Barbara Boxer slams Carly Fiorina on jobs

(07-07) 04:00 PDT Los Angeles --

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer pounded on the issue of jobs in her first campaign barnstorm of the state on Tuesday, lambasting her GOP opponent and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as a "disastrous" executive who laid off thousands of workers and shipped jobs overseas while earning millions.

Boxer, on a two-day state swing she called her "Jobs For California" tour, underscored her own enthusiastic support of the Obama administration's $862 billion stimulus package approved narrowly by the Senate in early 2009.

The third-term incumbent Democrat repeatedly said that had Fiorina been California's senator, she could have been the difference between passage and defeat.

"If she had been in the Senate, we wouldn't have the Economic Recovery Act," said Boxer, backed by an army of hard-hat wearing construction workers at the Doyle Drive construction project in San Francisco, where she launched her nine-stop, two-day trip.

"She opposes these jobs, the jobs of the people standing right beside us," said Boxer, with the panorama of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay as her backdrop behind a jungle of construction cranes. "She would have voted no on everything."

Boxer, facing perhaps her toughest campaign, traveled Tuesday from San Francisco to San Diego and Monterey; Palo Alto, Stockton, Fresno and Sacramento are among her stops today in what has become a combative, expensive campaign, with GOP leaders hoping to capture a crucial base in Democratic-leaning California.

From the San Francisco construction project to a Los Angeles manufacturing plant to a small business in San Diego, Boxer lambasted Fiorina as a wealthy candidate who has cost jobs, not created them.

'Made a fortune'

As head of HP, Fiorina "got fired; she was named one of the worst CEOs in history," said Boxer, speaking to reporters as she traveled the state by plane and van. "She laid off 30,000 (workers) ... sent jobs to China and made a fortune for herself."

In San Francisco, Boxer was joined by Mayor Gavin Newsom, who noted that the $1.45 billion project to reconstruct Doyle Drive will be completed with $500 million in funding from the federal economic stimulus bill.

Newsom lauded Boxer for delivering the last $100 million in federal funding to kick off what he called "among the most important transit projects in our nation."

In Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Councilman Richard Alarcon and Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, appeared with Boxer at Quallion, a San Fernando Valley company that makes lithium batteries.

Surrounded by workers in white lab coats, the officials praised Boxer's proposals to create jobs.

In San Diego, she held a roundtable discussion and emphasized small-business employment issues.

Clean energy

Boxer's job proposals include "making California the hub of the clean-energy economy," including support for the state's landmark greenhouse gases bill, which Fiorina opposes, boosting transportation projects and "ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas."

California's junior senator said the race represents "the clearest choice in the nation" for voters. Boxer supports President Obama's health care reform plan and opposes offshore oil drilling, while Fiorina opposes the health care law and supports offshore oil drilling. Boxer is pro-choice while Fiorina identifies herself as "pro-life."

Boxer's attempts to dramatize their differences come as Fiorina has ramped up her attacks on Boxer as a "failed" senator, saying her environmental policies are "job killers," and charging that Boxer's water policies have cost thousands of jobs in the Central Valley.

On Tuesday, Fiorina issued a statement saying she was recovering this week from reconstructive surgery related to the double mastectomy she underwent last year after her breast cancer diagnosis. The GOP candidate has said she has been cancer-free since undergoing radiation and chemotherapy.

Fiorina fires back

But her campaign took no vacation from responding to Boxer's statewide trip. In an e-mail, Fiorina's press secretary Amy Thoma said, "We think Boxer might want to consider renaming her swing through the Golden State the 'Broken Promises Tour.' "

Vice President Joe Biden will visit Silicon Valley on Thursday and Los Angeles on Friday to raise money for Boxer, who received help from Obama when he traveled to California in April and May to pump up her campaign coffers.

E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle