Despite heightened partisan polarization, Boxer was able to develop productive working relationships across the aisle, especially in the realm of infrastructure and water resources. During the same period, she also chaired the Senate Ethics Committee. military intervention in Iraq.) Becoming chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works committee in 2007, she continued in that role for eight years. She served on a wide variety of committees, with her longest tenure on the Foreign Relations committee. Kamala Harris succeeded to Boxer’s seat in the Senate.īoxer made her legislative mark in the Senate by forcefully advocating for a wide range of liberal issues, ranging from gun control to the expansion of government programs for children, from environmental protection to the battle against sexual harassment. Although many predicted that she would be a one-term senator, Boxer won her subsequent three races fairly comfortably, against state treasurer Matt Fong, secretary of state Bill Jones, and former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina. Boxer won a three-way race to garner the Democratic nomination and then defeated conservative television commentator Bruce Herschensohn by a margin of 48 to 43 percent. At the same time, new female senators from Illinois and Washington also joined the upper house. The Hill-Thomas hearings provided the primary context for Boxer’s election to the United States Senate in 1992 as part of the “Year of the Woman.” That November, Californians elected another Jewish woman to the Senate, Dianne Feinstein, making this the first time that any state had been represented by two women in the upper house of Congress. Indeed, the narrative centerpiece of Boxer’s biography/political testament, Strangers in the Senate, is Boxer leading the march of seven congresswomen over to the Senate to demand a full consideration of the charges of sexual harassment against Thomas. Yet it was the 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, where an all-white, all-male, panel of senators (including Joe Biden, chair of the Judiciary Committee) mercilessly grilled Anita Hill, that became the fulcrum of Boxer’s political life. In her decade in the House of Representatives, Boxer specialized in feminist issues, particularly reproductive rights, and in exposing waste in defense spending. Boxer went on to be the first female president of the Board of Supervisors in 1981 and was then elected to Congress the following year. She became a member of the Board of Supervisors in 1977 after working as a journalist and a congressional aide to Representative John Burton (who ultimately endorsed her for his seat upon his retirement from the House). During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Boxer helped form, and participated in, a number of grassroots organizations involving education, day care, peace, and women’s empowerment.īoxer ran for political office for the first time in 1972, losing a race for the Marin County Board of Supervisors. The war in Vietnam and the 1968 political assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. In 1965, the Boxers moved to Greenbrae, in Marin County, California. She was then able to ply her trade on Wall Street for three years. No firm would hire her, however, so she had to study for the required exam while serving as a secretary. In 1962, she organized tenants in her Brooklyn apartment complex to persuade a recalcitrant landlord to make necessary improvements.Īfter graduating from Brooklyn College in 1962 with a major in economics, Boxer hoped to become a stockbroker in order to put her husband through law school. The same year she married, a professor sexually harassed her-something she did not publicly disclose until the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings that brought her national attention. In 1994, Nicole married Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother Tony in a White House wedding that marriage ended in divorce, and she is re-married.īoxer’s politicization was gradual. Doug, the elder, is a lawyer active in California civic and political affairs. After what she characterizes as a Debbie Reynolds-type of life in the 1950s, she married Stewart Boxer in 1962 while a senior at Brooklyn College. She attended public schools, graduating from Brooklyn’s Wingate High School. Levy and homemaker Sophie (Silvershein) Levy, who were immigrants. Boxer was born on November 11, 1940, in Brooklyn to lawyer Ira R.
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