The GOP considered Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) one of the year's most endangered incumbents. (AP)

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 30, 1998; Page A1

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 29 – As the 1998 midterm election enters its final days, California is shaping up as the biggest disappointment in the country for Republicans.

With Democratic Lt. Gov. Gray Davis holding a strong lead over Republican Attorney General Dan Lungren, the GOP faces the prospect of losing the governor's office here for the first time in 16 years. The outcome will have significant implications for which party controls the congressional delegation in the next decade, because the next governor will have a powerful voice in how House district lines are redrawn after the 2000 census.

Now Republicans fear they may be squandering the opportunity to gain a Senate seat in California. Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who just a month ago was among the most endangered incumbents in the country, has turned around the campaign against Republican state Treasurer Matt Fong. Two independent polls in the last week have shown Boxer leading Fong, including a Field Poll released today that put her ahead by 51 percent to 42 percent.

"It's literally a scenario for the worst nightmare [of Republicans] coming true," said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll.

California Republicans say the Senate race remains competitive, that private polls show the contest within the margin of error. But after battering Fong with negative ads during September, Boxer appears in a surprisingly strong position to hold her post unless Fong can straighten out his campaign.

To that end, Fong's campaign launched a counterattack against Boxer today with a negative ad that accuses her of being "too liberal and ineffective for California." Republican strategists say Fong must attract more support from Democratic men and that ad is designed in part to do that.

The two statewide campaigns here underscore a larger lesson for Republicans in the nation's biggest state – and perhaps the country as a whole as they look toward 2000.

"Democrats have a better fix on what they need to do to win in California, and that translates nationally," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at Claremont Graduate University. She added: "Republicans have got to figure out that California is more moderate than the candidates that they choose. The Democrats have figured out that California is less liberal than it used to be."

How much this year's campaigns portend a longer-term shift toward the Democrats among the California electorate will be a topic of debate if current polls hold true. But a GOP strategist said the climate for California Republicans right now is poor. "It's a Democratic-leaning environment," the strategist said.

Davis has successfully hugged the center throughout his campaign for governor, pushing Lungren to the right. Through much of the year, Fong positioned himself as a bland moderate to Boxer's strident liberal. The late-summer fallout from President Clinton's relationship with Monica S. Lewinsky only compounded Boxer's problems.

But in the past few weeks, Fong's campaign has suffered from the combination of a backlash against Republicans after the House vote to launch impeachment hearings, Boxer's relentless negative ads and Fong's missteps in the campaign's waning days.

Boxer has hit Fong on the same issues Davis used to push Lungren to the right: abortion, guns and the environment. Fong's strategists rail at the incumbent's ads. "Her whole campaign has been one of deception and distortion," said Sal Russo, Fong's media adviser.

Fair or not, the ads have hurt. In an early October Field Poll, 55 percent of Californians had a favorable impression of Fong while 17 percent had an unfavorable impression. In the latest poll, it was 47 percent favorable, 36 percent unfavorable (though still slightly better than Boxer).

This week, Boxer seized on news that Fong had donated $50,000 in leftover campaign funds to the Traditional Values Coalition, a California-based group headed by the Rev. Lou Sheldon that strongly opposes abortion rights and gay rights. Boxer said it was evidence that the Republican is "out of the mainstream" in California. "When he wrote that check, he wrote his destiny," she said in an interview.

Fong is not as conservative on social issues as many in his party, but has had trouble establishing his identity in this campaign, and the contribution only made that problem worse. Then, after the donation to the Traditional Values Coalition was revealed, Fong turned around and signed a pledge to a Republican gay organization that he would support much of its agenda. Boxer taunted her opponent at a campaign event this week: "Matt Fong, what do you believe?"

"Her theme all along has been to portray Fong as a right-winger and move toward the center and that incident underscored one of her campaign themes," said Gary Jacobson, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego. "She has a fair number of negatives and he came in virtually unknown. He hasn't managed to define himself as effectively as he might have – and so hasn't been able to paint her successfully as a left-winger."

As one Boxer adviser put it, "Everybody in California knows Barbara Boxer. They haven't known Matt Fong. If they get to know Matt Fong, we win. If all they know is Barbara Boxer, we lose."

A Boxer victory on top of a Lungren defeat would only intensify the recriminations among Republicans that already have begun here in California. GOP activists privately are furious with Lungren for the kind of campaign he has waged.

Now Fong's campaign is drawing criticism for failing to respond aggressively to Boxer's attacks, for not doing more to make the race a referendum on the incumbent, and for assuming that Clinton's problems would continue to hamper Boxer's campaign. "It's not rocket science, it's political science," a GOP strategist said.

Russo said the race still is about Boxer. "People don't like Barbara Boxer," he said. "All of her negative advertising is accentuating what they don't like about her, that she's divisive and doesn't get along with people, and that she's not getting a lot done."

Until this week, Fong's criticisms of Boxer have been far more muted than direct, a strategic decision by his advisers that so-called "soft-contrast ads" were more effective with voters fed up by mudslinging. This week Fong shifted gears, deploying ads featuring his mother – March Fong Eu, a Democrat and former secretary of state – that criticize Boxer for negative campaigning.

But Russo acknowledged that Boxer's financial advantage has hurt Fong. "In the quintessential media state of California, you need $2 million a week [for ads], and we don't quite get there." The question is whether Fong has enough money to make his new negative ad effective.

On the campaign trail this week, Fong has been harshly critical of Boxer. Before donors in Newport Beach on Saturday, Fong said the campaign would be a referendum on Boxer's "extremism, her divisiveness and her hypocrisy," adding that his opponent is "a left-wing radical" who has coddled criminals, weakened the national defense, raised taxes and crippled local education.

But for much of the week, Fong had trouble talking about Boxer or even his own issues. After receiving the endorsement of a number of Silicon Valley executives in San Jose on Monday, Fong took questions from the news media. Every question dealt in some way with his donation to the Traditional Values Coalition. "Does anybody have any questions about high-tech issues?" Fong's press secretary Steve Schmidt boomed out. Hearing none, he unilaterally cut off further questioning.

Whatever burden the president's problems put on Boxer – who was a tiger in her criticism of former senator Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over allegations of sexual harassment – Clinton has been enormously helpful in giving Boxer the financial advantage she needed for her advertising campaign. His trip last weekend helped raise $2 million for her campaign.

In the campaign's final weeks, the issue of Clinton and Lewinsky has barely registered. Boxer said the difference in atmosphere is palpable. "I would hold a press conference and people would ask about that Monica Lewinsky issue," Boxer said. "It was very hard to break through on any other issues, so it was hurting me. I couldn't get a word in. I had to go on TV to start a dialogue. Now the press seems to be interested in other things."