Bruck and The New Yorker on Boxer race

The New Yorker's Connie Bruck weighs in this week on the U.S. Senate campaign in California. The Republican who emerges from the party's primary "may have a good chance of defeating Barbara Boxer, who faces an anti-incumbent mood and discontent over the state’s foundering economy," Bruck writes. [Link fixed.]

The national Republican Party has seized upon the race as a bellwether. Tom Campbell, a five-term Republican congressman who describes himself as a fiscal conservative and social moderate—he is pro-choice and supports gay marriage—believes this is his year. Recent polls show, however, that his opponent, Carly Fiorina, has overtaken his lead, and Campbell’s greatest assets—policy experience and a powerful intellect—now seem to be handicaps. Fiorina, the polished former C.E.O. of Hewlett-Packard, said at a debate on May 6th: “I am not a career politician.” Campbell’s other opponent, Chuck DeVore, casts himself as anti-government. The resolution of this contest will determine a great deal about the future of the Republican Party.

Bruck's focus is really on Campbell: "He has long been almost perversely independent. A supporter of Israel, he has nevertheless voted, on occasion, in ways that incur the enmity of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby."