Boxer Book Reveals Near-Exit From Race, Harassment Incident

WASHINGTON —  In a soon-to-be-released autobiography, California Sen. Barbara Boxer says she came within a day of dropping out of her Senate race last year and recounts for the first time her college-age brush with sexual harassment.

Boxer writes that she decided to drop out of the Senate primary three months before the June, 1992, election at a time when she was behind in the polls, short of campaign money, dogged by political ads attacking her, pestered by the “nastiness of the press” and tired of taking red-eye flights between Washington and California.

But Boxer’s two adult children talked her out of quitting and she went on to narrowly defeat Republican Bruce Herschensohn to win a six-year Senate seat.

The book, “Strangers in the Senate,” focuses on Boxer’s role in politics and the “new revolution of women in America.” In it, Boxer traces her rise from a female candidate whose gender posed a liability in her first Marin County race in 1972 to one of four Senate candidates who benefited from the so-called Year of the Woman to make history in 1992.

The 256-page book was written with Boxer’s daughter, Nicole, and includes a foreword by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. It will be available in bookstores by Dec. 6 and has already sold out a 15,000-copy first printing, said Alan Sultan, vice president of National Press Books. All royalties from the first printing will go to the Children’s Defense Fund.

Boxer credits last year’s success of women candidates to the fallout from the male-dominated Senate’s treatment of Anita Hill and her allegations of sexual harassment against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in the fall of 1991.

The book’s title stems from the day Boxer and seven other female House members marched to the Senate to demand an investigation of Hill’s charges. After the women were prevented from entering a meeting of Democratic senators, Boxer was told by a prominent unnamed senator, “We don’t let strangers in.”

Boxer writes: “Later, we learned that in context the word ‘stranger’ meant simply ‘non-senator’. It didn’t mean stranger in the ordinary sense. I felt better knowing that, but I still believe that the more common meaning of the word really was closer to the truth.”

Many women, including herself, identified with Hill’s plight because they at some time were the victims of sexual harassment, Boxer said.

In the book, Boxer says that she still remembers every “traumatic” detail of the day 30 years ago when she was sexually harassed by her college professor.

Then a 21-year-old senior at Brooklyn College, Boxer said she had arranged to meet her economics instructor in his office to contest a C-minus grade. When she attempted to leave the meeting, the unidentified instructor closed the door and asked Boxer for a kiss goodby.

After declining, Boxer recalled, “I walked toward the door and he grabbed me by the shoulders tightly and leaned over to kiss me. Now I remember seeing his ‘old’ face coming at me, my pushing him away, grabbing the door handle and running down the empty corridor.”

In her case, Boxer had told no one other than her husband before disclosing the incident in the book.

“The reason I raised it in the book was that I realized as we women walked over (to the Senate), we were very motivated by our own personal experiences,” Boxer said in an interview.

Boxer writes that she was not harmed physically or mentally by the harassment, “except to make me feel temporarily powerless. It dampened my spirit and my dignity.”

“Strangers in the Senate” is billed as providing “illuminating insights” into Boxer’s life as a female pioneer in national politics. But she offers scant detail about last year’s campaign or her early months in the Senate.

Boxer reveals that in March, 1992, she informed her husband, Stew, and two campaign aides of her intention to quit the race and planned to hold a news conference the next day. But she changed her mind that night, Boxer writes, after watching a “60 Minutes” segment on the fund-raising power of women candidates and discussing her decision with her two grown children.

Her son, Doug, a lawyer who is now 28, handed Boxer the Dr. Seuss book “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” and told her to read it aloud and think about the message.

Her daughter, Nicole, now 26, told her: “Mom, this election isn’t about you. There’s no way you can drop out. What will that tell the world about women? That we can’t take the heat?”

Boxer included the anecdote in her book to motivate her readers.

“I want my book to be inspirational and helpful to people,” she said. “I think they need to know we are all vulnerable and we all have the same emotions and go through the same things.”

Her Senate election was not the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition, Boxer writes, because girls were not allowed such dreams when she was growing up. Instead, she portrays her election as “the fulfillment of an American Dream previously reserved for American men.”