Posted on 10/04/2004 8:27:30 AM PDT by Former Military Chick
GREENBRAE, Calif. — Barbara Boxer's people live these days in genteel comfort here at the eastern edge of Mt. Tamalpais State Park, their homes tucked beneath swaying trees amid cascading red bougainvillea and the occasional rose bed.
There's Tom Thorner, Jackie DeNevers and Nancy Hakim, Boxer herself and her husband, Stewart. They all became friends 35 years ago when they formed the Marin Alternative to tackle issues distant — the Vietnam War — and as close as the valley floor along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, where they squelched a developer's dream of turning a wetland into a neighborhood.
Boxer was a young mother then, a native New Yorker and former stockbroker who moved west with her lawyer husband to find a future. Opposition to the war propelled her into activism — she was a volunteer in Democrat Eugene McCarthy's failed 1968 presidential run — but it was local environmental battles that gave Boxer her first tastes of political victory, her first proof that if you agitate and cajole enough, sometimes you can change your corner of the world.
Boxer has used that mix and an attention to grass-roots organizing to propel a nearly 30-year career in elected office — the last 12 in the U.S. Senate, where she has been both a beacon and a lightning rod for liberal causes.
From the beginning, Boxer has positioned herself not only as an environmental steward but as a leader and a product of women's rights.
As Boxer, 63, faces reelection to the Senate this November, she jokes on the campaign trail that her name fits her politics — she's a fighter more than a conciliator in a Senate chamber in which conciliation is equated with progress.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Judging by realtor.com's listings, her house is worth at least $1,000,000, more likely about $1,500,000 or so.
She made a pretty good investment.
Of course a lot of this value comes from her strident anti-development policies, so in a twisted way, she's earned it.
But if you want to see someone who cares about the "little people" who can't afford the cost of housing around here, well, it's not her.
D
Gee. I don't remember any Republican ever ever ever getting such a nice (if unreadably long) puff piece in the LA Times.
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