Boxer’s Support Defies Borders

Cecilia Boone, who has spent most of her life as a homemaker, sat down one day in April and wrote out a $1,000 campaign check to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s reelection fund.

Boxer is not Boone’s senator. Boone, in fact, lives in Dallas, two time zones to the east of California, and is represented in the U.S. Senate by a man, John Cornyn, and a woman, Kay Bailey Hutchison, both Republicans with conservative reputations.

Boone has never contributed a dime to either of the Texas senators. Cornyn and Hutchison might represent the Lone Star State, but as far as Boone is concerned, the liberal, Democratic Boxer represents her.

“I think she is a real beacon for what women can bring to politics,” said Boone, 58, citing Boxer’s public defense of abortion rights and support for education spending, after-school care programs and environmental regulation. “I will do anything I can to support women like Barbara Boxer and help them become more powerful and have a stronger voice in our national government.”

Boxer’s Republican challenger, former California Secretary of State Bill Jones, has pinned a lot of fundraising hopes on Boxer’s status as a red flag for Republican conservatives. But Boxer’s image as a national standard-bearer for liberal causes works both ways: the diminutive senator from Marin County has long used it to build up her own campaign strength.

So far in this campaign, 30% of Boxer’s donors have been people living outside of California, said campaign manager Rose Kapolczynski. In the second quarter of the year, the level rose to 38%, according to a Times analysis of campaign finance reports for the three months ending June 30. Women account for a majority of the contributors, though an exact breakdown was not readily available.

Jones, meanwhile, raised 96% of his money from Californians in the second quarter -- and overwhelmingly from men.

A key difference between the two campaigns’ fundraising efforts is Emily’s List, a campaign financing organization that bundles checks from contributors nationwide who want to back candidates who support a largely liberal agenda tilted heavily toward women’s issues.

Boxer has been both a proponent and recipient of the group’s efforts. In her first Senate race in 1992, 60% of Boxer’s donors were women -- a major share of them Emily’s List members, said Kapolczynski. And in her 1998 race for reelection, Emily’s List contributors -- many of them non-Californians -- accounted for nearly $1 million of the $15 million Boxer raised.

“Sen. Boxer has often said that she would not be in the Senate without Emily’s List,” Kapolczynski said. “Many of them were giving modest donations. We received many letters saying ‘This is my first political contribution ever.’ ”

Many of Boxer’s Emily’s List supporters contribute because they see the senator as a national champion for liberal causes, Kapolczynski said.

“There are progressive activists all over the country who give to Barbara Boxer because she’s one of the leading progressives in the Senate,” Kapolczynski said. “We’ve gotten letters from Mississippi saying, ‘I don’t feel like I’m represented in Washington. You represent my views. That’s why I’m sending you my contribution.’ She has a high profile on the issue and people want to support that.”

Jones spokesman Sean Walsh acknowledged the role Emily’s List has played in funneling contributions to Boxer. “That’s a function of Barbara Boxer rounding up the usual suspects,” he said.

Jones hopes to tap similar, less visible e-mail and direct-mail networks of conservatives to offset Boxer’s out-of-state support. Walsh said he believed Boxer’s out-of-state support has ebbed even though Boxer is raising money at a faster clip than in any of her previous campaigns.

“I do think that on a national level as well as a state level, people are not excited about her race,” Walsh said. “She’s not drawing the level of passion from her supporters that she has in the past.”

Overall, Jones isn’t firing up a lot of enthusiasm, judging by both polls and fundraising. Recent surveys of registered voters by several different polling organizations have measured a 20-point lead for Boxer, and at the end of June she had $7.1 million in the bank compared with less than $1 million for Jones.

Boxer’s contributions have come from 45 states plus the nation’s capital. More often than not, Boxer’s out-of-state donors have been women.

In Illinois, for example, 57 individuals contributed a combined $16,210. More than two-thirds, 39, were women. Most said they were either homemakers or retired, but they accounted for $10,795 of the total Illinois contributions to Boxer’s campaign.

Eleanor Weiss-Zoub, who lives in the north Chicago suburb of Lincolnwood, sent a $35 check. Weiss-Zoub, 72, has been retired from several family businesses for seven years, and was moved to donate to Boxer, she said, through Emily’s List.

“My feeling is she has a complete understanding of women’s rights, including abortion, and she will definitely defend Roe v. Wade,” said Weiss-Zoub, referring to the Supreme Court decision that guaranteed abortion rights. “I like her policies. I like what she stands for. I think she’s good for her state, and good for her country.”