Boxer, Barbara, 1940-

<p>Barbara Sue Levy Boxer (born November 11, 1940) is an American politician and lobbyist who served as a United States Senator from California from 1993 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the U.S. Representative for California's 6th congressional district from 1983 until 1993.</p>

<p>Born in Brooklyn, New York City, Boxer graduated from George W. Wingate High School and Brooklyn College. She worked as a stockbroker for several years before moving to California with her husband. During the 1970s, she worked as a journalist for the Pacific Sun and as an aide to U.S. Representative John L. Burton. She served on the Marin County Board of Supervisors for six years and became the board's first female president. With the slogan "Barbara Boxer Gives a Damn", she was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1982, representing California's 6th district.</p>

<p>Boxer won the 1992 election for the U.S. Senate. Running for a third term in 2004, she received 6.96 million votes, becoming the first person to ever get more than 6 million votes in a Senate election and set a record for the most votes in any U.S. Senate election in history, until her colleague, Dianne Feinstein, the senior senator from California, surpassed that number in her 2012 re-election. Boxer and Feinstein were the first female pair of U.S. Senators representing any state at the same time. Boxer was the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and the vice chair of the Select Committee on Ethics. She was also the Democratic Chief Deputy Whip.</p>

<p>Boxer did not seek re-election in 2016. She was succeeded by former California Attorney General Kamala Harris. In January 2020, Boxer joined Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs as co-chairwoman.</p>

<p>A New Yorker by birth and a Californian by choice, Barbara Boxer served in Congress from the Golden State for 34 years, including 10 years in the United States House of Representatives and 24 in the United States Senate. An advocate for families, children, consumers, and the environment, Boxer retired from the Senate at the end of the 114th Congress (2015–2017). She had an understated, straightforward approach to the legislative process, which she outlined in one of her farewell interviews. “It’s very easy,” she said. “You introduce legislation that moves us forward. You fight bad legislation.”</p>

<p>Barbara Boxer was born Barbara Levy in Brooklyn, New York, on November 11, 1940, to Ira Levy and Sophie Silvershein Levy. She graduated with a BA from Brooklyn College in 1962 and married Stewart Boxer. The family relocated to northern California in 1965, where the Boxers raised two children: Doug and Nicole. Prior to her marriage, Boxer was a stockbroker and economic researcher for Wall Street securities firms. In 2005 the Boxers moved from Marin County to Rancho Mirage in southern California.</p>

<p>Boxer first jumped into politics in 1968 while doing volunteer work for the Eugene Joseph McCarthy presidential campaign. In 1970 she helped found an antiwar organization, the Marin Alternative, to protest the ongoing conflict in Vietnam. Boxer worked for the Pacific Sun newspaper as a reporter and associate editor from 1972 to 1974. And from 1974 to 1976, Boxer worked for Congressman John Lowell Burton who represented the California district encompassing Marin County. In 1972 she ran for a seat on the Marin County board of supervisors, losing to the incumbent Republican. But four years later, in 1976, she won election to the board, and served as its first chairwoman. “She faced a lot of adversity from people who didn’t treat her the way they would treat a man,” said Sam Chapman, a longtime aide. “But she didn’t give in. It’s her nature to get fired up. And you knew she was going somewhere.5</p>