Decision ’92 : SPECIAL VOTERS’ GUIDE TO STATE AND LOCAL ELECTIONS : THE U.S. SENATE

Barbara Boxer

Born: Nov. 11, 1940, in Brooklyn, N.Y. Residence: Greenbrae.

Current position: U.S. congresswoman representing the 6th District, which encompasses Marin County and other portions of the Bay Area. Education: B.A. in economics, Brooklyn College, 1962. Career highlights: Stockbroker, 1962-65; reporter and associate editor of weekly Pacific Sun, 1972-74; aide to then-Rep. John Burton, 1974-76; Marin County supervisor, 1976-82; member of Congress, 1983-present. Personal: Married to attorney Stewart Boxer in 1962. Two grown children.

Excerpts from speeches: We must invest in America

In this campaign, much is at stake. It is not about partisan politics. The economy is at stake, the environment is at stake, the freedom of women and men is at stake in the form of the right to choose. And we have to understand that this goes beyond abortion. The people who oppose a woman’s right to choose are supporting a gag rule so that health care workers will no longer be able to tell their clients the truth. We have a situation where because of their opposition we can’t have fetal tissue research, which holds such promise. We do not have the pill RU-486 coming into this country, and that stops a whole very exciting area of research, because it holds a promise for finding a cure for breast cancer and for Cushing’s syndrome and for other diseases. So, much is at stake.

In my election for the U.S. Senate, you are going to find out who is for kids and who is just kidding, and Barbara Boxer is for kids and Bruce Herschensohn is just kidding. Let’s make that clear. Many times we isolate a discussion about education and we don’t connect it to the fact that it is probably the most important factor as we look at our economy. Education is probably the most important economic issue. And we have to put it in that light.

Recently, we found out that an international study has shown that America has slipped to No. 5 in competitiveness. In explaining why, as you read through the report, they attributed it, these researchers, to one thing: Our education system in America has slipped to No. 21 in the world--21 in the world!--and therefore we are losing out competitive edge.

The fact is I don’t think there is much disagreement in this land that education is the great equalizer, does give our people the opportunity. Even if they miss it a little bit in the early years, they can catch it in the community college. But we don’t want them to miss it in the early years, we want them to have it from Day 1. Head Start for all 3-year-olds, we need to start there! Now, the Education Department has just released its annual study of high school dropout rates, and the six cities with the highest dropout rates in the entire country are here in Southern California. We need help here and we need help all over the state.

Our educational system is in trouble. We know it. When I was a kid in the ‘50s--when we found out in America that we were falling behind in math and science and Russia launched Sputnik, the whole country froze in place and said, “What has happened to us? How are we going to keep up?” And a Republican President, Dwight David Eisenhower, said, “This will not do.” And he worked with the Congress--this was leadership--and they passed the National Defense Education Act.

But those days are long gone. There’s been a disconnect, a disconnect in our country between the Republican leaders we have seen in Washington and our children, and our teachers, and that’s wrong, because we’ll never compete if we don’t fix it and it’s time to fix it now.

We must invest in America. It is a crucial part of Bill Clinton’s message, it is a crucial part of Dianne Feinstein’s message and it’s a crucial part of my message. I used to be a stockbroker, and I know, when you make wise investments they pay! What? Dividends! Dividends! And when we have educated kids, and healthy and happy kids, and kids who are on track, those are huge dividends to our society, to our economy, and to all our families and our family values.

How are we going to pay for these investments? I think it is time to tell our allies in Europe and Asia it is time that they paid for their own military bills. Then we can bring that money home and take care of our own. I have authored a bill called the Reinvest in America Education Act: Head Start through college loans--mentors, computers in the classroom, teaching the foreign languages, rebuilding our schools. They are falling apart!

The fact is, we seriously have to tell our allies who we care about that we’ll always be there for them. But they have to pay their own military bills. It’s more than $300 million a day. What are they doing while we are picking up their military bills? Educating their kids, investing in high technology, rebuilding their infrastructure, highways and bridges.

Bruce Herschensohn

Born: Sept. 10, 1932, Milwaukee. Residence: Los Angeles.

Current position: Full - time candidate for the U.S. Senate. Education: University High School. Career highlights: U.S. Air Force, 1951-52; formed film company, 1956, producing documentary films for government and businesses; directed, wrote, filmed U.S. Information Agency documentary, “John F. Kennedy: Years of Lightning, Days of Drums”; special assistant to President Richard Nixon, 1972 to 1974; political commentator, KABC radio and television, 1978 to present, with breaks for political campaigns; candidate for U.S. Senate, 1986. Family: Divorced, no children. Excerpts from speeches: A voice for conservative ideals

I want you to imagine something. I want you to imagine that, in 1988, four years ago, the election had turned out differently. That instead of President Bush winning that election, it was Michael Dukakis. I want you to imagine something. Had that happened, I think that it is entirely possible and probable that at this time Saddam Hussein would rule the Persian Gulf states and would have authority over much of this nation’s energy.

I also believe and am confident that if Michael Dukakis had won, if George Bush hadn’t been President, our Supreme Court today would be giving legislative decisions, rather than judicial decisions. And in short, Clarence Thomas would not be sitting on the Supreme Court, and I am very glad that he is.

Had that election worked out differently, it is possible--even probable--that the term family values would never have emanated from the executive department of the government, and I’m glad that it has.

We all notice that when Bill Clinton gave his speech, his acceptance speech at the Democrats’ Convention, that a very small portion, just about one paragraph out of almost a one-hour speech, was devoted to foreign policy. And I can certainly understand why. Because right now we are living in a period that probably none of us thought that we would see: the end of the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall is down, the people of Eastern and Central Europe are free, there was an election in Nicaragua.

Do you remember who was for a military buildup and keeping our defenses strong? It was President Reagan, and it was the Republican Party. Against keeping our defenses strong, against that military buildup that eventually brought about the crumbling of communism in Europe, against all of that, were Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and the leadership of the Democrats.

It was the Republican Party, the Republican Party and not the Democrats, that wanted to give aid to the Nicaraguan resistance against Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista government. Against any aid to the Nicaraguan resistance were Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and the leadership of the Democrats. Today, there’s an elected president in Nicaragua and it isn’t Daniel Ortega, it’s Violeta Chamorro. And you’ll remember that many of the leadership of the Democrats went to that island nation, excuse me, that Central American nation, to Nicaragua, to embrace, embrace, Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista government.

And it was the Republican Party, it was President Reagan, who termed the Soviet Union, and it’s hegemony over so much of the world, the Evil Empire. And there were those who laughed and ridiculed and said you should never use that term in relation to the Soviet government and the ones who laughed and ridiculed and said you should never use that term were Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and the leadership of the Democrats.

If we have collective Republican conservative victories, victories of our party’s philosophy in what remains of this century, this is how our nation can look at the century’s edge:

We’ll have a nation where regulatory agencies no longer act like national police forces barging in and seizing property. Those agencies will be out of business unless they have a non-negative economic impact and observe the 5th Amendment constitutional rights of private property.

We’ll have a nation in the year 2000 with a new amendment added to our Constitution stating that “Neither the United States nor any state has the authority to prohibit or mandate prayer anywhere.”

We’ll have a nation in the year 2000 that will not permit for a moment the kind of anarchy and terrorism we lived through in Los Angeles last April the 30th. We will ensure domestic tranquillity as the U.S. Constitution requires.

By the year 2000, we’ll have a nation with a fair and uncomplicated tax system because of a true reform with the enactment of a Flat Rate Tax for all wage earners, a flat rate prescribed to balance our budget with none of our debts passed on to those yet unborn.

And speaking of the unborn, we’ll have a nation in which those unborn are granted the liberty to live.

Dianne Feinstein

Born: June 22, 1933, San Francisco.

Residence: San Francisco.

Current position: Full - time candidate for the U.S. Senate. Education: B.A. in history, Stanford University, 1955. Career highlights: Member, California Women’s Board of Terms and Parole, 1960-66; member, San Francisco City and County Board of Supervisors, 1970-78; mayor of San Francisco, 1978-88; Democratic nominee for governor of California, 1990. Family: Married to San Francisco investment banker Richard C. Blum, Jan. 20, 1980. One daughter, Katherine Anne, from previous marriage to the late Bertram Feinstein. Also divorced once.

Excerpts from speeches: Change versus more of the same

There is one big issue, it is more of the same versus change. Change carries a risk. You are voting for someone for the United States Senate. I hope you won’t cast that vote based on sound bites or 30-second spots. I hope you will cast that vote based on a record of an individual.

I think my strengths are that I am a good legislative craftsman, that I have run a city, that I understand what it is like to build a city, to keep it economically healthy, to keep people employed.

And I do believe in fairness. All during my tenure as mayor of San Francisco, no one will ever say that she was unfair, no one will ever say that she favored one group over another. I tried to see that there was access for people. I tried to see that those people had merit. I was proud to appoint people of merit and of color as well.

We come from a state that today is in the deepest economic slump since the Great Depression of the 1930s. We come from a state that has lost 780,000 jobs in the last two years alone. . . . What does that mean in terms of people losing their jobs? What does it mean for the working men and women of this state? What does it mean in terms of people losing their houses and health care because they can’t afford to pay their mortgages or their premiums? It means real life on the raw edge, and it has got to be reversed. . . .

The real acts of leadership aren’t in 30-second sound bites, and they aren’t in smart sayings. They are in what happens when you sit down in the middle of the night and you try to craft a solution to some of the most difficult problems in life that will stand the test of time and stand the test of extraordinary analysis and criticism. And frankly that’s . . . what I have had my seasoning in doing, and that’s what I have done the best.

If we become a more disunited America, if we look more for the differences among us than for the similarities, Los Angeles, April 29, will just be the beginning of a long litany of disuniting events throughout this country. The time has come when we must as a nation address once again the inner city and how you build it. I did that for nine years as mayor, and I did it at a time when I saw every single program that could help form the national level ended. . . . Whatever it was, it was ended in America. No wonder the legacy of those 12 years is abundant homelessness, absent health care, closing trauma units (and) child care that suffers in quality. . . .

What this new (Democratic) team has in common is saying that we must once again begin to build this country. Infrastructure is a terrible word. It is not a 30-second sound bite, it is not a smart saying. But think about it. You have got to support a productive economy, you have got to be able to have goods and services move rapidly out of the cities, you’ve got to be able to educate a work force as jobs become more highly technical and complicated, and you’ve got to be able to convince everyone that the golden key to opportunity is education.

One reason I stand before you today is that I had the best of what public and private education has had to offer in this country, and I want to do my utmost to see that legions of people can stand on platforms like this in the future and say exactly the same thing.

We’ve got to take these schools off of autopilot, we have to help them teach, we’ve got to see that they do, we’ve got to provide the kinds of programs that are necessary for learning, and we have to start it all very, very young, with early childhood education and new involvement of every parent in every state throughout this land. . . .

I hope that you will believe that my dream for this country is a very simple one. It is that we are one people, regardless of race, creed, color, sex or sexual orientation. That we have a work ethic, as a product of this work ethic we can get a job, as a product of the job we can buy a home, we can raise a family, we can educate that family to do better in life than we did, that we can live in a safe community and that we can drink clean water and breathe clean air.

That is my very simple dream. It isn’t coming true today. And that is the dream I hope to give you a progress report on in two years.

John Seymour

Born: Dec . 3, 1937, Chicago Residence: San Clemente

Current position: Appointed U.S. senator Education: Served four years in Marines after graduating from Mt. Lebanon High School in Pennsylvania; attended UCLA, graduating in 1962 with a degree in real estate and finance .

Career highlights: Started his own real estate brokerage business in 1964; elected to Anaheim City Council in 1974, serving as mayor from 1978 to 1982; elected to state Senate in 1982; appointed by Gov. Pete Wilson to U.S. Senate in January, 1991.

Family: Married to Judy Seymour for 20 years, with three children, one adopted; also has three children from a previous marriage that ended in divorce.

Excerpts from speeches: Working to make a difference

The No. 1 issue facing California today is jobs. I understand what it takes to create and keep jobs, to make a payroll, to sweat through the tough times of recession. And that’s what I think this campaign should be all about. I had a life before politics. I was in business 17 years. I know what it’s like to work my way through a recession. My opponent, Dianne Feinstein, has made government her entire life.

I got involved not because of some ego trip but because I was fed up with the status quo, because I became convinced that one person can make a difference. Mayor Feinstein likes to talk about change. But I’m here to tell you that I’ve been in the trenches to make change happen and I’ve being doing it long before change suddenly became the trendy or politically correct thing to do. Mayor Feinstein is right about one thing. This election is about change. And there’s going to be a clear choice between her words and my deeds, between her old ideas and my new thinking.

It has been a very quick, fast 18 months. It’s been a lot of work, but the most challenging thing I’ve ever done in my lifetime. I can recall, for example, having met, now twice, Boris Yeltsin. The first time the media greeted him before the coup as a bumpkin and perhaps an alcoholic and as a revolutionary. In my meetings with him at that time, I recall meeting a very bright, committed, talented, tenacious, cunning, opportunistic politician. So it was strange at that time to read the media reports.

And then to see him greeted a year later, now after the coup, and the media was saying some extraordinarily positive things about him now that he was the new president of the Republic of Russia. And so I look at myself as a politician and recognize what the media had to say about John Seymour when he went back to Washington--that he was dead on arrival, that he was nothing but a caretaker--and to know that I have these 18 months to perform and make some things happen. . . . As I look in the mirror, get up out of bed every morning and I look in the mirror and I know that I’ve had a hand in trying to make a difference in fighting for California.

That first week in Washington, I boarded a tram from the Senate Office Building to the chambers and I found myself seated next to my colleague Sen. Bill Roth from the state of Delaware. He said, “John, what did you do before you came to Washington?” I said, “Bill, I was a state senator in the California state Legislature and I represented about 600,000 constituents in Orange County. And he started to laugh and I said, “Bill, what are you laughing about?” And he said, “John, I’m a United States senator from Delaware and I represent 600,000 constituents.” So that put everything in proper perspective.

I cast my first vote and made my first speech in support of the (Iraq) war resolution. And a lot of history has been written since that January 12th of 1991 when I cast that first vote.

If somewhere, in a footnote, history should record my public record, my public service, I would hope that they record me as one who cared more for people than for policy, one who was a no-nonsense guy who worked hard for those in need of help, but who wasn’t hesitant to knock heads of bureaucrats in order to get things done. You know, I see great similarities between our hometown, and its renowned landmark of Disneyland, and Washington, D.C. They both revolve around illusion and fantasy and both have their characters. Washington unfortunately has more than one Goofy idea and too many Mickey Mouse programs.

I can confirm firsthand yours and my worst fears. Government waste and inefficiency is everywhere. Bureaucracy is faceless, unresponsive and uncaring. Congress is out of step with the people and out of control with their spending and out of sight with their arrogance. They sell drugs in their own post office, they run up lunch tabs they don’t pay, they kite checks in their own bank and they vote for pay raises for themselves in the middle of the night.