NEWS ANALYSIS : Gain by Herschensohn Puts Boxer Off Balance : Election: Lead of 20 points has been cut by half or more. Underdog’s early TV campaign played big role.

Three months ago, it seemed U.S. Senate candidate Barbara Boxer could do no wrong.

Basking in the glow of a primary victory over better-known and better-financed men, feted to celebrity status at the Democratic National Convention, Boxer had amassed a whopping 20-point lead over opponent Bruce Herschensohn. A conservative Republican television commentator who has never held elective office, Herschensohn was being dismissed in some Democratic and Republican circles as too far to the right to be taken seriously.

Now, with less than two weeks until the election, Boxer’s lead has been cut in half in one poll--and reduced to nearly nothing in Republican tracking surveys that show Herschensohn with momentum and gaining. A national co-chairman of President Bush’s reelection campaign suggested last week that a surging Herschensohn could provide “reverse coattails” for Bush in California.

Though such Republican claims may be partisan hyperbole, Boxer’s polling shows that her lead has slipped below 10 points, and she recently predicted that the contest will be a dead heat by Election Day. “The way we are going to win is if we run like we are way behind,” Boxer told precinct walkers last weekend in Sherman Oaks.

The swift reversal of fortunes has caught many analysts by surprise. Conventional wisdom after the June primary had Boxer running away with the election, in part because of Herschensohn’s conservative views but also because of her aggressive primary campaign. Handicappers had wrongly pegged Dianne Feinstein--who holds a solid lead over Republican Sen. John Seymour in the other Senate race--as the vulnerable Democrat.

What happened?

While a number of factors may be at work, Herschensohn has run a formidable campaign by playing to his strengths: television and a strong anti-incumbency sentiment. Boxer has been caught on the defensive, forced to follow Herschensohn’s lead and play catch-up for the better part of a month. This has made it difficult for her to capitalize on what she regards as Herschensohn’s extreme views, including his opposition to any defense cuts, his uncompromising anti-abortion stance and his call to eliminate most environmental regulations.

Races traditionally tighten during the final weeks of a campaign, as voters pay attention to the contests and often return to the party fold. Some pollsters and analysts suggest that there also has been a gradual fading of excitement generated by the prospect of electing a woman to the male-dominated Senate.

But the critical turning point came Sept. 22 when Herschensohn began airing television ads statewide, a full two weeks before Boxer, a five-term congresswoman from Marin County. His relentless attacks on the perks and privileges of Congress--even though Boxer was not mentioned by name--went unanswered and put the Boxer camp on the defensive, where it has been ever since.

It was a strategic gamble by Herschensohn, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a media campaign weeks before most voters began thinking about Senate races. But in a contest where both candidates suffer from low name recognition statewide, the television blitz allowed Herschensohn to define himself in his own terms: Here was an outsider, just like you and me, outraged by the shenanigans on Capitol Hill.

“The anti-incumbent feeling may very well be at work here,” said Larry Berg, a political scientist at USC.

Since then, Herschensohn has been successful in keeping attention trained on Boxer’s liabilities as a Washington insider, including her vote in favor of a congressional pay raise, her 143 overdrafts on the now defunct House bank and her liberal politics. He also has successfully played the debate card, challenging Boxer to more than 100 face-to-face encounters and accusing her of running from public scrutiny by agreeing to only three.

“My view of this race has always been (that) the winner will be the candidate who gets the most mileage by focusing on the other candidate,” said pollster Mark DiCamillo, whose Field Poll last week was one of the indicators that the race was narrowing. “Early on, Boxer was able to pass off Herschensohn as being out of the mainstream. Now, he has been effective in saying: ‘Look, Boxer is the one who’s out of the mainstream.’ ”

The decision not to respond earlier to Herschensohn’s television campaign--Boxer’s first ad did not run until Oct. 7--was dictated by the bottom line, campaign officials said. Boxer had a choice: Hold off for two weeks and have enough money to run ads through Election Day, or respond immediately to Herschensohn’s broadcasts and risk running out of money during the final days of the contest.

Campaign manager Rose Kapolczynski said there was really no choice. Since July 1, Boxer has been outspent by Herschensohn, who anticipates an infusion of $2.5 million from the Republican Party’s national Senate committee. To date, Boxer has received $500,000 from the Democratic Party’s Senate committee, and can count on just $500,000 more.

“Sure it would have been nice to do both, but that wasn’t an option,” Kapolczynski said. “In every election there are a large number of voters who make up their minds in the last 10 days. If you aren’t able to talk to those people when they are making up their minds, you are in trouble.”

Nonetheless, it was a call that has been second-guessed--inside and outside the campaign. Before Boxer began airing her ads, the campaign received telephone calls and letters from supporters asking why Herschensohn was getting a free ride on television. “Get on TV!” one donor scribbled on a fund-raising response card.

Political science professor Bruce Cain of UC Berkeley, who had been predicting an easy Boxer victory, said Thursday that Boxer tripped up by allowing Herschensohn to capitalize early and effectively on her weaknesses. Cain still predicts that Boxer will win, but he criticized her campaign for allowing Herschensohn to take the offensive.

“What surprises me is Boxer hasn’t done as a good a job as she should in showing how far Bruce Herschensohn is away from the median voter in his attitudes on abortion, the environment and the role of government,” he said. “He is off the map on these things, and its not being conveyed as effectively as Herschensohn is conveying his anti-Congress message.”

In one of her first ads, Boxer attempted to depict Herschensohn as an extremist on a variety of issues, using his own words to make the point. It spliced together video clips of speeches and public statements he has made, proclaiming his support for offshore oil drilling, for abolishing the Department of Education and for repealing Roe vs. Wade.

Kapolczynski said Democratic tracking surveys show the ad and several others aired this month have effectively stabilized Boxer’s slide. The surveys show Boxer with a consistent eight to 10 point lead, with Herschensohn never garnering more than 40%, she said.

But Herschensohn’s campaign manager, Ken Khachigian, said the ad has not had the impact Boxer’s staff intended. With the exception of the abortion rights question, the positions highlighted in the ad are not cutting-edge issues that are decisive in most voters’ minds, he said. Khachigian’s nightly tracking polls showed Herschensohn pulling to within 1.6 points of Boxer as of Monday: 44.6% for Boxer and 42.8% for Herschensohn, with 8.6% undecided.

USC political scientist Herb Alexander also doubts the effectiveness of the Boxer ad.

“Honest to God, you’re not sure whether this is a Herschensohn ad or an anti-Herschensohn ad,” he said. “If you don’t listen carefully, you might miss that. . . . You are giving name identification to Herschensohn.”

As he surges in the polls, Herschensohn is rapidly becoming the cause celebre of a beleaguered Republican Party hungry for a victory. Already beloved by the party’s right wing, Herschensohn is gaining a wider following among GOP loyalists. He was featured on the cover of National Review this week and is pictured on the front page of a recent edition of Roll Call, a Washington newspaper that covers Congress, under the headline: “Bright Spot at Last for GOP.”

None of this is lost on the former aide to President Richard M. Nixon.

“It’s a good feeling,” a relaxed and jocular Herschensohn said Wednesday after an appearance at Leisure World in Seal Beach. “I felt pretty crummy when it was 20 points and holding like that. I mean, it was a long time. . . . I really got concerned.”

Boxer, meanwhile, has lacked much of the confidence and zest she displayed during the primary, when she had little difficulty deflecting criticism about her problems in Congress. In recent campaign appearances and interviews, she has deliberately lowered expectations about the race and herself.

“We are not perfect, and you knew that,” she said at a fund-raiser this week in San Francisco. “But we are in it for the right reasons.”

The reversal of fortunes can be detected inside headquarters of the opposing camps.

At Herschensohn campaign offices, which occupy half a floor in a Newport Beach office park building, staffers who sometimes found it hard to persuade doubting friends that Herschensohn had a chance are now reveling in sudden potential winner status.

“Now people are realizing we are going to do it,” said scheduler Patty Renfer, her desk awash in papers, faxes, yellow sticky notes and brown filter-tip cigarettes.

Phone and mail traffic have doubled and tripled in recent weeks, staffers say, and money--especially from big donors--is pouring in. Some Republican cash cows were reluctant to support Herschensohn while he did not seem a “viable candidate,” campaign officials said, but these holdouts are starting to come around.

At Boxer’s campaign headquarters--spread out over two floors of a Hollywood high-rise near Mann’s Chinese Theatre--the complacency of a month ago has given way to a sense of urgency. Volunteers and paid staffers say Herschensohn’s rise in the polls caught many of them by surprise, but no one has grown disheartened.

In fact, they said, it may be the wake-up call many supporters needed. When a newspaper story this week in San Francisco said that the race was tightening, the campaign collected $3,785 one afternoon in credit card donations from frantic telephone callers.

Times staff writer Glenn F. Bunting contributed to this report from Washington.