Being ‘Out’ Is the ‘In’ Thing in California : Senate: Washington veterans bash themselves; donkeys sound like elephants and every Democrat wants to be “Feminist of the Year.”

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” lamented Professor Henry Higgins. For 1992 politics, the answer lies in the saga of California Rep. Barbara Boxer: When a woman is perceived as “just one of the boys,” she risks derailing her Senate campaign.

Boxer positioned her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Alan Cranston as an assault on elitist, white, male “politics-as-usual,” epitomized by the Senate hearings on Anita Faye Hill’s sexual harassment charges against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

Boxer’s strategy appeared to be working. Running against Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy, who is far better known, and Rep. Mel Levine, who is far better financed, she parlayed her “woman as outsider” stance and reformist rhetoric into media, money and credibility.

Then she was ambushed in the House banking scandal. In the bounce of a check--143 checks, actually--Boxer lost her edge as a woman candidate and an outsider, in a political season that appears favorable to both. She became just another incompetent and arrogant Congress-type, in an election year when anti-incumbent, anti-Washington sentiment is overflowing.

The larger lesson to be learned from Boxer’s bumpy ride is that this is a particularly quirky election year. The Illinois primary victory of Carol Moseley Braun, an unknown, underfunded, black woman, against a likable, well-heeled incumbent senator, reinforces the presumption that 1992 offers few political certainties. It is within this context that California’s U.S. Senate races will be played out.

Responding to the national mood, political insiders are running as outsiders. The state’s Washington contingent is bashing itself. Democrats are sounding like Republicans. And, in the Democratic Senate primaries particularly, everybody is vying for “Feminist of the Year.”

Which candidates are helped by all this? Who is hurt? Who’s credible?

Even before “Rubbergate,” one candidate was on the airwaves bashing Washington. “Congress has botched things up,” he stewed. “Congress is the epitome of arrogance.”

Certainly, none of the five Senate hopefuls currently serving in Congress would have the chutzpah--or stupidity--to tar themselves.

Wrong.

California’s incumbent U.S. Senator, John Seymour, intones those somber indictments in his campaign ads. He’ll raise and spend a lot of money to persuade Californians that, for the past 14 months, he’s been on the outside, looking in with alarm. He’d better pray voters won’t figure out the Senate is part of Congress.

Conservative Rep. William E. Dannemeyer reported 27 bad checks written over a 39-month period. Will right-wingers desert him because he can’t balance his checkbook? Not if the issue is abortion rights. Not if the prize is control of the California Republican Party. But barring a Patrick J. Buchanan landslide in June--a safe prediction--Seymour will limp, bloodied, into the fall campaign.

His likely Democratic opponent will be former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, an outcome perhaps more likely because of Rubbergate. California Democratic women really want to send one of their own to the Senate. With Boxer wounded, feminists may concentrate resources and attention on Feinstein, despite the fact that state Controller Gray Davis, Feinstein’s major opponent for the Democratic nomination against Seymour, proudly broadcasts his feminist credentials.

Even before the check-kiting scandal, speculation was that men voting in the Democratic primary--basically a politically correct lot--would split their gender votes. And that those votes would likely break for Feinstein, because she is a tested statewide political commodity, better known and not so intense as Boxer.

She’s not blemished with the slime of Washington--although her alliance with the “Sacramento swamp” appeared to have hurt her in the gubernatorial campaign. But Davis can’t make that an issue without highlighting his own ties to the highly unpopular State Capitol.

That points out a weakness in McCarthy’s strategy. Running against Boxer and Levine, two sitting U.S. House members, the former California Assembly Speaker has made Congress-bashing a key element of his campaign. He’s using the check-kiting scandal to attack Congress as “a privileged class out of touch with Americans.”

Will that wash? McCarthy has held elected office for nearly 30 years--six of them as leader of the much-trashed Assembly. Until voters unleashed their anti-government wrath, he disdained the label of outsider. It’s unlikely the well-known McCarthy will be able to shed his insider image. His candidacy will stand or fall on that.

Levine is the best financed and least known of the Democratic candidates for the Cranston seat. Low in the polls and off to the latest start, he’s relying on a nest egg that has already reached about $4 million--almost double the war chests of opponents Boxer and McCarthy combined--to buy him name recognition. He will make sure voters know he didn’t even use the now-defunct House bank.

But will outspending the competition be enough to ensure victory? Some analysts contend that Levine cannot make up his huge gap in the polls over the next two months. They question whether or not the media that money buys can be seen and heard above the unprecedented clamor and clutter of the 1992 presidential primaries.

Others, including Levine operatives, think that the muddle of this election season can complement Levine’s early stealth strategy, developed long before Rubbergate hit.

Because California’s voters tend to postpone interest until right before the election, the best way to break through all the static may be to run a campaign driven by the repetition of simple, positive messages, reinforced by a last-minute blitz of direct mail.

Little-known Rep. Tom Campbell, running for the Republican nomination for Cranston’s seat, will likely follow suit. His opponents, Palm Springs Mayor Sonny Bono and conservative television commentator Bruce Herschensohn, have far higher name recognition (that’s better news for Herschensohn, who’s positive ratings far outstrip Bono’s). And neither carries Washington baggage. So Campbell will need to focus his money-raising abilities on buying name recognition, defining himself and letting everybody know that he didn’t bounce a House check.

The state’s U.S. Senate hopefuls are all running hard in the same direction--as far away as possible from the high negatives associated with politics-as-usual. But the saga of Boxer should warn them: In this political season, you can run but you can’t hide.