Boxer’s Strategy Is to Stake Out Middle Ground

To win a tough reelection fight, Barbara Boxer apparently hopes to turn the U.S. Senate race from a referendum into a choice, from an up-or-down vote on her performance into a contrast between the incumbent and her opponent, state Treasurer Matt Fong.

With Wednesday’s first face-to-face meeting, Boxer took an important step in that direction and, to the extent anyone was watching, probably helped her cause.

The Democrat went on the offense from the start, using her opening remarks to portray Fong as a dangerously retrograde Republican who would steal away a woman’s abortion rights and allow guns to proliferate.

By contrast, Boxer extolled her own accomplishments in exhaustive, minute detail: 1.4 million jobs created since she took office in January 1993; 9,000 more police officers on the beat in California; a pristine coastline protected well into the next century.

No matter that Boxer, as one of 100 members of the U.S. Senate, had only a fraction, if anything, to do with those achievements. With her crisp recitations and facile command of facts, Boxer was senatorial and substantive in a way she has not always appeared in the past.

Fong, in turn, often seemed fumbling and ill at ease, frequently referring to notes he insisted upon bringing to the lectern as one of his conditions in pre-debate negotiations. “Barbara, you’re not soft on crime,” he said at one point, slipping up while attempting to make precisely the opposite charge (he quickly corrected himself).

Many of the issues Fong hopes to campaign upon--a stronger, more vigilant national defense; a simpler and fairer tax code--were lost for the day, squandered after the challenger’s opening statement as Fong repeatedly found himself on the defensive.

Not that Boxer was always in command. One problem, for her, was that the first quarter of the hourlong debate was taken up with a discussion of President Clinton’s relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky.

Boxer defended her relatively tepid condemnation of her fellow Democrat, which as Fong and debate panelist Dave Bryan pointed out was in striking contrast to her lead-the-charge role pursuing sexual harassment allegations against Republicans Clarence Thomas and Bob Packwood.

Saying, “I want to get back to work,” Boxer made repeated attempts to return to the compare and contrast themes she stressed at the opening.

Eventually, after considerable back-and-forth, Boxer and Fong wound up in the same place: condemning Clinton’s behavior but agreeing that talk of resignation or impeachment was premature, given the ongoing investigation by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Still, it was time Boxer probably would have rather spent making an affirmative case for her own reelection. The focus on Clinton pointed to the lingering danger the senator faces from continued fallout from Starr’s probe, and underscored Democratic fears that if the issue dominates political news through the fall, it could dampen turnout by Boxer’s partisans.

“It’s an issue that’s not going away,” said political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe of Claremont Graduate University, who attended the debate at KCAL’s studio in Hollywood. “And it hurts to the extent it takes away her ability to get her message out, because a lot of people still think she’s this radical liberal from Marin County.”

Indeed, Boxer spent a good deal of the hourlong debate trying to stake out the precious middle ground where most voters reside. It was the Democrat, for instance, who accused Fong of wanting to dip into the Social Security reserve fund “for higher spending,” who extolled the balanced federal budget and talked tough on the death penalty and welfare reform (in the process, she conveniently ignored parts of her congressional voting record).

Fong did a similar scurry for the center, stating an apparently pro-choice position for the first three months of pregnancy--after rigorously avoiding the abortion issue during the GOP primary--and endorsing legislation to ban housing and job discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Since her narrow election to the Senate six years ago, Boxer has been one of California’s most polarizing figures, seen by most voters in shades of black or white. Fong, a relative unknown to most California voters after a sole term as treasurer, is so drab as to be colorless.

If there was a winner at Wednesday’s debate it was Boxer, who managed to soften her harsh portrait, if only for the day, while doing her best to paint Fong in garish colors.

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Boxer vs. Fong

In their first debate, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and State Treasurer Matt Fong clashed on several issues, including the White House controversy, offshore oil drilling and gay rights.

On offshore oil drilling:

Boxer: The 40 tracks [of land] that have been leased but not drilled are mostly in...Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura [counties]....If those permits are given on those 40 leases, that will double the offshore oil drilling....We’re working to see that [Interior Secretary] Bruce Babbit does not grant those permits.

Fong: I am for protecting our environment....I support taking off those 40 leases as well....Playing politics with the environment is just plain wrong. My opponent just talked about President Bush signing the moritorium. Yes, and in 1990 when he did so, you [Boxer] criticized President Bush for signing that ten-year moritorium. And yet, eight years later, when President Clinton did the same exact thing, you praised him.

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On gay rights and national domestic partners legislation:

Boxer: What’s pending...is a Riggs amendment that said that a local city could not in fact get any more federal funds dealing with housing if they had domestic partners [rights] on the books....I think the local jurisiction is doing just fine on this issue.

Fong: I believe the core value of America is the traditional family unit...of husband and wife. But we should also be sensitive to the needs of those who live outside that traditional family structure. One of my own members of our family is gay and members of my family historically have suffered discrimination....So I support no discrimination of any kind for housing or employment.

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On the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal:

Boxer: What the president did was wrong. He should’ve stepped forward earlier and taken responsibility. Having said that,...there is a process in place. The special prosecutor is still moving forward.... He’s going to give a report to the Congress.

Fong: I’m glad to see that she’s in favor of the American process....But you know that’s not how Barbara Boxer was when it came time [for the] to Republicans....[Then] she was very partisan, whether it was Clarence Thomas, whether it was Senator Packwood. There was a process, Barbara; you didn’t follow it.

Compiled by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times