ShareThisFor months, California's Republican U.S. Senate candidates wanted to talk only about Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer.
Now they shifted their attention to someone else: Scott Brown, the Republican from Massachusetts who claimed the GOP's first U.S. Senate seat in the Bay State since 1979.
As a new Field Poll showed Boxer holding onto support from roughly half of likely voters in California, three GOP challengers insisted this week that Brown's victory proves a Republican can win here, too.
Democrats acknowledged that Boxer faces a difficult battle this fall as she seeks her fourth term. But they said Massachusetts Democrat Martha Coakley was to blame for her own failure against Brown.
The poll showed Boxer leading each of three GOP candidates in head-to-head matchups.
Former U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell, a moderate Republican who switched contests after aspiring to be governor, fared best, trailing with 38 percent to Boxer's 48 percent.
Republicans were quick to note that Boxer was below 50 percent against Campbell -- traditionally a concerning sign for an incumbent.
"That's what most political consultants would say, that usually if you're under 50 percent, you're vulnerable," said Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo. "But I must add, Boxer has been in this situation multiple times before."
The poll showed Campbell with an immediate lead over former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, 30 percent to 25 percent. State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, trailed with only 6 percent among likely voters in the GOP primary. Campbell's lead is within the poll's margin of error of 7.1 percentage points.
All three Republican candidates said this week that Massachusetts -- which has not a single Republican among its 10 House members -- proved that any blue state is winnable this year. California has not had a Republican senator since Sen. John Seymour, an interim appointee, lost to Dianne Feinstein in 1992.
"By any measure, Massachusetts is more liberal than California," DeVore said. "To have Scott Brown perform magnificently and win by 5 percentage points ... shows to me an awakening of the American voter in a very remarkable way."
Rose Kapolczynski, Boxer's campaign manager, said the senator knows she's in for a tough race. But Kapolczynski added that Boxer's advantage over potential challengers in the poll shows "that what happens in Massachusetts doesn't predict what happens in California."
Republican candidates -- and not just in the Senate race -- used Brown's victory as an opportunity to solicit donations. Both Campbell and DeVore sent fundraising pleas via the social-networking Web site Twitter, while gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner issued a fundraising e-mail titled "Building on Last Night's Victory."
"There's general dissatisfaction with the Obama administration and declining approval ratings, which usually isn't good for the party in power," said John J. Pitney Jr., professor of politics at Claremont McKenna College.
He added, however, that "it's still an uphill battle for Republicans, and Boxer is the favorite."
California and Massachusetts are considered solid blue states, but they each have an independent streak. Both have elected Republican governors in the last decade.
Based on 2008 voter-registration statistics, Democrats hold a greater than 3-1 advantage over Republicans in Massachusetts. But they are not a majority. Just over 50 percent of Massachusetts voters are registered as "unenrolled," or independent.
In California, Democrats had a 44.6 percent-to-31.1 percent registration advantage as of last May. Independents make up a smaller share of the electorate than in Massachusetts -- 20 percent.
Chris Lehane, a Democratic political strategist, called 2010 "a challenging political ecology for any candidate that has a 'D' next to her name." But he blamed Coakley for various campaign lapses that led to her downfall.
"With Sen. Boxer, you have someone who's not going to take a single moment for granted," Lehane said. "She's not going to pull a Coakley and take a couple weeks off during the holidays. (Coakley) gave the impression she had been ordained. That's always a bad thing to do, but in this atmosphere it's an especially bad thing to do."
The three Republican candidates for Senate said they believe they can run a campaign against Boxer based on the economic downturn and anxiety over the federal health-care overhaul.
"I see parallels in what voters are concerned about," Fiorina said, comparing her race with the situation in Massachusetts. "So here in California, all the polling data says Californians are most concerned about jobs. And they're most concerned about out-of-control spending ... and they're concerned with the direction that health-care reform is taking. I think all of those things play in California just as they play in Massachusetts."
(kyamamura(at)sacbee.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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