Skip to content Skip to footer

What’s at Stake in California’s Senatorial Race?

Your Call continues our special California election series by focusing on the race for the U.S. Senate seat between Democrat Barbara Boxer and Republican Carly Fiorina. Listen to Your Call with Rose Aguilar: What’s at Stake in California’s Senatorial Race?

Your Call continues our special California election series by focusing on the race for the U.S. Senate seat between Democrat Barbara Boxer and Republican Carly Fiorina.

Listen to Your Call with Rose Aguilar: What’s at Stake in California’s Senatorial Race?

Barbara Boxer was first elected to the Senate in 1992 after serving 10 years in the House of Representatives. Senator Boxer chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the Senate Ethics Committee, and serves on the Senate Commerce and Foreign Relations Committees. She’s currently running for her fourth term.

This is the first time Carly Fiorina is running for political office. In 2008, she served as Victory Chairman for the McCain/Palin 2008 presidential ticket. After rising through the ranks of AT&T and Lucent Technologies, she became the CEO of Hewlett Packard in 1999. Fiorina was forced out by the company’s board six years later after the controversial Compaq merger failed to produce the shareholder returns or profits that she had promised.

This race has largely been overshadowed by California’s gubernatorial race even though there’s obviously a lot at stake and the candidates are polar opposites on just about every major issue except for Israel and Palestine.

“You probably couldn’t get a clearer choice in any election,” says San Francisco Chronicle Washington bureau reporter Carolyn Lochhead. “Fiorina has surprised political analysts for not shifting to the center on social issues. Boxer’s trying to focus on the social issues; Fiorina on the economic ones.”

During Fiorina’s GOP Senate primary, she said she “absolutely would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.” In a May appearance on Dennis Prager’s conservative radio show, she said, “In fact, I am proudly pro-life.”

Unlike most Democrats, Senator Boxer has defended her support for abortion throughout her campaign, but the national media have largely ignored this issue. “Make no mistake about it, a women’s right to choose is on the ballot in California this year, and it is very stark, it is Boxer, pro-choice vs. Fiorina, anti-choice,” she said at a recently rally with pro-choice advocates.

Boxer and Fiorina are also diametrically opposed on other major issues, including gay marriage and LGBT rights, offshore oil drilling, global warming, and tax cuts for the wealthy. According to a recent LA Times piece, Fiorina often says she had to outsource almost 30,000 jobs because California has a business-hostile tax structure, but during her reign at Hewlett Packard, the company benefited from state tax breaks.

On Your Call, we’ll discuss these issues and more, and we’ll find out who’s funding the Boxer and Fiorina campaigns.

Guests:

Carolyn Lochhead, Washington bureau reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, and writes the “Below the Beltway” blog

Barbara O’Connor, political communications professor and director at the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Sacramento State

Rose Aguilar is the host of “Your Call,” a daily call-in radio show on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and on KUSP 88.9 FM in Santa Cruz. She is author of “Red Highways: A Liberal’s Journey Into the Heartland.”

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.