Barbara Boxer

Senator

• Born: November 11, 1940
• Place of Birth: Brooklyn, New York

A representative and senator from California, Boxer has been a strong voice for progressive values, originating numerous bills and amendments in the areas of environmental protection and of women’s equality.

Early Life

Barbara Boxer was born in Brooklyn to Ira and Sophie Silvershein Levy. She grew up in Flatbush and Crown Heights, in secure and close-knit neighborhoods of Jewish and Italian residents. Her father was keenly interested in politics, and he admired both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Boxer was a bright girl who made friends easily, but she was not afraid to do the unexpected. Along with a friend, she coached the boys’ baseball team at her high school. After graduating, she enrolled in Brooklyn College, earning a degree in economics with a political science minor. During her senior year, Boxer married fellow student Stewart Boxer; the couple moved into a small apartment. When her husband enrolled in Fordham University’s law school, Boxer, armed with her economics credentials, looked for a job in one of the Wall Street trading firms. Her first employer hired her as a secretary and denied her entrance to its stockbroker training program. She studied on her own and passed the exam; then she went to work at another firm that would allow her to manage accounts.

The couple planned a move to California, where Boxer’s husband had a job offer. Boxer went ahead to look for housing. She was pregnant at the time, and their first child, Doug, was born the day after she arrived. It was a dramatic start to a new chapter in her life.

Life’s Work

The Boxers lived in San Francisco for two years and then moved to Greenbrae in Marin County, north of the city. A daughter, Nicole, was born in 1967. Boxer describes the late 1960s as a time she devoted to family life. Nevertheless, she was shocked by the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy in June 1968, and the other political assassinations that had rocked the United States: Martin Luther King, Jr., in April 1968, and President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Like many others, she reacted to the escalation of the Vietnam War with profound unease about the future that lay ahead for her children.

For Boxer, this unease stimulated her activist’s temperament. She joined with other young women in setting up a job-preparation project for school dropouts, a program so successful that it was later adopted by the county. She worked on environmental issues, an after-school day care center, an Education Corps providing job training, and support centers for women. Her community involvement was strong enough that she ran for the governing body, the Marin County Board of Supervisors, in the 1972 election. She won the primary but narrowly lost the general election, hurt by an opponent that used her status as a mother against her. Nevertheless, Boxer was resilient. She went to work for the Pacific Sun newspaper, first as a reporter and then as an assistant editor. In 1974, she took a job as an aide to John Burton, representative for California’s fifth district. In 1976, she ran again for the Marin County Board of Supervisors. This time she won, with much support from women, and ultimately she was chosen its president. After six years, Boxer ran for Burton’s seat in Congress, redistricted as the sixth district. Newly elected to Congress, she almost immediately was elected president of the Democratic new members’ caucus.

As a representative, she championed many of the same issues on which she had worked previously. Her district included part of San Francisco as well as Marin County. Most of her constituents were supportive of her stands. She soon gained a reputation for being strongly progressive and outspoken, with an instinct for getting maximum news coverage.

In her ten years as a representative in the House, she served on the Armed Services Committee, where she became known as a foe of such projects as the Patriot missile and funding for the Nicaraguan Contras. She brought attention to such wasteful practices as six-hundred-dollar toilet seats and seventy-five-hundred-dollar coffeepots, leading to reformed practices in military procurement. Perhaps her most dramatic action was organizing a march of women representatives to the Senate hearings on Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The protest, aimed at the committee’s rejection of attorney Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment, failed. Thomas was confirmed, but millions of women who had experienced sexual harassment without recourse joined the outcry. Boxer gave up her House seat to run for the Senate.

In 1992, Boxer became California’s junior senator. She is often labeled the Senate’s most liberal member. While labels seldom describe the entire range of a senator’s positions, there is little doubt that Boxer has been a strong supporter of a variety of progressive measures and reasonably effective at getting a number of them enacted into law. While still in the House, she cosponsored the Family and Medical Leave Act, only to have it vetoed by President George H. W. Bush. It was signed by his successor, President Bill Clinton. She was not an automatic supporter of Clinton’s efforts, however; she voted against his administration’s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and fast-track trade initiatives.

After 2000 she found herself in an altered political landscape, in which many of her Democratic colleagues hesitated to oppose Republican measures when they were framed as necessary for a war on terror. With reservations, she voted for the Patriot Act but against the invasion of Iraq. She had earlier decided not to run for reelection in 2004, but, stung by criticism from House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that equated criticism of Bush administration policies with disloyalty, she changed her mind. In the 2004 election, she received almost seven million votes, the largest total ever for a Senate candidate. In the next four years, she spoke out forcefully against some high-profile nominees, including Condoleezza Rice for secretary of state and John Bolton for ambassador to the United Nations. Meanwhile, she continued to craft new legislation in support of her trademark issues of environmental protection, women’s equality, and the interests of Californians. Boxer won reelection in 2010 after a grueling campaign.

In 2014 Boxer denied rumors that she was planning to resign, but also said that she had not yet decided whether or not to run for reelection in 2016. She later declined to run for re-election in 2016. She then conitnued her political career as a lobbyist, working as a paid consultant for both Poseidon Water and CityLife Parking. In 2021, the inaugural committee of Joe Biden returned a donation from Boxer after she registered as a foreign agent of the Chinese company Hikvision.

Significance

Boxer’s career can be viewed as a series of milestones in defying the conventional wisdom. She experienced frustrations based on gender stereotypes, but her determination to make the world better overcame most of the warnings of “you can’t.” The most persistent of these is that an outspoken, liberal woman could not win a seat in the U.S. Senate; and if she did, she could not function effectively. Boxer’s three largely successful terms disproved this. The only senator to hold two committee chairmanships (environment and public works, and ethics), she has also been a member of the party leadership as chief deputy whip since 2005. Additionally, she serves as a senior member of two other committees (commerce, and foreign relations). She is chair of the Commerce Committee's first subcommittee on global women's issues.

Boxer has been open about her Jewish affiliation, although it is not much of a factor in her electoral strategy. She is a member of Hadassah, a Zionist organization for women, and, in general, is a supporter of Jewish endeavors and of Israel. She is strongly associated with women’s causes. To many of her constituents, Boxer, as a woman who found her way into politics for the sake of her children’s future, is a role model to emulate.

Bibliography

Boxer, Barbara. Blind Trust. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2009.

Boxer, Barbara. “Interview: Barbara Boxer.” Interview by Ruth Coniff. The Progressive 69, no. 7 (July, 2005): 39–43.

Markay, Lachlan. "Scoop: Boxer to Drop Representation of Chinese Surveillance Firm." Axios, 12 Jan. 2021, www.axios.com/2021/01/12/scoop-boxer-to-drop-representation-of-chinese-surveillance-firm. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Mimms, Sarah, and Billy House. "Is the Senate Ethics Committee Working?" National Journal. National Journal Group, 2014. Web. 22 Dec. 2014.

Richman, Josh. "Sen. Barbara Boxer Lays Out Democrats' Economic Manifesto in San Francisco." Oakland Tribune (CA) 19 Feb. 2014. NewsBank. Web. 22 Dec. 2014.

"US Senator Barbara Boxer." Senate.gov. Senate.gov, 2014. Web. 22 Dec. 2014.

Whitney, Catherine. Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate. New York: HarperPerennial, 2001.

Wildermuth, John. "Sen. Barbara Boxer Knocks Down Resignation Rumors." SFGate. SFGate, 5 Sept. 2014. Web. 22 Dec. 2014.