ABSTRACT
Into the last weeks of October, 2010, the Cook Political Report still rated the California U.S. Senate race a tossup.1 With a Republican tide rising around the country, and a liberal incumbent Democrat, Barbara Boxer, polling below 50 percent, the GOP’s chances of winning control of the Senate depended on winning races like this one. The challenger, Republican Carly Fiorina, formerly the CEO of the technology fi rm Hewlett-Packard, was a good candidate, an outsider with business and economic credentials and ties to Republican heavyweights. She was aided by conservative and Republican outside groups that spent millions of dollars to attack Senator Boxer during the last weeks of the campaign, but to no avail. Barbara Boxer defeated her credible, well-fi nanced Republican challenger by ten points on Election Night. That she did so, even in a national Republican landslide, speaks to the liberal tendencies of voters in California and to the ongoing strategic problem faced by a conservative Republican Party in the state. Democrats won up and down the ballot in California in November, buoyed by strong Democratic voter registration and the popularity of the president and the policies he championed.
