campaign money as possible before the end of the year, Democratic Senate candidate Barbara Boxer turned Wednesday to those who form the rock-solid base of her campaign--women.

But, surrounded by 100 women and a only handful of men at a Beverly Hills fund-raiser, Boxer also nimbly tried to reach out to male Democrats and even to disaffected Republicans and independents.

Noting that she routinely wins more votes than there are Democrats in her Marin County congressional district, Boxer said she can appeal to all parties. “When they meet me and I talk to them, they know I feel inside what they’re feeling,” she said.

And while she decried the all-white male lineup of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was embroiled in controversy during October’s hearings into the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, she took pains to say that an all-female committee would be equally wrong.

“That’s not America,” she said. “. . . We need a little reality in the Senate.”

Though her campaign is powered largely by women--and half of her campaign donations are from women, Boxer is carefully crafting simultaneous anti-elitist and outsider arguments for her candidacy. And she is playing the gender card far more subtly than might be expected for one of two California women seeking a U.S. Senate seat next year.

“I do not believe that my message is a message for women,” she said after the fund-raiser, which netted about $50,000. “It is a message for people who are concerned about the direction of the country.”

Of course, Boxer’s gender will be obvious to voters who select a Democratic nominee for the seat held by retiring Sen. Alan Cranston. Running against her are Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy, who is ahead in most polls, and U.S. Rep. Mel Levine of Los Angeles, who is expected to raise more money than his opponents.

But while Boxer is an acknowledged underdog, she also is trying to take advantage of the widespread voter discontent that many political activists believe could benefit women candidates in 1992. A recent national poll conducted by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press found that six of 10 people believe the country would be better off if more women served in Congress. Asked to compare hypothetical candidates, both men and women favored women over men.

But hypothetical candidates tend to fare better than flesh-and-blood ones, as was underscored at Boxer’s fund-raiser by Ellen Malcolm, the founder of the women’s political fund-raising group Emily’s List.

“Women have to prove themselves over and over and over again,” she said. “They face a wall of skepticism that is unrelenting and just undermines their campaigns at every step of the way.”

On the positive side, Malcolm said her group, which in 1990 dealt out $1.5 million to women candidates, has seen its fund raising increase 52% since the hearings into allegations that Thomas sexually harassed a woman employee, Anita Hill.

Boxer’s approach contrasts vividly with the strategy followed by former San Francisco mayor Dianne Feinstein in 1990 when she was bidding to become the first woman governor of California. Feinstein openly played up her gender, only to see a related campaign promise--to appoint women to half the government positions available--backfire on her.

Boxer said she expects to end the year having raised more than $2 million, exceeding her expectations. Candidates are required to file federal reports of the campaign contributions as of Dec. 31, and they stiffly compete to bring in money as the filing period winds down.