Senate candidates Boxer and Fiorina spar in debate

Sen. Barbara Boxer and the woman vying to replace her, Carly Fiorina, tangled for an hour Wednesday during their second and final debate, arguing that their own background and experience can best help lead the economy out of its financial distress and that their rivals’ resumes make them unfit for the job.

Fiorina said Boxer had been ineffective and harmful, failing to work to get water turned on in the dry and unemployment-pocked Central Valley, and failing to be a financially responsible trustee of the nation’s coffers.

“Washington has a spending problem, and we need to hold our representatives accountable,” Fiorina, a Republican, said during the radio debate that was sponsored by KPCC-FM (89.3) and La Opinion. “Barbara Boxer in her 28 years in Washington, D.C., has done nothing to curb spending.”

Boxer, the three-term Democrat, questioned how Fiorina could improve the American economy when as the chief of Hewlett-Packard, she laid off American workers and shipped jobs overseas.

“This race presents one of the clearest choices in the nation,” she said. “My opponent doesn’t represent the people of California.”

The candidates clashed from radio studios 3,000 miles apart — Boxer remained in Washington, D.C., to avoid missing Senate votes, participating from an NPR studio there, while Fiorina joined the debate moderators at KPCC in Pasadena. The distance meant there were fewer sharp confrontations compared with their meeting earlier this month, when they met face-to-face at St. Mary’s College in Moraga.

Boxer is facing her toughest competitor in many years. The contest is tight, though recent polls give Boxer a slight edge, and the senator has a significant financial advantage in the last disclosure statements filed with federal officials. More than 150 supporters of both women gathered outside the Pasadena studio to wave signs and chant.

Social issues figured prominently in the debate, with the candidates staking out starkly different positions on abortion, immigration, healthcare and the environment.

Boxer sought to use the issues to paint Fiorina as out of sync with California voters.

“My opponent would open up federal waters to drilling, even after the BP nightmare, so she stands with Big Oil; she doesn’t stand with the people of California,” Boxer said. “They revere their environment; it’s a God-given gift and it’s also an economic asset.”

Fiorina accused Boxer of using such issues to divert attention from more pressing topics, such as the economy and government spending.

“When people want to talk about the issues that matter most to them — where is my job, why is government debt out of control — Barbara Boxer always punts to the divisive issue of abortion to try to change the subject,” she said.

Both candidates were repeatedly pressed by the moderators on questions they refused to answer — Boxer declined to identify what programs she would cut to trim the federal deficit; Fiorina refused to say what she would do with the nation’s 12 million illegal immigrants.

And both faced awkward moments. When Fiorina was reminded that she once said extremist environmental organizations supported Boxer, and was asked to name one of these organizations, she paused for several seconds and could not answer. Boxer was caught flat-footed on a question about insurers deciding to refuse to offer child health insurance policies rather than be forced to offer them to children with preexisting conditions.

seema.mehta@latimes.com