Boxer campaigns with labor allies, says Fiorina walks “on that far right lane”

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Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer turned her efforts to getting out the vote Sunday, sprinting across Los Angeles County from a morning service at a predominantly African American church in South L.A., to a Latino-focused phone bank run by labor supporters in El Monte, before rounding out her schedule revving up volunteers at a voter call center in Harvard Heights.

Standing on the stage in El Monte with her union allies—with yellow and black “Viva Boxer” signs hanging along the walls—Boxer said her opponents were trying to convince Latino voters not to vote, which had been the explicit message of one outside group’s Web ad.

“When you make those calls, remind people this is an awesome power, and the other side wants us to stay home,” said Boxer, who is facing former Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Carly Fiorina at the polls. “They want to depress voter turnout. But I know this: The people will win if we have a good turnout, and you’re going to make sure that we get that turnout.”

The three-term senator framed her race against Fiorina as a contest between an advocate for “millionaires and billionaires” and a champion for the middle class.

“If ever this state needed someone in the United States Senate to stand up and fight for them, it’s now. My name is Boxer and I am that fighter,” she said. “We have to keep pushing forward for the positive change—the positive change that we know is on the way. Maybe it hasn’t come to the degree that we want it to come, but it is coming. We took this country back from looking at the Great Depression—honestly we did in the tough votes that we cast. We turned it around.”

Boxer noted that her rival won the endorsement of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, drawing boos from the crowd. “She walks on that far right lane,” Boxer said of FIorina, “and that is not where the majority of Californians walk.”

Fiorina spokeswoman Andrea Saul responded that “after nearly three decades in Washington, all Boxer has to show for herself are 2.2 million Californians out of work, with more than half a million jobs lost since the stimulus passed, and bigger government.”

“The fact of the matter is, the only way to change Washington is to change the people we send there, which is why voters will choose to end Boxer’s 28-year career as a politician on Nov. 2,’ Saul said.

Boxer’s appearance at the headquarters of the International Assn. of Firefighters Local 1014 in El Monte underscored the close partnership between labor and the Democratic candidates in the final stretch of the race.

Maria Elena Durazo, the executive-secretary treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, told the crowd that labor volunteers had made more than 3 million phone calls in support of their candidates over the last six weeks. By Sunday, they had directly contacted 325,000 people either through a phone call or by knocking on doors, a federation spokeswoman said.

The efforts will supplement those of Boxer’s campaign, which is working jointly with the Democratic Party and President Obama’s Organizing for America to make contact with voters through 81 field offices around the state. Aides said that on Saturday alone those volunteers tried to contact about 300,000 voters across the state.

-- Maeve Reston in Los Angeles

Photo: L.A. Times file.