Boxer Back In Senate
By Michael Yue
and Matthew Brunwasser

Barbara Boxer won a second term to the U.S. Senate, defeating Republican challenger Matt Fong.

In official election returns, Boxer lead Fong 52 percent to 44 percent, with 57 percent of the vote counted. But exit polls by national media organizations declared Boxer the winner, and last night Fong conceded defeat.

An excited Boxer, in an 8-minute televised speech, declared victory and thanked her families, donors and campaign staff.

“They said I was too progressive, too supportive of our president, too feisty. Where did they get that idea? One columnist even wrote that I ma too short,” she said.

“They all missed something. The support that I have in this greatest state because we stand together on the issues,” she said.

“I love the state, the people, the ideas, the ethnic diversity, most of all I love the California spirit.” she added.

Election observers said that ineffective campaign strategies plus a recently disclosed donation to an anti-gay organization severely damaged Fong's chances to unseat the incumbent.

Just a few weeks ago, Fong, the state treasurer, was four points ahead in the race, according to a survey of likely voters. But a Field Poll released this past week showed that Boxer had jumped to a lead of nine percentage points.

One election day poll by CNN even found that a slim majority of Asian Americans voted for Boxer rather than Fong.

Boxer's surge in poll numbers may be attributed to a non-stop campaign backed with multimillion-dollar television ads.

In commercial after commercial, Boxer, a former Marin County supervisor and six-term congresswoman, hammered Fong relentlessly for his conservative stands on environmental regulation, gun control and abortion.

Republicans retorted by saying the ads misrepresented Fong.

But until the last a few days before the election, Fong stuck to his good guy campaign tenets and openly expressed aversion to using negative campaigning.

Then with polls indicating that the gap with Boxer was widening, Fong finally altered his strategy. Over the weekend prior to election day, Fong waged a television ad counter attack in which he lashed out at Boxer. But it may have come too late, political analysts said.

A major blow to Fong's campaign was delivered just 10 days before the election when the San Francisco Examiner revealed Fong had made a $50,000 donation to the Traditional Values Coalition. The anti-gay, anti-abortion organization, among other things, has advocated quarantining AIDS patients.

Though Fong insisted the money was intended to help change the group's extreme positions, the controversy immediately drew angry response from GOP gays and lesbians. The Log Cabin Club, an organization of gay republicans, had threatened to withdraw its endorsement.

Under pressure, Fong signed a written pledge on October 26 to support the California Log Cabin republicans on a wide range of gay issues, including AIDS research, domestic partnership and anti-discrimination laws.

But his efforts to appease both sides on this hot political issue apparently backfired, with many conservatives chiding Fong for selling out family values for his own political gain.