Barbara Boxer's Path To Victory In CA SEN

Welcome back to Hotline On Call's Path To Victory. On Friday, we looked at how former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina (R) can overcome 13% party registration deficit to defeat Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) and pull off what would be considered a significant upset.

We now turn to Boxer's campaign. Boxer's camp has withstood a litany of stories about how vulnerable she is, especially with Fiorina - and her checkbook - in the race. This is the toughest re-election bid of Boxer's career but she appears to be making progress. A Field Poll out Friday showed Boxer leading 47% to 40%, a 3-point bump from her numbers in July.

So how does she keep up the momentum through Election Day? Boxer's path to victory is threefold: Make Fiorina seem too conservative for California's Democratic-friendly electorate, undercut Fiorina's strongest attack line, and rev up the base.

Carly "The Extreme" Fiorina: To put it simply, Democrats - and several non-partisan analysts - believe that Fiorina is too far to the right to win statewide in California. Unlike former eBay CEO Meg Whitman (R) in the gubernatorial race and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) before her, Fiorina has not moved to the center following the GOP primary. In particular, Democrats are critical of her positions on offshore drilling (she supports it), abortion (she opposes it), the assault weapons ban (she opposes it), and Schwarzenegger's clean energy initiative (she wants to repeal it and is the only statewide Republican to take that position).

These are positions that the conventional wisdom would suggest are too conservative to win statewide in the Golden State. "It would be a miracle for those positions to pass muster in California," said one Democrat strategist in the state. "This woman should be running in Utah."

Democrats believe that highlighting these positions will drive Fiorina's unfavorability numbers up. Boxer has been on the air for more than a week attacking Fiorina, and her negative numbers have risen. In the Field poll released Friday, 38% viewed Fiorina unfavorably. That's up from 29% in a July survey while her favorable number has remained at 34% during that time.

Attack Fiorina's Strength: The Boxer campaign plans to take a page out of the Karl Rove playbook at hit Fiorina on her strength: Jobs. So far, Fiorina has tried to focus the race on the economy and that's a conversation the Boxer campaign wants to have.

Californians don't know the full story about Fiorina's time at Hewlett-Packard, or her record on job creation, Democrats say. They believe - and they are supported by their polling - that they have a lethal line of attack on Fiorina: Her time as CEO at Hewlett-Packard. In particular, they want to highlight that Hewlett-Packard's stock dropped 50% while Fiorina was at the helm and that the company fired thousands during her tenure. The silver bullet, they say, is that she sent jobs to China. The attack flies in the face of Fiorina's most used salvo against Boxer - that she, and Democrats, don't know how to stimulate the economy.

This strategy was loud and clear in Boxer's first attack ad. "As the CEO of HP, Carly Fiorina laid off 30K workers," the narrator says. "Fiorina shipped jobs to China. And while Californians lost their jobs, Fiorina tripled her salary, bought a million dollar yacht and 5 corporate jets. Carly Fiorina: Outsourcing jobs, out for herself."

Rev Up The Base: The Boxer camp needs all the attacks on Fiorina to fire up the Democratic base, which, at this point, appears to be pretty tuned out of the election. Democratic base turnout is crucial to Boxer because she has to run up the score in areas that are predominantly Democratic: the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

These two areas typically make up 46% to 50% of the statewide electorate, so Boxer can focus almost all of her attention there. And she is so far. According to media trackers, Boxer has aired ads in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego and has ignored the Central Valley, which is GOP territory.

San Francisco is Boxer's home base (Marin County) and she'll probably need to pull at least 65% in the city and surrounding counties - Napa and Sonoma - in order to win if Democratic turnout is low in other areas. In Los Angeles she probably doesn't need to do quite as well, but if she's approaching 60% there she'll be in good shape on election night.

In addition to the base, the Boxer camp hopes their attacks show  independents that Fiorina is out of the mainstream. Independents make up about 20% of the California electorate and, if they turnout, they tend  to act like moderate Democrats. In the Field poll out Friday, Boxer led  among these voters by a 46% to 40% margin. If exit polls show these voters are breaking for Boxer on Election Day in this anti-incumbent climate, she should be in the driver's seat.

Previous Paths To Victory
CA SEN:
Carly Fiorina's Path To Victory

WA SEN:
Dino Rossi's Path To Victory
Patty Murray's Path To Victory

WI SEN:
Ron Johnson's Path To Victory
Russ Feingold's Path To Victory

WV SEN:
John Raese's Path To Victory
Joe Manchin's Path To Victory

OH 15:
Steve Stivers' Path To Victory
Mary Jo Kilroy's Path To Victory