This summer, I worked at a liberal activist non-profit film studio. As an intern, my job largely consisted of doing research for the studio’s campaign videos. You know the moments in a political attack ad where a statistic flies toward the screen in big red letters with a swoosh and a freeze frame? As in, “What you don’t know about Senator John Smith is that… (freeze frame, swoosh) HE’S TAKEN 5 MILLION DOLLARS FROM OIL LOBBYISTS THIS YEAR AND HE CANOODLES WITH CRACK ADDLED HOOKERS (bam).”
I was the lowly intern fumbling around the Internet to find out how much money various Republicans had taken from oil companies, and how many crack-addled hookers they were canoodling with. It was a great first internship that consisted of many hours of researching through campaign donations, old interviews, debates, and comically-outrageous, racist statements on Fox News.
For one work project, I scoured YouTube in search of dirt on Carly Fiorina. Carly Fiorina is the former CEO of Hewlett Packard and California’s Republican candidate for the Senate this year (one of this election season’s tightest races). She is also a current target of a series of attack ads produced by the studio for which I worked.
Digging up dirt on her was not difficult. She was a wildly unpopular CEO at HP, having fired 30,000 workers and left in disgrace with animosity from the company’s board and the Packard family. In a state that is almost 40 percent Hispanic, she supports Arizona Law SB1070 (the often talked about Arizona immigration law). She is pro-life in a state that is overwhelmingly pro-choice, and cuddly with Sarah Palin in a state that despises the former Vice Presidential candidate.
While searching in the nooks and crannies of YouTube for a video of Fiorina saying something attackable, I came across several videos of Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat Senator against whom Fiorina is running. Barbara Boxer has been in the Senate since she was elected in 1992. She is one of the most liberal senators currently in office and, in the words of our studio boss, is “one of the best allies progressives have in the Senate.” Since my job was to dig up dirt on Fiorina, I knew very little about Boxer besides her liberal credentials. So I was quite surprised to find a video of her making a condescending racist remark at a Senate hearing. As I watched a few more YouTube videos of Boxer, I found that I immensely disliked her.
In the first video I saw, Boxer is talking to Harry Alford, the president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, about climate change legislation. During the hearing, Boxer starts quoting the NAACP’s resolution in favor of green job creation, as well as comments about pro-climate change legislation made by a black CEO. Alford demands to know why she is bringing up irrelevant quotes from other black organizations, as if he should agree with them just because he is black. As Boxer attempts to brush over her own comments, Alford says, “You’re quoting some other black man. Why don’t you quote some other Asian…you are being racial here….We are referring to the experts regardless of their color. And for someone to tell me, an African-American, that I must contend with some other black group and put aside everything else in here…is just god-awful.”
It was discomforting to see the candidate that I was essentially working for paint herself as an ignorant racist. I was further frustrated when I saw the highly circulated video of her demand that a general call her “Senator” instead of “ma’am” (the Army’s guide to protocol instructs service members to refer to elected officials as “sir” or “ma’am”). Boxer comes off as condescending and disrespectful as she smugly says, “Do me a favor, can you say ‘senator’ instead of ‘ma’am?’ It’s just a thing, I worked so hard to get that title, so I’d appreciate it.”
So what was I, a politically active liberal, to do? Barbara Boxer seemed to be elitist, abrasive, and thoroughly unlikeable. On the other hand, she voted against the Iraq War and supported a slew of LGBT issues (including co-sponsoring the Matthew Shepard Act, which expanded the federal definition of hate crimes to include those committed based on gender identity and sexual orientation). She supports comprehensive climate change legislation, health care reform, and is a vigorous defender of reproductive rights.
Despite these facts, I found myself considerably less enthusiastic at work. My vigor for digging up dirt on Fiorina was rapidly fading. Fiorina might have compared concern over climate change to “worrying about the weather” and called Arizona’s law that enables racial profiling “absolutely necessary,” but she is also well-spoken, energetic, charismatic, and a breast cancer survivor.
I never fully got back my anti-Fiorina mojo. But I did learn something important. In researching both of these candidates, I found that I liked a lot about Fiorina’s personality, but had no particular interest in hanging out with Barbara Boxer. However, I also realized that Boxer shared almost of all of my political leanings and opinions, while Fiorina and I disagreed on virtually every issue.
In the end I decided that, as a progressive, supporting Boxer was the smartest thing to do. A vote for Boxer might be a vote for an unpleasant woman, but it is also a vote for climate change legislation, legalization of gay marriage, and the end of the Afghanistan War. A vote for Fiorina is a vote for a charismatic leader, but it is also a vote for the repeal of healthcare reform, tax cuts for the richest one percent of the country, and for anti-immigrant fear-mongering.
A candidates’ personality does matter to a certain extent; likable Senators are probably more likely to work across party lines for bipartisan legislation and have more success in gathering allies. And there is a point at which a candidates’ personality can be too horrible to deserve a vote. For example, had John “I cheated on my wife while she was dying of breast cancer” Edwards been the Democrat’s presidential nominee in 2008, I would not have gone out to vote for him over Vietnam war hero John McCain.
But ultimately, I could not vote for the California Senate nominee that I would want to have a beer with. That kind of thinking lead to the election of the affable George W. Bush over the more aloof Al Gore. A senator is supposed to go to Washington to represent your interests, whether they be conservative or liberal, and enact legislation that attempts to better the country. If the other candidate will not do that, even if he or she is likable, then they do not deserve your vote.
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