With Both Hopefuls Vulnerable, Turnout Is Key

With a month left before judgment day, both candidates for the U.S. Senate can make a reasonable argument that they will win. Both can point to polls backing them up. Yet neither, really, has a clue what will happen.

Rarely has an incumbent senator been in Democrat Barbara Boxer’s shoes, entering the stretch run dead even, at best, with a challenger who began to advertise statewide only in the last few days.

Rarely has a challenger been in Republican Matt Fong’s shoes, a beneficiary of the wacky political environment and broad distaste for the incumbent, but with hardly his name, much less his issue positions, known to Californians.

The unpredictability of it all has candidates, strategists and analysts of every stripe muttering the same mantra: “Turnout.” According to the prevailing wisdom, the lower the turnout, the better for Fong and the worse for Boxer. Or, as Boxer said hopefully at a recent event: “Guess what: If everyone votes, we win.”

Whoever wins, this week ushers in the real start of the Senate campaign. The candidates have been picked for months and have even debated once, but only now are both jostling for position on the television airwaves where California’s elections are decided.

Boxer, her political career hanging in the balance, opened both barrels at state Treasurer Fong this week, blasting him for his opposition to new restrictions on assault weapons. Turning advertising orthodoxy on its head, she went negative before spending much time lathering up herself--a high-wire indication of the straits in which she finds herself, and of her campaign’s heightened effort to define Fong before he defines himself.

Fong, trying to make his message as blandly inoffensive as possible, is introducing himself to Californians with a mom-and-apple-pie advertisement on education, the issue considered most pressing by voters. Hoping to broaden his constituency, he is airing versions of the ad in English, Spanish and two Chinese dialects. And he doesn’t even mention Boxer--the better to freeze voter impressions of her and not risk having some rise to her defense.

Each is trying to make the other one the issue, which only underscores the weaknesses of both.

“What strikes me as so odd and most telling about the vulnerabilities is: Here’s a campaign where the ad wars have not been engaged, the candidate back-and-forth has been fairly minimal and it’s even,” said Jennifer Duffy, who studies Senate and gubernatorial races for the Cook Political Report, which is based in Washington.

Boxer’s difficulty is readily apparent. In a recent Times poll, she trailed Fong 48% to 43% among likely voters, a sharp indictment of an incumbent. Less surprisingly, she led 47% to 39% among registered voters, a reflection of Democratic strength on paper that often disappears on election day when only the most dependable voters show up.

When asked their impression of her, a third of registered voters said it was unfavorable, while half said it was positive. Fong, in comparison, was 40% favorable to only 14% unfavorable. The largest chunk of his supporters said they backed him because he is not Boxer.

But Boxer has always been a skin-of-her-teeth candidate, having eked her way into office in 1992 on President Clinton’s and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s coattails. She is also, in this race, a living exemplar of the political truism that you can’t always predict the outcome by listening to the candidates.

On the stump, she is pointed, enthusiastic and disciplined enough to daily tick off her criticisms of Fong: He wants to raise the qualifying age for Medicare, believes the Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion was “wrongly decided” and would fail to support environmental protections.

More polished and effervescent than Fong, she gibes at his friends, characterizing him as a tool of controversial compatriots like former Reagan administration official Oliver North.

“You can tell something about people by their friends. . . . I’ve got Hillary, he’s got Ollie,” Boxer told her audience at a recent San Francisco fund-raiser that starred First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Boxer’s strategists insist that Californians, a broad and diverse people living in a state that largely ignores politics, don’t really dislike Boxer. Rather, they say, they simply do not know her, and thus will be willing to side with her if they buy her characterization of Fong.

“Until this week, all they really knew is that he was his mother’s son,” said Boxer strategist Roy Behr, referring to Fong’s mother, March Fong Eu, California’s longtime Democratic secretary of state.

Independent analysts suggest that, while Fong is largely an unknown quantity, it will not be easy for Boxer to define him on her terms without incurring some risk. Although negative attacks typically hurt the recipient, the acid also splashes back on the sender. And that is something Boxer can ill afford.

Duffy suggests that the bigger problem for Boxer is to win back the moderate Democrats, moderate Republicans and independents who contributed to her 1992 victory--but who have not been satisfied with her tenure in office because she has essentially hewn to a liberal Democratic track. Fong, with his moderate mien, is clearly aiming at those voters, and they are also in Boxer’s sights when she discusses assault weapons and other issues she stresses.

“The bottom line is this race has nothing to do with Matt Fong and everything to do with Barbara Boxer and what she hasn’t done,” Duffy said.

Out campaigning, Fong has maintained his low-key, cautious style, casting the race in both ideological and generational terms as a battle between a “1960s liberal Democrat” and a “21st century Republican.”

He criticized her opposition to a ballistic missile defense system that he supports, her past votes for tax increases, her initial opposition to welfare reform and what Fong contends is her opposition to education reform.

“I want to take California forward,” he told delegates at the state Republican convention in September. “Barbara Boxer is looking in her rear-view mirror and she wants to take California back.”

He dismisses her commercial criticizing his opposition to new gun restrictions.

“I think she’s looking for a way to mask her own soft-on-crime record by saying I’d pass out Uzis to kids,” said Fong, who countered that he thinks tougher sentencing laws are more effective than gun bans.

Both of the candidates have decried the attention focused on President Clinton’s struggle to beat back impeachment. But it is much more problematic for Boxer if the presidential scandal continues to dominate the news as the election nears.

For one thing, it risks turning off the occasional voters, largely Democrats and independents, whose support she needs to win. It also increases the potential backlash against her for failing to criticize President Clinton as assertively as she criticized Republicans accused of sexual misbehavior.

“Matt Fong is wrong, and the people don’t know it because there has been so much noise about the president’s problems and they haven’t had a chance to hear where he is in the issues,” Boxer lamented recently.

But the impact of Clinton’s troubles is no sure bet, as Fong’s own moves on the matter suggest. First he aggressively criticized Boxer and suggested Clinton should consider resigning; lately he has backed off. He now contends publicly that the president’s behavior is not an issue in the Senate campaign.

“It’s not Clinton,” said Sal Russo, Fong’s media strategist, about the campaign’s focus. “It’s Boxer.”

Times staff writer Amy Pyle contributed to this story.