California’s 14th congressional district consists of portions of San Francisco and San Mateo County counties. Some of the cities and towns included in the district are: Belmont, Brisbane, Burlingame, Colma, Daly City, East Palo Alto, Foster City, Half Moon Bay, Montara, Pacifica, Redwood City, San Bruno, San Carlos, San Mateo and South San Francisco.
The 14th congressional district is represented by Rep. Jackie Speier (D). It is also represented, as is the rest of California, by U.S. Senators and Bay Areans Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D). On Thursday, January 8, Boxer, a staunch and unapologetic liberal, announced she will retire at the end of her term in 2016. Boxer won election to the U.S. Senate in 1992 and previously served ten years in the U.S. House of Representatives (CA 6th District) from 1983 to 1992. Her retirement will open a Senate seat in California for the first time since 1992. Included among the Democrats expected to seek the hotly contested open senate seat are: California Attorney General Kamala Harris, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and billionaire environmental activist and former hedge fund manager Tom Steyer. Former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice may be a possible Republican contender.
Boxer, who currently serves as the Chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works as well as the Vice Chairman on the Select Committee on Ethics, is considered a passionate voice for the environmental movement. She is the Senate sponsor of the Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Wilderness Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006, which protects 275,830 acres of federal land as wilderness and 21 miles of stream as a wild and scenic river. She wrote the Senate bill that elevated Pinnacles National Monument (about five miles east of Soledad) into America’s 59th National Park. She was and is a huge supporter of the 1989 Dolphin-Safe Tuna Bill, which does not allow chasing or netting of any dolphins during an entire fishing trip and which all U.S. tuna companies adhere to, and she co-sponsored a resolution to end commercial whaling and illegal trade in whale meat. She has supported clean energy projects and stood up for open space. She voted yes on banning oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Her résumé additionally extends to (and beyond) championing women’s issues, projects for children, human rights and world health issues.
A visit to GovTrack.us (https://www.govtrack.us/), a government transparency website, offers voters a look at their representative’s legislative record. Boxer has a listing of 783 bills which offer an instructive report card on what the 14th congressional district has learned to expect from their California junior senator. While the race for her seat is going to be competitive and undoubtedly expensive, the winner of that race, regardless of his or her party, is going to have some big and busy shoes to fill.
Jean Bartlett can be reached at editor@jeansmagazines.org.
