Barbara Boxer, California’s junior senator, is a Democrat first elected to the House in 1982 and a decade later to the Senate. She is the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Boxer grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1962, she graduated from Brooklyn College, where she met her husband, Stewart. The couple moved to Marin County, Calif. in 1968. Boxer, a stockbroker, volunteered for Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign that year. In 1970, she and some neighbors formed the Marin Alternative to oppose the Vietnam War. Marin County was only on its way to being trendy then; the overall political tone was liberal Republican, but heading left. In 1972, Boxer ran for the Board of Supervisors and lost to an incumbent Republican. She then went to work as an aide to Democratic U.S. Rep. John Burton. In 1976, she ran again for the county board and won. When Burton retired unexpectedly in 1982, Boxer ran for the House seat and was easily elected. In the House, she was known for her aggressive investigation into wasteful spending, unearthing the Air Force’s $7,622 coffee pot in 1984, and for her vocal opposition to the Gulf War in the early 1990s. She also led a group of women House members in a march to the steps of the Senate to demand hearings into law professor Anita Hill’s sexual-harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas, who was in the process of being confirmed to the Supreme Court. Read More

Barbara Boxer, California’s junior senator, is a Democrat first elected to the House in 1982 and a decade later to the Senate. She is the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Boxer grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1962, she graduated from Brooklyn College, where she met her husband, Stewart. The couple moved to Marin County, Calif. in 1968. Boxer, a stockbroker, volunteered for Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign that year. In 1970, she and some neighbors formed the Marin Alternative to oppose the Vietnam War. Marin County was only on its way to being trendy then; the overall political tone was liberal Republican, but heading left. In 1972, Boxer ran for the Board of Supervisors and lost to an incumbent Republican. She then went to work as an aide to Democratic U.S. Rep. John Burton. In 1976, she ran again for the county board and won. When Burton retired unexpectedly in 1982, Boxer ran for the House seat and was easily elected. In the House, she was known for her aggressive investigation into wasteful spending, unearthing the Air Force’s $7,622 coffee pot in 1984, and for her vocal opposition to the Gulf War in the early 1990s. She also led a group of women House members in a march to the steps of the Senate to demand hearings into law professor Anita Hill’s sexual-harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas, who was in the process of being confirmed to the Supreme Court.

In 1992, Boxer ran for the Senate. She started off as neither the best-known nor the best-financed candidate, but 1992 turned out to be the “Year of the Woman,” in which the enthusiasm of the feminist left helped produce important victories for Democratic candidates. Boxer won the June primary with 44% of the vote, to 31% for Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy and 22% for U.S. Rep. Mel Levine. In the general election, her opponent was Bruce Herschensohn, a Los Angeles television and radio commentator. The Boxer-Herschensohn race was a battle of opposites, the far left versus the far right of the ideological spectrum. Herschensohn opposed abortion rights and advocated a flat tax and offshore oil drilling. Boxer’s positions were precisely the opposite. Her bid was helped by the poor showing of President George H.W. Bush’s campaign in California and by the revelation late in the campaign that Herschensohn had frequented nightclubs that featured nude dancers. She won with 48% of the vote.

Boxer’s voting record is among the most liberal in the Senate, and she has long been one of the chamber’s most outspoken members. She objected to Army Brigadier Gen. Michael Walsh calling her “ma’am” at a June 2009 hearing. “Could you say `senator’ instead of `ma’am?’’’ she asked Walsh. “It’s just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title.” Conservative bloggers called the remark arrogant, but she saw no need to apologize. Boxer is one of the strongest proponents of abortion rights in Congress and a prime sponsor of the Freedom of Choice Act, which would nullify all state restrictions on abortion.

She was a staunch defender of President Bill Clinton during the impeachment proceedings in 1998, when the president was accused of lying about an extramarital affair with a White House intern. In 2001, Boxer supported the use of force in Afghanistan. But in October 2002, she voted against the use of force in Iraq, and she later cast votes against funding for the war. In January 2005, as the electoral vote count was read out to a joint session of Congress, she was the one senator to protest the awarding of Ohio’s electoral votes to Republican President George W. Bush. She recalled that four years earlier, no senator had protested the Florida vote in the bitterly contested presidential contest of 2000, and Boxer said she regretted not having protested then. Her protest triggered the dissolution of the joint session and a debate in each of the two chambers. The Senate voted 74-1 to accept the Ohio count, with Boxer as the lone dissenter, and the House voted 267-31 on the same question. “I hate inconveniencing my friends, but I think it’s worth a couple of hours to shine some light on these issues,” Boxer said.

Boxer has supported gun control and has sponsored amendments to require childproof safety locks on all handguns and to ban sales of guns to people who are intoxicated. But in summer 2002, she and Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning emerged as the Senate’s leading advocates of allowing airline pilots to carry guns. Boxer argued that pilots could be trusted with that responsibility and that they could protect passengers against terrorists. The measure passed in both the House and Senate.

During the Clinton years, Boxer was frustrated when Republicans held up nominations to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, long the most liberal in the country. During the Bush years, she held up nominations of judges she considered too conservative. In 2001, she opposed the nomination of Rep. Christopher Cox of California to the Ninth Circuit. When Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she might oppose him too, Cox withdrew. In 2005, Boxer said she would “use all the parliamentary tools I’ve been given as a U.S. senator” to delay a vote on the confirmation of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, and she voted against both Roberts and Samuel Alito. In 2005, Boxer published a novel called A Time to Run about a liberal, woman senator from California opposing a conservative Supreme Court nominee. Four years later, she came out with another roman a clef political thriller, “Blind Trust,” about the same senator battling a Republican White House on homeland security and civil liberties.

In recent years, Boxer has concentrated on environmental issues. As the ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee during the years of Republican control of Congress, she sparred continually with conservative Chairman James Inhofe of Oklahoma over the issue of reducing carbon emissions to combat global warming. Inhofe famously said that the theory of human-caused global warming was a “hoax.” The committee’s emphasis changed abruptly when Democrats won the Senate majority in 2006. Boxer made addressing the causes of global warming her top legislative priority. “I really have two major goals,” she said. “They are to protect the health of the American people. And the second is to make the environment a bipartisan issue again on Capitol Hill.”

But her aggressive style did not always foster bipartisanship. In December 2007, she harshly criticized then-Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson for refusing to grant a waiver allowing California’s tough carbon emissions law to go into effect. She sought access to an EPA staff document recommending a waiver and accused Johnson of lying. She fumed during the summer and fall of 2008 when he refused to appear before the committee and testify. Inhofe boycotted the hearings as well. Boxer’s primary goal was to enact a cap-and-trade system to reduce carbon emissions, which she has called “the greatest challenge of our generation.” Such a system would allow companies to trade emissions “credits,” depending on the amount of pollution they generate. Boxer called former Vice President Al Gore to testify in a highly publicized hearing in March 2007, showering him with praise for his campaign to spur action on global warming. In 2007, Boxer’s committee took up a cap-and-trade bill sponsored by Connecticut Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman and Virginia Republican John Warner, and in nearly 10 hours of hearings, she fended off more-restrictive amendments from independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and less-restrictive amendments from others. In May 2008, she advanced a version with changes she hoped would increase support. In early June, her bill attracted only 48 votes in the Senate, well short of the 60 needed to proceed.

In the next Congress (2009-2010), senators from states that are heavily dependent on coal-generated electricity wanted to stop any cap-and-trade bill that would put their states at a competitive disadvantage, but during the early months of the Obama administration in 2009, Boxer continued to push the legislation. As the year progressed, however, she ceded control of the issue to Lieberman and Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry, a more accomplished negotiator who did not have a re-election to worry about, unlike Boxer. Kerry and Lieberman enlisted South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham in the hope that his support could bring aboard more Republicans. The three worked to develop a method of pricing carbon while increasing production of nuclear power, a compromise Boxer said she could accept. However, when Majority Leader Harry Reid proposed bringing up a comprehensive immigration bill for debate in April 2010, Graham said the climate bill was far closer to being ready and angrily accused Reid of catering to Hispanics in order to win his own re-election, essentially killing any deal.

Boxer pursued other bipartisan initiatives, working in 2007 with the Bush White House to increase the energy efficiency of federal buildings. Boxer co-sponsored, with Republican John Ensign of Nevada, a bill to reduce the tax on corporate profits earned abroad if they were invested in creating American jobs. She and Ensign estimated the 10-year revenue loss as $18 billion. But after Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation pegged the revenue loss at $28 billion, the measure was not included in the president’s February 2009 economic stimulus bill. Boxer has long been interested in enacting a “bill of rights” for stranded airline passengers, and in 2009 joined Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine in seeking support for a measure allowing passengers to deplane after every three hours on the ground and to be given food, water and other amenities while they wait. It was incorporated as part of a reauthorization bill for the Federal Aviation Administration that passed the Senate in 2010 but stalled in negotiations with the House. The Obama administration issued a rule modeled after their legislation that took effect in April of that year.

In 2007 and 2008, Boxer was entrusted with considerable institutional responsibilities when Reid appointed her to temporarily replace the disabled Tim Johnson of South Dakota as chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee. (Johnson suffered a brain hemorrhage in late 2006 but recovered.) In February 2008, she led the committee in admonishing Republican Larry Craig of Idaho for attempting to withdraw his guilty plea following his arrest in a homosexual sex sting in a Minneapolis airport men’s room. He had pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge, a misdemeanor, and later, after the incident was publicized, tried to change the plea. Under Boxer, the panel also admonished New Mexico Republican Pete Domenici for contacting a federal prosecutor who was investigating state Democrats in a corruption case. In June 2008, after public revelations that Democrats Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Kent Conrad of North Dakota had received favorable terms on home mortgages, committee members voted unanimously to require more disclosure of members’ mortgage terms. The Ethics Committee also investigated Ensign for trying to cover up an extramarital affair with a campaign aide and wife of one of his top staffers. In May 2011, Boxer announced that the committee had uncovered evidence that Ensign broke the law and the information would be forwarded to the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission.

During her first three years in the Senate, Boxer’s job ratings were among the Senate’s lowest. But California, with its large metropolitan areas, trended sharply toward the Democrats in the mid-1990s. From about 1997 on, Boxer generally has had positive job ratings, though they are somewhat lower than those of her more centrist colleague Feinstein. In 1998, Boxer was challenged by Republican state Treasurer Matt Fong. She raised $15 million and ran ads attacking Fong for what she called his ambiguous stances on issues like abortion rights. Fong attacked her for what he called the hypocrisy of her support for Clinton. (The president’s brother-in-law, Tony Rodham, married Boxer’s daughter.) But Fong failed to raise much money. Boxer won 53%-43%. She won 61% of the vote in Los Angeles County and 63% in the San Francisco Bay Area, and was not far behind in Southern California and the rest of the state—an impressive performance for a Democrat dismissed a few years before as too left-wing for much of the state.

When she was up for re-election in 2004, Boxer raised impressive amounts of money early, and well-known Republicans declined to make the race against her. Her opponent was Bill Jones, who had been elected secretary of state by narrow margins in 1994 and 1998 and was not well known outside his home base in Fresno County. Boxer spent $16 million to Jones’ $7 million. She won 58%-38%.

In early November 2009, Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard, decided to seek the GOP nomination to challenge Boxer in 2010. The well-connected former CEO had the potential to be a well-financed and formidable opponent, and after investing $5.5 million of her own savings, breezed past her Republican rivals in the June primary with 54% to former Rep. Tom Campbell’s 26% and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore’s 17%.

The political climate appeared ripe for Fiorina, with public distrust of Washington and its longtime inhabitants reaching a crescendo in the summer. Fiorina ran as an outsider with business experience, calling Boxer “one of the most bitterly partisan” senators and attacking her record of getting only a handful of original bills passed into law. She even was caught on an open microphone criticizing Boxer’s hairstyle as “so yesterday.” Fiorina blasted the senator as being partly to blame for the recession through her party’s enactment of policies such as the $787 billion economic stimulus. But Fiorina also embraced such conservative causes as opposing abortion rights and backing offshore drilling that risked alienating moderates and independents. Boxer attacked her opponent on those issues, but focused on Fiorina’s tenure at Hewlett-Packard, citing the company’s decision to lay off 28,000 workers and moving jobs overseas. Boxer refuted criticism of her thin legislative record, citing “1,000 Boxer provisions” enacted as amendments or other additions to legislation. She got a boost from President Obama, whose popularity in the Golden State was above his national ratings and who campaigned for her in the state. Polls through the summer and fall showed Fiorina within a few points of Boxer. In the end, she could not overcome the state’s Democratic tilt and Boxer handily won a fourth term, finishing with 52% to Fiorina’s 43%. Boxer noted that voters also returned former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown to office and said, “I think as (voters) looked at Jerry and they looked at me, they said, ‘you know, these are two imperfect people … but we trust them.’’’

During the 112th Congress, Boxer focused heavily on transportation and highway funding. And despite her earlier conflicts with Inhofe, she worked with him to iron out the details of a new federal transportation bill. The two-year bill had no earmarks and consolidated roughly 90 highway programs into 30. It passed the Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously and eventually passed the Senate, 76-22. Describing Boxer’s role in the negotiations, the San Francisco Chronicle observed: “Tea Party conservatives have managed to transform [Boxer] into a paragon of bipartisanship.” But the companion bill in the House stalled.

In recent years, Boxer has paid special attention to environmental issues at the local level. After complaints about pollution and odor in Mecca, Calif., Boxer sent a letter asking the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate the issue more thoroughly. She also appeared at a press event with environmental activist Erin Brockovich. Western Environmental, a recycling plant, was blamed for the odor but attempted to clear its name. The EPA forced a halt to all hazardous waste deliveries to the recycling plant and ordered the company to remove some contaminated soil. In February 2012, Boxer asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do a full-scale review of the accident-prone San Onofre nuclear plant near San Diego. She got a bill signed into law in May 2012 that enables the city of Tracy, Calif. to buy land to use for developing a solar energy facility.