CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS : The Strategists in the Herschensohn-Boxer Battle : Democrats: Campaign manager Rose Kapolczynski tries to be the ‘political windshield’--not the bug that runs into it.

Rose Kapolczynski, the top official in Democratic candidate Barbara Boxer’s campaign for the U.S. Senate, said that as a political campaign manager “sometimes you are the windshield and sometimes you are the bug.”

“When you lose, the campaign manager is the bug,” she said.

Kapolczynski, who got hooked on politics when she was a high school sophomore in Wisconsin, has a lot on her mind a week before Election Day: Wondering what Boxer’s opponent, Republican Bruce Herschensohn, is up to, making last-minute campaign decisions, figuring out the best way to spend the $100,000 a day that the Boxer campaign is raising, deciding which television ads to run on what stations, managing the staff and volunteers.

And avoiding being a bug on Herschensohn’s windshield.

Second-guessers abound. Boxer, an underdog in the Democratic primary who defeated two veteran Democratic officeholders, Lt. Gov. Leo T. McCarthy and Rep. Mel Levine, has been the favorite in the general election. But Boxer’s once-sizable lead over Herschensohn has been cut by more than half. Kapolczynski knows where the buck stops: at her doorstep.

At a time when Herschensohn was making big gains in the polls, Kapolczynski went with a novel television ad that used the image of Herschensohn speaking in his own words about such things as his support for offshore oil drilling. Many were confused, thinking it was a Herschensohn ad.

Kapolczynski defends the ad, which has been withdrawn in most places.

“All our research shows that it worked very well. His views are so outlandish that we wanted to present them in the most believable way. Normally, people have a hard time believing negative ads. There is a certain percentage of people who say, ‘I don’t believe that, that’s just mudslinging,’ ” she said.

Kapolczynski, who earns $10,000 a month running Boxer’s campaign, is the first to admit that politics is an inexact science. In 1988, she managed a U.S. Senate campaign in Washington state. Her candidate, Mike Lowry, a former Democratic congressman from Seattle, lost to Republican Slade Gorton by 40,000 votes out of 1.8 million cast. In the closing days of the campaign, she ran a hard-hitting television ad against Gorton that some said was so negative that it backfired against Lowry.

“There were decisions that I reconsidered in my mind for months after we lost. It was a close race. When you lose by about 1%, you always think you could have done something different,” she said.

Kenneth L. Khachigian, Herschensohn’s campaign manager, would not like to trade places with her at this point in the campaign. “I would rather be in our shoes than their shoes. The worst thing in the world is to see that lead fritter away. It is an awful feeling,” he said.

Even though she is only 37, Kapolczynski has been working in politics for more than half her life.

Kapolczynski said she got hooked on politics when she watched her hometown become “energized” over environmental cleanup. When she was in high school, she organized busloads of students to go out of town, in one case to Ohio, to work for George McGovern in 1972.

After high school, she attended the University of Colorado for three years, but left and began working on environmental issues in the late 1970s. She was a paid staffer for the Colorado Open Space Council when she was hired by the Sierra Club to run its Seattle office in 1980. In 1983, she began working on former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart’s failed presidential campaign, and she was a coordinator for Hart in Midwestern and Western states through much of 1984. After that, she ran a Seattle mayoral campaign, moved to Washington, D.C., to become political director of the Sierra Club, and then back West in 1988 to run Lowry’s campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Kapolczynski was in Washington working as a political consultant when she met Boxer. She joined Boxer’s staff last year, moving to California in August, 1991. “We hit it off right away. We have a terrific relationship,” Kapolczynski said.

The campaign manager said she loves the excitement of politics. But like a lot of people involved in campaigns this year, she’s a bit worn out at this point.

“The stress, the hours, are hard to take. Twelve- to 14-hour days, seven days a week, and it’s been going on for an awful long time,” she said.

But, she said, “I love campaigns. They are more thrilling than any roller coaster I’ve been on, and I love roller coasters.

“At the end of every campaign, I think to myself: ‘Why would I do this again?’ I am so tired. But then another candidate comes along who inspires me, and I jump in again,” she said.