CAMPAIGN JOURNAL : A Hopeful Boxer Hits the Road in Drive for Senate

Her stocking-clad feet propped on the dashboard of a rented car, a cellular telephone in one hand and a notebook in the other, Barbara Boxer was doing some old-fashioned campaigning in her quest to become California’s first woman senator.

“Old-fashioned,” at this moment, meant overcoming a major glitch: Her flight from San Diego to Los Angeles--one leg of a 27-hour, seven-city tour--had been canceled, and she and a reporter were speeding up the freeway in a hastily rented car in hopes of reaching the next event, a rally in Ventura.

Boxer would make the rally (an hour late) and use the travel time to call her staff and redirect last-minute arrangements. Speaking on the car phone to a friend in the Bay Area, Boxer learned of a new negative commercial attacking the other woman running for Senate, Dianne Feinstein. Already, Boxer is the target of an attack ad.

“Oh my God!” she said upon hearing that the commercial compares Feinstein to Leona Helmsley. “What will they compare me to? Roseanne Barr? ‘That Girl?’ ”

Then, reflecting, she said: “I guess these broadsides mean we’re really in it. The gloves are off and we have to take it, just like the guys.”

As things turned out, the canceled flight was the only major disaster in Boxer’s whirlwind, 850 -mile tour of the state, which ended Thursday. While many candidates for the U.S. Senate are relying heavily, if not solely, on paid television advertising, Boxer--short on cash but determined to keep up what she sees as momentum--stumped from San Diego to Oakland in just over a day’s time, reading story books to Head Start toddlers, shaking hands at a supermarket, inspecting hospital emergency rooms and rallying supporters in the middle of the night at a Denny’s in Santa Cruz.

“This is a tight, tight race,” she told about 100 backers at a reception in San Diego. “You know it’s tight because we’re getting attacked! That’s a sure sign.”

Boxer, a congresswoman from Marin County, is in a three-way battle with Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy and Rep. Mel Levine for the Democratic nomination to replace retiring Sen. Alan Cranston.

Boxer began this final campaign push Wednesday morning at the Choi Hung Head Start program in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, where she read a copy of “The Three Billy-Goats Gruff” to a restless group of 4-year-olds. In all, she visited three Head Start facilities, one in San Diego and another in Sacramento, to underscore what she said was the need to increase funding for the program.

“For the price of one B-2 Bomber, you could double this program,” she said, adding that she advocates tripling the Head Start budget to $7.5 billion over the next several years in order to make the program available to all eligible children.

From Los Angeles, Boxer flew to San Diego early Wednesday afternoon.

In San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood, she worked the crowd outside a mauve-trimmed Ralphs grocery store. A few shoppers recognized her from television; many others rushed by, too busy, unwilling or uninterested.

A Navy officer in uniform and crew-cut was persuaded to stop.

“So how are you on abortion,” the skeptical man asked.

Boxer girded herself for what she knew would be a hard sell: “I’m pro-choice. I believe in a woman’s right to choose. . . .”

“Are you hard on that?” he asked.

“Well, I’m very pro-choice,” she said. This, she probably realized, was a lost cause.

But then he asked about downsizing the military. Boxer brightened and launched into her plans for retraining defense industry workers and investing the peace dividend in domestic programs. He seemed to like that.

Later, to reporters, the officer said he had never heard of Barbara Boxer until that moment. But, he added, “She seemed like a nice lady.”

A few minutes later, a school librarian in pearls and sensible shoes stopped to shake Boxer’s hand. The woman said she had been a registered Republican for “thirty-some” years, until now. She re-registered Democrat, she said, so that she could vote for women Senate candidates.

“I’m sorry, but I’m voting gender!” the woman, Marian Day, of Mission Hills, said. “I switched to have more choice. . . . It’s time to take a chance, to do something different.”

After leaving San Diego by car, Boxer hooked up with her staff in Los Angeles and drove on to the Ventura rally. From there, she drove up U.S. 101 in a gray Dodge Caravan, complete with cooler stocked full of bagels and yogurt. A few catnaps along the way, Boxer and entourage arrived in Santa Cruz at about 4:30 a.m. Thursday, where they met with a small group of supporters at a Denny’s.

From there, Boxer traveled to Oakland, where she arrived at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center around 6:30 a.m. and toured the facility with a group of nurses.

Walking through wards of babies who are HIV-positive or have cancer, Boxer heard from the nurses how labor-intensive their work is. The care of one child can often require seven staff members.

Boxer paused in the intensive-care unit. An 18-month-old girl lay in a hospital bed too large for her, hooked up to more tubes, cables and machines than could easily be counted. She was recovering from open-heart surgery. Briefly, Boxer’s familiar statements and statistics failed her, and she fought back tears.

“You’re doing good work,” she quietly told an emergency room nurse. “We all thank you for that.”

From Oakland, Boxer boarded the van again and headed to Sacramento. She met with Democratic activists in an outdoor patio at the New Helvetia Roasters and Bakers, a coffee shop in a restored firehouse. Her supporters were happy to see her, but inside, some of the patrons were perhaps more representative of today’s voters.

“Mrs. Boxer is probably not as bad as they go . . . but I think all the candidates are a bunch of jerks,” Daniel Kennedy, an art collector, said over cappuccino. “It’s all the same. It doesn’t matter who you vote for, this country is in sad shape.”