Boxer’s Hometown Fits No Stereotype

On a recent sun-swept afternoon in this Marin County hamlet, the only yellow “BOXER” bumper sticker in sight is on a car parked in front of Sen. Barbara Boxer’s wood-shingled house.

That’s not to suggest Democrat Boxer is without supporters in her hometown. But upscale Greenbrae--really just a shopping center and a hillside of homes in the shadow of Mt. Tamalpais--is one of Marin’s more conservative areas.

Her neighbors, Boxer laughs, are “actually pretty Republican, but they’re very independent-thinking Republicans.”

Greenbrae residents are also discreet.

You wouldn’t begin to guess that a two-bedroom tract house here would go for $600,000 or more unless you checked the real estate ads or walked through Mollie Stone’s grocery store, with its shelves and shelves of fine wine and 25 varieties of smoked and cured salmon.

Boxer’s opponent, Matt Fong, the Republican state treasurer, tells voters that three decades of living in ritzy Marin have left Boxer, 57, out of touch with common folk.

“With only a 2.3% unemployment rate in . . . her home county, I can see how she can think things are fine,” Fong said at several campaign stops in the Central Valley earlier this month.

Of course, Boxer’s local supporters object to that broad brush. They say it’s naive to assume that simply because her home base is upper crust, because nine in 10 residents are white, she can’t fathom the needs of the poor.

Ken Lippi met Boxer when she was chairwoman of the Marin County Board of Supervisors and he was a student political intern. When she ran for Congress in 1982, Lippi volunteered as her driver and recalls one political event in blue-collar Vallejo.

“She was able to just walk in and click immediately with all kinds of people . . . seniors, young people, ethnic people,” said Lippi, now a government teacher at Marin Catholic High School. “I’m sure she’s able to make those same kinds of connections with communities that are not quite like Marin.”

Boxer points out that she was raised in a lower-middle-class family and that her husband grew up in poverty. “I know what it’s all about,” she said.

Greenbrae started out as a developer’s dream--just 30 minutes from San Francisco yet a world apart in climate and congestion. Developer Niels Schultz Sr. bought more than 600 acres of rolling terrain in the 1940s to build his vision of a total community.

Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Boxer and her husband, Stewart, moved here in 1968 with a toddler and an infant, in the days when a three-bedroom home could be had for $40,000. It was cheaper than San Francisco, where they had been renting, and seemed like a more wholesome place to raise children.

Boxer describes herself as “one of the original soccer moms”--a group whose increased political acumen would one day become emblematic of the moderate suburban voters key to President Clinton’s victories.

In her autobiography, “Strangers in the Senate,” Boxer jokes that her husband “must have felt like he married Doris Day”--who would certainly have been right at home in Greenbrae--”and woke up with Eleanor Roosevelt!”

The first fight Boxer took on had distinctly suburban roots: Developers wanted to build condominiums on creek-side property in the heart of Greenbrae. Boxer organized other young mothers and convinced the community to tax itself, buy the land and turn it into a park and wetlands preserve. Today, she can be seen there walking with her grandson when she’s home from Washington.

Because of its wealth and its high median age--46--Greenbrae doesn’t match Marin’s reputation for being knee-jerk liberal--a stereotype Fong also would like to affix to Boxer.

Greenbrae is not as determinedly right wing as nearby super-rich Ross, but it is certainly a comfortable place for Republican precinct walkers, says Terry Craven.

Craven lives just blocks from Boxer, but their beliefs lie miles apart. Craven staged a one-woman protest over condom distribution at the local middle school, helped organize a 50-woman anti-President Clinton demonstration at San Francisco’s Embarcadero in 1996 and has put a yellow bumper sticker on her car that reads: “Another Woman Against Boxer.”

Lately, she’s become part of a small group of moderately conservative Marin women working to unseat Democrats. They call themselves “Soccer Moms With a Brain” and disparage their liberal peers as “Barbie Brains.” This campaign season, they have turned their lasers on Boxer.

Over lunch at the Lark Creek Inn on a recent weekday, four members plotted plans for protesting today’s since-canceled San Francisco fund-raising visit by President Clinton on Boxer’s behalf.

Margarita Ajamian wanted to erect a billboard to read: “We don’t think with our ovaries; we’re not voting for Barbara Boxer.”

Conversation turned again and again to their kitchen table issue: the decline of public education. And from this group’s perspective, the Democrats in general--and Boxer in particular--are to blame because of their cozy liaison with teachers unions.

“My 6-year-old son attends a California Distinguished School,” said Melanie Morgan. “This is supposed to be the creme de la creme, and I had to hire a math tutor to bring him up to grade level.”

Morgan co-hosts a conservative radio talk show, though she confessed over the handmade ravioli that she once had her nails done in the chair next to Boxer and gave her a $75 donation on the spot. Her lunch partners groaned.

“Even though I consider myself a conservative, I also consider myself a feminist and an environmentalist,” Morgan said. “That was four years ago, ladies. Don’t throw me out!”

Ironically, it was Morgan’s husband who hired Boxer in the 1970s as a radio talk show host. He, Morgan added, is still a liberal.

Video clips from the Barbara Boxer-Matt Fong debates are on The Times’ Web site:

https://www.latimes.com/elect98