CAMPAIGN JOURNAL : Boxer Seeks to Sow Support in Central Valley

At the first Fajita Festival along downtown’s main street, U.S. Senate candidate Barbara Boxer is working the crowd.

She pauses in front of the Doritos stand to pin a yellow Boxer button on Edward Garcia, a worker in a fiberglass factory. Garcia likes Boxer OK; the trouble is that he is not registered to vote.

“The way politics is, you know . . . ,” Garcia later tells a reporter. “I just never got around to it (registering).”

Historically, low registration and turnout are only part of the problem for Boxer in the conservative San Joaquin Valley, where even among Democrats she came in second in the June primary. It was Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy who won this fruit and vegetable valley that feeds the nation.

With that in mind, Boxer persuaded McCarthy to join her on a campaign swing Thursday and Friday that covered territory from Bakersfield to Fresno. On Saturday, Boxer continued solo up through the valley from Madera to Sacramento, where she was scheduled to arrive by nightfall.

All of this is part of a 56-city, 17-day statewide campaign tour designed to expand Boxer’s geographical and political base in her tough Senate race. The liberal 10-year veteran of the U.S. House of Representatives faces conservative television commentator Bruce Herschensohn in a classic ideological clash for the six-year seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Alan Cranston.

As she did during the primary campaign, Boxer continues to concentrate on her likely supporters, such as labor leaders and Democratic clubs. But she is also meeting with less reassuring audiences--angry farmers, Republican raisin producers, and runaway juveniles for whom politicians are an anathema.

Frequently linking her name to that of Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton, Boxer emphasized her campaign themes of jobs, education and “bringing the dollars home” from overseas projects to domestic investment.

“You go from one end of the state to another,” she said Saturday at a stop in Merced, “and you hear the same thing over and over and over. People are fearful, fearful of losing jobs . . . of not having (adequate) health insurance. . . . The good news is there’s a lot of hope out there, hope for change.”

At hospitals and clinics in Fresno, Lamont and McFarland (home to a mysterious cancer cluster among children), she preached affordable health care. Environmental protection and water were the issues at the Grassland Wetlands outside Los Banos, where officials presented Boxer with a duck hunting vest as white-faced ibis and snow egrets flitted about.

“The only thing I’ll be hunting are votes,” Boxer said. Duck hunters and conservationists work hand in hand in this area to preserve the wetlands.

Among labor leaders and some farmers she seemed to score points with her opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. The pact that will remove trade barriers with Mexico must include provisions to prevent the exodus of American jobs, she said.

Boxer hopes these themes will hit home particularly well in the Central Valley, where unemployment is higher than the state average and there are signs that the economic recession continues to deepen.

“It’s going to be bleak times for the middle class unless we change course,” she said. “Families are in trouble. Children are in trouble, and where children are in trouble, the state is in trouble.”

Water policy also was an issue when Boxer visited the Sun-Maid raisin plant outside Fresno on Friday. Company officials refused to allow The Times to attend their meeting with the candidate, but said afterward there was “some common ground” with Boxer on some issues.

“People get branded as a liberal with two horns on their head,” said Bruce G. Conley, Sun-Maid’s director of industry relations. “I told her I was glad she didn’t have horns on her head. . . . Not enough people here know much about her; that’s the problem.”

Later, Boxer was grilled by skeptical fruit and vegetable farmers in nearby Selma who challenged her on water and environmental policies. Boxer is routinely given high praise by environmental groups, who are often on the opposite side of issues from the agricultural industry.

“Look,” she begins, “one of my jobs is to protect the environment . . .”

“At what cost?” demands a farmer.

“To what degree?” demands another.

Boxer begins to speak of the importance of compromise.

“What kind of compromise?” a third farmer insists.

Finally, Boxer says negotiation and give and take are the keys.

“I don’t have to be at this table,” she tells the group. “I want to be at this table. . . . Maybe we’ll agree on 60% of the issues, maybe 80% of the issues, and maybe some years only 45%. . . .”

At a rally with Democratic activists in a carpenters’ union hall in downtown Fresno, Boxer told her audience that Herschensohn is out of touch on a variety of issues that are important to California, from abortion rights, which Boxer supports, to education, where Herschensohn advocates abolishing the Department of Education.

Herschensohn, for his part, maintains that Boxer, who wrote 143 overdrafts on a House bank account, is the one who is out of touch, portraying her as too liberal for mainstream California and part of the problem in Washington.

He also has criticized her for rejecting his offer of a weekly debate. She said she would rather spend the time campaigning and would agree to a handful of dates. He said she is afraid of his sharp debating skills.