This just in from the Fiorina campaign: Barbara Boxer is a Democrat.
Not only that, she’s an unabashed Democrat, who was “prioritizing her own bitter partisan politics” when she voted over the weekend to support the health-care bill wending its way through the Senate.
You might remember that health care bill. You know, the one backed by Democratic President Barack Obama that every single Democrat in the Senate voted for.
Carly Fiorina, who’s looking to win the June GOP primary and challenge Boxer in November, wrote in an email to supporters Tuesday that “with her 1 a.m. vote, Barbara Boxer proved yet again that her loyalties lie with the special interests, NOT with the people of California she was elected to serve.”
Now it’s mighty courageous – a word that’s not always a compliment in politico-speak – to mount a political assault on a three-term Democratic senator for supporting a Democratic bill backed by a Democratic president in a state that typically votes, well, Democratic.
Picking health care as the issue to whack Boxer also suggests that Team Fiorina is looking at a different set of numbers from most Californians.
Just last week, for example, the Public Policy Institute of California put out a survey showing that 52 percent of California adults support the changes in health care “being developed by Congress and the Obama administration,” with 39 percent opposed.
More to the point, the health care plan is supported by 71 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of independents. While 76 percent of Republicans don’t like the plan, that won’t help Fiorina much if she makes it to November.
In fact, Californians’ biggest complaint about health care reform seems to be that it just doesn’t go far enough, since 61 percent of California adults want the “public option” plan that was dropped by Senate Democrats because of loud complaints from members on both sides of the aisle.
But the numbers haven’t convinced the former Hewlett-Packard CEO to find another issue or cured what often seems to be a political tin ear.
Last week, for example, Fiorina slammed Boxer for voting down an amendment to the health care bill by an Idaho Republican “that would have protected middle-class families” by requiring the proposed measure be stripped of “any tax increases on American families making less that $250,000 annually.”
Maybe life is different in Fiorina’s Los Altos Hills neighborhood, but most Californians, particularly those who can’t afford health insurance, probably think families making a quarter of a million bucks a year places likely are a bit beyond middle class.
It’s not that Boxer shouldn’t be a magnet for criticism. From the day she was first elected to Congress from Marin County in 1982, she’s been an unabashed liberal who’s farther to the left on many issues that most Californians, regardless of party.
The most recent National Review survey, for example, ranked Boxer as the third most liberal member of the Senate.
Boxer’s in-your-face political style, shown most memorably recently in the “Call me senator” video that’s a YouTube favorite, also is a legitimate attack point.
Heck, even Fiorina’s attack last week on Boxer, which basically blamed her for California’s soaring unemployment rate and shrinking economy, is legitimate campaign fodder, since Boxer was in office when the economy tanked.
But Fiorina might want to remember that only 31 percent of California voters are Republicans. Continuing to remind the other 69 percent that Boxer doesn’t support the GOP agenda is likely to be seen by them as less of a terrifying threat and more of a welcome promise.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.