Sen. Boxer’s Recipe for Success: Start With a Far-Right Opponent

Shhhhhhhh. Don’t tell anyone, but there’s a campaign for U.S. Senate going on. Barbara Boxer is running for reelection.

On paper at least, she must be considered vulnerable. Boxer is arguably the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate and proud of it. She’s eclipsed in the media by the senior California senator, Dianne Feinstein. Outside her signature issues, like the Violence Against Women Act, she’s offered little major legislation. Yet she trounces all her potential opponents in the latest polls and looks like she’s headed for a third term.

How does Boxer do it? It’s a combination of hard campaigning, Republican incompetence and uncanny good luck. Boxer’s luck began in 1992, her first Senate race, when she drew right-wing radio commentator Bruce Herschensohn as an opponent. Anti-choice, anti-environment, pro-guns and pro-death penalty, Herschensohn was so far to the right he made Boxer look like a moderate. She sailed into office.

Up for reelection in 1998 and considered an easy target for defeat, Boxer lucked out again. She could not have picked a better opponent than Matt Fong: inexperienced, inept and inarticulate. I remember a gathering of California lobbyists in Washington where Fong was scheduled to give a major foreign policy speech. He read the entire text without looking up, said nothing new, clearly did not know his subject and left as soon as he finished without taking one question. His Republican supporters were dismayed.

This time around, Boxer’s luck seems better than ever. She sidestepped all the fracas of the California recall election and used that time out of the spotlight to quietly feed her campaign war chest. After Arnold Schwarzenegger, Boxer may have been the politician to benefit most from the recall.

And, so far, nobody’s talking about the Senate race this year, either. The political spotlight is focused instead on the hotly contested Democratic presidential primary. On Jan. 1, she had $5 million, of an estimated $20 million she’ll probably need, in the bank -- 10 times as much as her nearest Republican challenger.

And, once again, the California Republican Party seems determined to help Boxer by putting up their weakest candidate. Bill Jones is the likely Republican contender, already endorsed by Schwarzenegger. But the movie star governor can’t automatically transfer his electoral magic to the humdrum former California secretary of state.

Jones is the Herschensohn of 2004. He’s on the wrong side of all three issues most important to swing voters in California: the environment, gun control and choice.

In the 2002 gubernatorial primary, Jones received the endorsement of the NRA over Bill Simon and Richard Riordan. As a member of the Assembly, Jones voted to allow offshore drilling in state waters. As an anti-choice legislator, he backed restrictions on Medi-Cal funding for abortions and voted to require parental notification in cases involving teenagers.

So here we go again. Jones’ name is different, but he fits the profile of extreme Republican candidates Boxer has faced -- and crushed -- before. When will California Republicans ever learn? Only after Boxer gets elected for the third time.

Bill Press is a political commentator for MSNBC and former chairman of the California Democratic Party.