Feinstein, Boxer Poised for Daunting Challenges : Senate: For three months they have been fawned over. They have also laid groundwork for job ahead.

The spacious offices of Sen. Barbara Boxer were crawling with Secret Service agents as Secretary of State-designate Warren Christopher waited patiently in the lobby to meet with California’s newest U.S. senator.

Boxer, still basking in the glow of her November triumph, has found herself in high demand during her first month on the job. Before Boxer could hire a press secretary, her staff was overwhelmed with interview requests from newspaper correspondents and all four major television networks.

An equally hot commodity atop Capitol Hill is California’s other first-year senator, Dianne Feinstein. She was selected by Senate leaders to crack the all-male Judiciary Committee and, during last week’s inaugural festivities, was greeted with wild applause wherever she went. In a recent Newsweek cover story, “Women of the Year,” Feinstein was featured prominently in a pictorial, posing with her baby granddaughter.

For three months Feinstein and Boxer have been feted and fawned over by the Washington political Establishment after their historic breakthrough as a state’s first pair of women U.S. senators in the nation’s history. As the inaugural celebrations fade and the 103rd Congress gets down to business, however, a daunting challenge awaits the Democratic twosome.

Both California women campaigned as agents of change who promised to shake up the Senate. So far, Feinstein and Boxer have been adapting to the tradition-bound body in the cautious, conservative manner typical of first-year senators.

But each has shown flashes of independence.

Boxer, in a rare outburst against a fellow senator, said in an interview that Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) should resign immediately, even before the Senate completes an investigation into allegations that he sexually harassed female staffers. Feinstein has indicated that she will introduce a bill that would abolish the exemption from sexual harassment laws that the Senate granted itself.

Lack of Seniority

The male-dominated Senate, notorious for its deliberative and clubby ways, would appear an inhospitable institution for two high-profile, first-year women senators who have vowed to provide swift economic relief for California at a time when the state is in desperate need of federal assistance. Lack of seniority is certain to frustrate Boxer and Feinstein by denying them everything from powerful subcommittee posts to useful perquisites.

This year, for example, Feinstein and Boxer are not entitled to “hideaways,” the private rooms situated inside the Capitol near the Senate chamber that provide a quiet retreat for senators. The hideaways often are used to resolve disputes among senators as legislation is hammered out on the nearby Senate floor. But only 76 rooms are available and they are assigned by seniority, leaving Boxer and Feinstein out in the hallway.

Both California senators say they are determined to scale the institutional barriers.

“What I have to do is produce,” Feinstein said in an interview. “If I’m really going to get something done, I need to convince my colleagues to work with me. Because the more you learn about the Senate, the more you realize that it’s really a difficult place for a newcomer.”

Despite their freshman status, Feinstein, 59, and Boxer, 52, are well positioned to become influential players in the Senate, some political observers say.

Short of the presidency, the position of U.S. senator from California is the most “significant” in American politics today, said former Rep. Mel Levine, who previously worked as a Senate staffer for California Democrat John V. Tunney and ran against Boxer in last year’s Democratic primary.

“Two freshman senators from California can accomplish an extraordinary amount,” Levine said. “They are obviously in a very unique and historic position. There are many members of the U.S. Senate, whether they are politically ambitious or want to respond to a very critical national constituency, who will want them to succeed from Day 1.”

Both California senators have been buried under an avalanche of logistic demands since the November election. They had to quickly set up the largest offices in Congress, where the size of a lawmaker’s staff is determined in part by the number of constituents. For each California senator, this meant hiring about 60 employees and starting a mail-room operation that is expected to receive--and respond to--as many as 15,000 constituent letters a week.

Receptionists for the California senators have had trouble coping with the volume of telephone calls. Last week, calls to Boxer’s office were answered by a recording that said, “The mailbox belonging to Sen. Barbara Boxer’s office is full. Goodby.”

For Feinstein, the former San Francisco mayor who spent the past four years on the campaign trail and will be forced to hit it again next year, the transition has been particularly hectic. She was sworn in the week after her November victory to fill the remaining two years of Gov. Pete Wilson’s term. Mindful that she will have to run for reelection in 1994, Feinstein spent a weekend in December attending fund-raisers in Miami.

Boxer, already accustomed to the ways of Washington as a 10-year veteran of the House, had two months to plot her transition. She has also found time for two vacations in Hawaii since the election.

As Boxer and Feinstein have prepared to launch their Senate careers, a number of differences in style and approach--some substantial, others subtle--have emerged, along with many similarities.

Feinstein immersed herself in the nitty-gritty details of her Senate operation, from participating in the interviewing and hiring of top aides to changing hotels in Washington from the Madison to the Jefferson to save $20 a night.

For the most part, Boxer followed the more typical Senate scenario of delegating hiring matters to top staffers she brought over from the House.

Feinstein openly campaigned for assignments to the Appropriations and Judiciary committees, and spelled out in detail the first pieces of legislation she intends to introduce. Among the proposals is the California Desert Protection Act she introduced last week.

Boxer, preferring to abide by the Senate’s penchant for secrecy, declined to reveal her committee choices. She has not decided what legislation she will introduce first. Her priorities include helping push through the Clinton Administration’s economic package, health care reforms and a bill guaranteeing abortion rights.

Feinstein is determined to stick to her campaign pledge of cutting her office and payroll expenses by 25%. Recently, President Clinton has begun to hedge on a similar promise.

“It is more difficult to attain than I thought,” Feinstein said. “But I think everybody ought to do it as a statement of the times, as a symbol of being serious about cutting back. . . . You have to start at home.”

Boxer has no plans to cut her annual budget. If anything, Boxer said, her Senate office budget makes it difficult to effectively serve 31 million constituents. She noted that the approximately $3.5-million annual allotment for each California senator is far less per capita than the budgets of senators from smaller states.

Like their fellow senators, Boxer and Feinstein followed the longstanding tradition of rewarding their top campaign aides by giving them lucrative jobs and salaries.

Feinstein made Campaign Manager Kam Kuwata her California director and highest-paid staffer at a yearly salary of $105,000. Other top Feinstein staffers are Chief of Staff John Haber at $85,000, Legislative Director Barbara Larkin at $84,000 and Deputy Legislative Director Kathy Lacey, who had been an aide to former Sen. Alan Cranston, at $75,000. Communications Director Bill Chandler, who earned $55,000 as Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s press secretary, gets $75,000.

Boxer is paying her campaign manager, Rose Kapolczynski, $85,000 as state director. Her other top-paid staffers are Chief of Staff Sam Chapman at $98,000, Administrative Assistant Karen Olick at $85,000, Policy Director Drew Littman at $85,000 and Legislative Director Liz Tankersly at $75,000.

As senators, Feinstein and Boxer receive $133,600 yearly.

During inaugural week, Feinstein courted California constituents who visited Washington by throwing two receptions that were paid for out of campaign funds. At an office-warming party after Clinton’s inaugural Wednesday, Feinstein stood for 2 1/2 hours posing for photographs with several hundred voters. The guests were promised pictures taken by a Senate photographer at taxpayers’ expense. They also consumed 13 cases of California wine and champagne given to Feinstein by the Wine Institute, a Washington lobbying group.

Boxer, who does not have to worry about her reelection until 1998, sponsored no such events for Californians. She spent the week attending numerous festivities, including luncheons held in her honor by Los Angeles attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.’s law firm and EMILY’s List, a leading feminist organization.

Both California senators stood out among their colleagues by calling for Packwood to quit after it was reported he had sexually harassed some female staffers. Feinstein said Packwood should resign if a pending Senate Ethics Committee investigation confirms the allegations. Boxer went even further in an interview, saying Packwood should step down immediately.

“For the good of the institution, for his good and for the women involved, I think it would be better if he resigned,” Boxer said. “Look, no one is irreplaceable in the scheme of things.”

The two senators see eye to eye on the importance of working as a team. This would be a departure from the past 24 years, when one California seat was occupied by Cranston and the other was filled by faces arriving through a revolving door, all but one of them Republican.

Cranston and former Sen. John Seymour said they never met on a regular basis and discussed issues of importance to the state only when necessary.

Cranston said he cautioned Boxer and Feinstein that it can be difficult for two senators from the same state and party to get along. When he arrived in 1968, Cranston recalled, Arkansas Democrats J. William Fulbright and John L. McClellan were barely on speaking terms.

“Rivalries tend to develop between people of the same party that don’t exist between people of opposite parties,” Cranston said. “You can be rivals for prestige and power within your party, for heading the state delegation to a national convention or for carrying some particular bill of interest to people of your party.”

Boxer and Feinstein say they already have put aside their past political differences to form a close partnership. They have agreed to meet weekly in an informal setting--Boxer suggested breakfast and Feinstein preferred dinner. (They tentatively agreed on dinner.)

Signs of this cooperative arrangement are evident already.

Feinstein, even though she is the senior senator who traditionally would nominate judicial appointees, announced that she will share the responsibility with Boxer. They will take turns offering recommendations to President Clinton to fill vacancies on the federal bench in California.

Boxer let Feinstein take credit for introducing the California Desert Protection Act, a bill that is likely to become law under a Democratic Administration. This was a concession by Boxer, who established a track record in the House as an ardent environmentalist and will serve on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The senators also agree on their top priorities--reviving the California economy and uniting the state’s fractured congressional delegation.

Appropriations Committee

Feinstein is well positioned to look after the state’s interests in her new post on the Appropriations Committee, the powerful panel that controls the Senate purse strings. She is the first California senator to serve on Appropriations since Republican Thomas H. Kuchel in 1968.

Boxer is forming what she calls a “bipartisan unity working group,” which will consist of one Republican and one Democratic House member from Northern and Southern California. The purpose of the task force is to ensure that issues of importance to California are not overlooked as they make their way through both houses of Congress.

Boxer, sipping apple juice during a recent interview in her Senate office, said that California’s senators are being warmly accepted by many incumbent senators. This was evident when Senate leaders set aside two suites of offices for California in the Hart Building, Boxer said. Normally, it would take years before a freshman senator could expect to occupy such spacious and lavish quarters.

Feinstein and Boxer assumed a lead role in the Senate confirmation process by introducing the Californians nominated for Clinton’s Cabinet. Christopher visited with both senators before his confirmation hearings.

Boxer said she was thrilled when she received a congratulatory call from Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.) the day after it was announced she had been selected to the Environment Committee.

According to Boxer, Moynihan told her: “We need California on that Environment Committee. It is ridiculous . . . California is half the country.”

Boxer said: “That kind of attitude is terrific. You would expect maybe that New York would be competitive with California. That is just an example of how wonderful people have been in reaching out. . . . I think people understand California is in trouble and if California doesn’t rebound, it is going to drag everything down in the country.”

Feinstein remains skeptical that any measure of influence will come her way simply because she represents the nation’s largest state.

“We in California would like to say well, after all, we’ve got more votes than somebody in a small state,” Feinstein said. “But when you get back here, that doesn’t mean anything. It’s mano a mano. “