Candidates cross the state in campaign’s final days

Candidates for California’s statewide offices worked to drum up support Saturday, touting their own records and proposals as they sought to blunt any movement by their opponents.

With early voters already able to cast ballots, what used to be a last-minute flurry to get out the vote has been extended dramatically, and the candidates were vying for any advantage Saturday.

“This is what I need you to do. If you can give another five bucks, do it. Right now I need you to volunteer,” Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer told supporters in Santa Monica. “If you put in 30 minutes a day calling, getting people to the polls … it’s going to make the difference.”

At stops in San Jose, Los Angeles’ Koreatown and City of Industry, Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman appealed to Asian American constituencies to side with her over Democrat Jerry Brown.

“We have a choice between a career politician and a career problem-solver,” Whitman told several hundred supporters in Industry, gathered in a parklike setting under a glowering sky. “And do we have some problems that need to be solved, and I will solve them.”

As she spoke to reporters after the event, Whitman recounted a Saturday story in the Los Angeles Times that showed some city employees earned substantial overtime while Brown was mayor of Oakland. Whitman contended that as governor Brown would look the other way while unions exerted their power.

“What you saw was gross fiscal negligence,” she said. “No one was home, no one was in charge and this is the kind of fiscal mismanagement that we cannot stand in the state of California.”

Earlier, Whitman toured a Koreatown grocery store, picking out pears to place in her rolling cart as a horde of photographers and camera crews recorded the scene. At one point she was approached by a woman who told the candidate that her son had been unemployed for eight months.

“That’s why the No. 1 thing we need to do is jump-start the economy,” Whitman replied. “Hang in there. Jobs are on the way,” she added, reprising one of her campaign themes.

Brown, the Democratic nominee and state attorney general, had no public events Saturday.

The two major U.S. Senate candidates, meanwhile, campaigned at different ends of the state. In Santa Monica, Boxer painted her opponent Carly Fiorina as an extremist on environmental issues, citing the Republican’s support for offshore oil drilling.

“It has always been one of my goals, ever since I was a county supervisor, to make sure we protect the gifts like these that I consider a gift from God,” Boxer said, standing on a makeshift platform on the beach as waves crashed and cyclists and runners passed in the background.

“Anyone who says they are ready, willing and able to destroy this coastline does not understand really what our work is as human beings: to protect this God-given legacy, No. 1, and to protect the 400,000 jobs” tied to the California coast.

In appearances and in her campaign ads, Boxer has highlighted differences with Fiorina on oil drilling, abortion and guns — all issues on which the Democrat is more in line with voters’ views.

Boxer also emphasized Fiorina’s ties to conservative icons such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. The former GOP vice presidential candidate played a critical role in Fiorina’s primary victory by endorsing the former Hewlett-Packard chief but is deeply unpopular with the independent voters who could decide the race.

“So when my opponent says, ‘Drill baby drill,’ yes, it won her the endorsement of Sarah Palin. But I have something to say very clearly today: Sarah Palin does not speak for California,” Boxer said.

Fiorina swung through her old turf in Silicon Valley on Saturday to buck up female supporters who were making calls on her behalf at the Santa Clara Republican Party headquarters.

“Things are bad in California: 12.4% unemployment, 20 counties with unemployment above 15% … and yet people are not hopeless, they are not helpless,” she told women who crowded around her during a break from their calls. “We have the power of our vote. And this time the power of everyone’s vote is going to cause the whole nation to look to California and say ‘Wow’ … the voters of California decided that 28 years of Barbara Boxer was enough.”

Touching on the grueling pace of her travels in recent days, Fiorina said she’d been reminded of a Johnny Cash song: “I’ve Been Everywhere.”

“That’s kind of how I feel. I open the drapes in a hotel room and I don’t really know where I am actually, but I know what we have to do that day, which is to go out and talk to people about the issues that matter to them,” she said.

Fiorina has presented herself as a proudly conservative Republican from the earliest stage of the race. But she has sought to broaden her appeal in the final stretch with a series of television ads in which she promises to cross her party if necessary.

That message is at odds with her cutting tone on the campaign trail when she hammers the rate of government spending under the Obama administration and characterizes the stimulus program and the healthcare bill as a waste of taxpayer money.

Asked to name any pending Democratic measure she would back against the will of her party, Fiorina mentioned several votes that have already come and gone.

“I would have voted against the bailouts — those happened in a Republican administration,” she added.

seema.mehta@latimes.com

maeve.reston@latimes.com

Mehta reported from Santa Monica and Reston from San Jose. Times staff writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this report.