For the fifth time since taking office, President Barack Obama visits California this week, to give a major speech on the economy Wednesday and hold a second set of big political fundraisers for endangered U.S. Senator Barbara, D-Calif., Boxer Tuesday evening.
Tuesday’s fundraisers take place in Pacific Heights, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of San Francisco, which is of course THE most liberal major city in the nation. During his 2008 campaign, then candidate Obama famously explained to a San Francisco gathering that part of the reason he was having trouble in the Pennsylvania primary against Hillary Clinton was that Pennsylvania voters were bitter and cling to God and guns.
The fundraisers Tuesday will rake in about $1.5 million for Boxer’s re-election coffers…this is no cheapie…$35,000 per couple!
Boxer is in the fight of her life and she has acknowledged as much for months. On Capitol Hill she has at times been impatient and curt when asked about the campaign back home.
California holds its primaries on June 8th. The GOP primary to oppose Boxer is a three-way contest and very much in flux.
Republican candidate and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, a millionaire, leads some polls. She’s never run for office before but was a senior adviser to John McCain’s 2008 Presidential campaign. Since then, she has shifted some of her positions to the right on things like immigration. She considers herself a social and economic conservative. As a woman she might stack up stronger against Boxer. Fiorina left HP under a cloud and has been criticized for it. Among all three candidates she is hands down the most politically polished, even if she is the least experienced. She has raised more money than her GOP rivals but has also invested some her own.
The other top contender is Tom Campbell. He is well known to California Republicans, having served five terms in Congress from Silicon Valley during the tech boom and bust years. Campbell has cast himself for years as California’s intellectual fiscal conservative. He has a PHD in economics and studied under Milton Freidman. He is a soft spoken academic type and a social moderate who is pro-choice on abortion and pro-gay marriage. That plays well in general election polls against Boxer — but even in liberal California — social conservatives hold sway in GOP primaries. Campbell has seen some polls of his support wane in recent days.
The most consistently conservative record on social and fiscal issues belongs to state assemblyman Chuck Devore. He is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve, who worked at the Pentagon before seeking elected office. The Tea Party Express has endorsed him but the depth of their support is uncertain.
I interviewed all three GOP candidates in advance of the president’s arrival Tuesday.
Fiorina lambasted Boxer repeatedly, “She is vulnerable because she is a failed senator, she’s been in Washington D.C. for 26 years, people are tired of professional politicians, they’ve figured out that they are part of the problem and not part of the solution.” She also argued that her differences with Senator Boxer would be the reason Republicans would elect her June 8th, “Tom Campbell is not going to beat me and that’s because Republican primary voters know that Tom Campbell cannot be their representative, first of all, Tom Campbell can’t beat Barbara Boxer, you can’t beat Barbara Boxer with Barbara Boxer light”
Campbell however disputed Fiorina’s lead in recent polls, “In the primary you have a very simple and very powerful focus, who will have the very best chance of replacing Senator Barbara Boxer, every poll way beyond the margin of error, shows that I do.”
Devore said his election strategy was working, “recent polls have shown that he [Campbell] has been collapsing and that Fiorina is beginning to move, so I think that bears out my strategy of continuing to focus my attention Carly Fiorina…She’s a political opportunist who will say or do anything to get elected and I think that the voters have had enough of that.”
On the air and in the news the June 8th primary for the Senate has been overshadowed by the bitter battle in the race for governor to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger. In it, EBAY founder and Billionaire Meg Whitman is in a vicious fight with state insurance commissioner and a multimillionaire Steve Poizner. The winner will face Attorney General Jerry Brown who was already governor from 1975-1983.