Are you ready for Carlyfornia?
If you love Sen. Barbara Boxer’s “Fighting for You” slogan (Boxer. Fighting. Get it?) or the ever-popular “Boxer” shorts (available for $9 a pair on her campaign website), what’s not to like about Republican Carly Fiorina’s attempt to revise the English language in the name of campaign-speak?
Of course, as the rather strange website just put up by the Senate hopeful puts it, “It’s Carly vs. Boxer. Coming Soon?”
Question mark aside, the barebones, placeholder website is a real step toward an actual, no-fooling Senate campaign and may be designed to answer recent questions both here and elsewhere about just how serious the former Hewlett-Packard CEO is about challenging Boxer.
The timing of the website launch also isn’t an accident, coming just days before this weekend’s state GOP convention in Indian Wells.
Nationally, Democrats are treating Fiorina as a deadly serious threat. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee honored her this week with her very own attack ad, a web video whacking her for her tenure as head of HP.
It’s worth noting that you haven’t seen the DSCC take a similar shot at GOP Assemblyman Chuck DeVore of Irvine, who’s Boxer’s only official challenger.
For Fiorina and her backers, the ad is a sure sign that Boxer and the Democrats are running scared.
“The inordinate amount of attention national Democrats are paying to an unannounced Senate candidate in California only speaks to the growing vulnerability of Barbara Boxer,” Brian Walsh of the National Republican Senatorial committee told Politico.
It’s no secret that Boxer – and any other politician in existence – would rather race a little-known, under-funded assemblyman than a nationally known businesswoman with plenty of rich friends and millions of her own money that she could put into a campaign.
But going on the attack more than a year before the election has its drawbacks, especially for someone like Boxer, who has a well-deserved reputation for an abrasive, take-no-prisoners style, both in the Senate and on the campaign trail. Voters can get tired of the yelling, even if it’s coming from Democratic Party sources and not Boxer herself.
And, in the wonderful world of attack politics, if you use the good stuff now, what are you going to have left to fire up the voters next fall?
But for Boxer, the way-early sniping at Fiorina may be more of an investment than a sign of panic.
Back in 2002, Democratic Gov. Gray Davis spent $10 million on TV ads attacking Los Angeles Mayor Dick Riordan in the GOP primary. The ads, which focused on Riordan’s less-than-consistent record on abortion, gave a boost to conservative businessman Bill Simon, who beat the more moderate Riordan and then lost to Davis in November.
Now DeVore isn’t Simon, who put $5 million of his own money into that primary campaign. Still, if Boxer and the Democrats can raise enough questions about Fiorina’s background to change next June’s GOP primary from the coronation Fiorina’s backers expect into a real race, it will be time and money well spent.
The personal attacks, which will only grow harsher, also will serve as none-too-gentle reminders to a political neophyte like Fiorina of just what she will be getting herself into if and when she decides to make her challenge official.
John Wildermuth is a longtime writer on California politics.