Boxer Launches First TV Spot

Title: “1965”

Script: “We moved to California in 1965 because we knew it was the best place to raise our family. And it still is. But now families are being squeezed. Healthcare costs are going up, but wages aren’t. College is out of reach. People need help. I want to make health insurance tax-deductible. Tuition, deductible. And give tax incentives to companies that create jobs here in America, not overseas. We need to do these things for our families. I’m Barbara Boxer, and I approved this message.”

Images: The ad begins with footage from a home movie of Boxer and her two then-school-age children. It then moves to Boxer speaking in what appears to be a living room and ends with more family home-movie footage.

Analysis: In an election year in which voters say the war in Iraq is the predominant issue, Boxer -- an early and vocal critic of the war -- has focused her first ad on domestic issues that campaign officials hope middle-class families will respond to: job insecurity and rising healthcare and tuition costs. The ad does not specify how Boxer’s proposals would work. She does not, for instance, say whether her proposed tax deductions for tuition would be calibrated to income levels or how deductions for health insurance would assist lower-income families who do not itemize their tax returns. But in a campaign in which Jones has sought to paint Boxer as weak on national security and defense issues, this ad seems designed to focus voters’ attention on their pocketbooks.

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Los Angeles Times