Chapter Eight

Unforgettable Colleagues, a Lonely Dissent, and the Best Election Ever

Our group of senators was far from the only ones who fought passionately against the war in Iraq. In addition to our team in the Senate, over on the House side my dear friend and fellow Californian Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking female politician in American history and the only woman ever to serve as Speaker of the House, worked tirelessly with her team to stop the war from the moment George W. Bush sought authorization in 2002 to use the armed forces of the United States against Saddam Hussein.

“Tirelessly” is the word. Nancy is the most energetic human being on earth. Now, I know I’m considered extremely energetic. At one point my staff told me, “We have to hide your vitamin pills because we can’t keep up with you.” But Nancy is truly unbelievable. I don’t know how she does it. I say this with tremendous admiration and love for her. And she is very tough, so tough.

Nancy and I come from different backgrounds. Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro is a Catholic girl from Baltimore, where her father, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr. was the Democratic congressman from 1939 to 1947 and subsequently mayor of Baltimore from 1947 to 1959. Her brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III, was the mayor too, from 1967 to 1971. She and her husband, Paul Pelosi, moved to San Francisco in 1969, where Paul’s brother Ronald was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Nancy had grown up within the Democratic Party, first in Baltimore and then in California. She was born with Democratic politics in her blood and earned her stripes working through the system. I came at it in a totally different way.

Nancy always knew that party politics was her way to fight for change, so she came from within. I kind of stayed away from the party and was more of an outsider. The first office I ran for, the Marin County Board of Supervisors, was actually nonpartisan. You just ran as a human, without a D. or an R. next to your name.

Our paths first crossed when Phillip Burton died in 1983. Phil was succeeded in office by his wife, Sala. But she became ill with cancer, then picked Nancy to be her successor, and died just a month after being sworn in for her second term. I stayed out of the tough primary that Nancy won narrowly against San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt that year, because he was a friend of mine and had helped me get elected, so it was a little uncomfortable between us at first. But Nancy and I were thrown together, working on important local issues, and both realized very quickly how much we liked each other.

Nancy took office in June of 1987, by which time I’d been in the House for four years. She now represented most of San Francisco and I represented a slice of the city and points north. It didn’t take long to realize how great it was to have such a fierce partner. Everyone who knows Nancy says that she adds a lot to your life: heart, warmth, determination, loyalty, and a never-give-up attitude. It’s invigorating to be around her because she brings such force and urgency to the work at hand.

But, yes, we not only came from totally different family experiences, but were brought up in different religions. She’s Catholic and I’m Jewish. But what I learned at a very young age is that there is a huge amount in common between Italian families and Jewish families: very warm and very close relationships, a lot of love, and a lot of guilt. My best friend through high school was Juliette Cucco, an Italian Catholic. We were like sisters. She took me with her to confession, and I took her with me to bar mitzvahs. So as I came to know Nancy, I had that wonderfully familiar feeling. It was comfortable for both of us. We also faced absurd discrimination from within the House of Representatives and that brought us even closer. We had no idea when our friendship began in earnest that both of us would wind up making history in our careers.

There are photos of Nancy and me that I treasure which go back to our House days. We were constantly thrown together from 1987 until I ran for Senate as “the two women” who represented San Francisco, and wondered why our male predecessors were never introduced that way. We fought together against systemic prejudice against women in the House. We teamed up on AIDS and funding for rebuilding our infrastructure after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. And we worked to rescue the Presidio army base as it was closing, since we didn’t want to see it taken apart by private development.

So we became close. Our relationship was made as we traveled across the country together on those endless flights. Our husbands liked each other and our children became really good friends. She has five: Christine, Jackie, Nancy, Paul, and Alexandra. Christine and my daughter, Nicole, became very dear friends and they remain so today. Now their children are good friends—little six-year-olds. It’s very sweet. Christine spent many happy times at the home I shared with Nicole and her family in D.C. and seeing Bella, Christine’s daughter, with Sawyer, Nicole’s son, makes Nancy and me glow because the friendships in our family now cover three generations.

I want to say this loud and clear: I believe Nancy’s achievement in becoming the Speaker of the House in 2007 and her other leadership roles are not as appreciated or celebrated as they should be. Yes, there’s been some recognition, like scholar Norman Ornstein at the American Enterprise Institute saying that the 111th Congress Nancy led was “one of the most productive Congresses in history.” But as I write, I believe she’s still not given enough credit for what it took for her to keep getting elected and sustaining the confidence of all those guys in the House of Representatives.

I served ten years in the House. I know firsthand what a male-dominated institution it was. It was when she got elected and still is now. For Nancy to win the confidence and support, not only of the relatively small number of women at that time but also the overwhelming support of the men in the House, is an amazing tribute to her intelligence, hard work, and personal skills.

Nancy is fearless and has said many times that “fear” is not a word in her vocabulary. She keeps everything in perspective.

“If they can’t take my children away, then I can handle it,” and “Politics is not for the faint of heart” are two of Nancy’s truisms.

When I marvel at Nancy’s ability to have won the trust of so many in the House, I remember that she was born into a family where she was the only girl out of six children. I am sure that she had to work to prove her tough side and I am sure she added a great perspective to their lives. Nancy had to learn to be relevant.

We shared the representation of San Francisco, and when I left the House, she began to rise up the ladder of influence and responsibility. I was proud of everything she did along the way. She never, ever was afraid to speak the truth to power.

In 2007, when Nancy was Speaker of the House, she responded to President Bush’s statement that the Congress was “ineffective” and “the American people deserve better” by firing back at the president in strong terms: she called the president “a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the war, on the economy, on energy, you name the subject” and said that Congress had been “sweeping up after his mess over and over and over again.”

Talk about tough.

There are few leaders as strong and courageous as Nancy. You can’t intimidate her or in any way back her down. I so admire that, since the result of her actions included being scorned and vilified by the far right for her leadership in the House for decades. Too bad for them, when it comes to Nancy Pelosi.

We’ve had such fun together. I remember one time we decided to dress as the Andrews Sisters for a charity. I had arrived at the studio early for the publicity photo, when there was a knock on the door. I opened it and there she was. A vision of the forties.

I never laughed so hard with Nancy until one night in 1987, when Reagan was president, when we found ourselves at a White House Christmas party. This was right around the time that Congressman Barney Frank had confided to us and other colleagues that he was gay. It sounds easy now. It was far from easy then.

I remember Barney telling me that he and his partner, Herb, were going to the White House together. Again, sounds easy now. I told Barney I was excited for him and Herb and looked forward to seeing them at the party.

Barney, Herb, Nancy, and I stood near the dance floor. Then all four of us started to dance together when suddenly our two colleagues danced off without us.

So there we stood, Nancy and I. We looked at each other as we stood on the dance floor and laughed, thinking the same thing: It was one thing to strongly support our friends, but it was another to be dancing with each other. We didn’t.

Now Barney is very kind to us in his memoir about this incident. He writes that he remembers us “graciously” walking away. I don’t remember us being gracious, but we were cheerful about it, and that experience stuck with us. We both are pleased and relieved that in many places in our nation, the truth is being lived at last, when it comes to the LGBT community. The battle is not over, but it is moving in the right direction.

Another very important and amusing thing about my personal and political relationship with Nancy Pelosi over the years: Nancy and I actually look nothing alike. So who knows why, but we’re often taken for each other. Yes, often.

It started when Nancy became whip in 2002, a very important leadership role in the House, and a photo went out with her holding a whip. I didn’t realize how many people saw the photo until I found myself on a plane heading back to the Bay Area one day, and several fellow passengers came up to me with big smiles.

“We are so proud of you.”

Okay. Great. I was pleased they liked my work in the Senate. Then, finally, after the tenth person came up and added: “Love the way you are holding that whip,” I realized it was a case of mistaken identity, and was forced to correct the record.

“Oh, that’s Nancy. I’m Barbara, your senator.”

The constituents were so embarrassed that I was sorry I corrected them. They were deflated and so was I.

This comedy of errors continued when Nancy took the lead against human rights abuses in China. She opposed normal trade relations with them and I supported normal trade relations. I was often complimented for standing strong for human rights and sometimes yelled at for opposing normal relations with China. Once, when I was called out by a businessman, I told him, “I think you are confusing me with Nancy Pelosi. I am for normal trade relations.”

“No, you’re not!” And then he walked away, with me mumbling, “No, I’m not Nancy? Or no, I’m not for normal trade relations with China?”

I kind of gave up after that and just smiled when people said, “Hi, Nancy.”

Another major event happened immediately before the awful period of our fight against the war in Iraq. Hillary Clinton was elected to the Senate in 2000.

I’m not sure how early in her husband’s presidency she’d begun thinking about running, since she never said a word to me about it. But I do remember very clearly that I went to Camp David in 1999, while Nicole and Hillary’s brother, Tony, were still married. I wanted to let Bill and Hillary know that I was hugely in favor of her running for the Senate from New York State, since Daniel Moynihan had decided to retire and the seat was open.

I couldn’t grab Hillary, who was busy taking care of everyone’s needs, so I decided to talk to the president alone. I went to his office at Camp David, where we had met many times during the period we were family. I laid it out from my perspective, saying that I knew New York was a really difficult place to run for office due to the harsh newspaper and TV coverage and their unrelenting punditry that always seemed abusive to me, but that New York had shown it was open to electing superstars like Robert Kennedy.

“Hillary should run,” I told President Clinton. “She’s so talented, such a good speaker.”

He took it all in, not revealing his thoughts on the subject.

Stew and I had always marveled about who was the better speaker, Bill or Hillary, since they both had so many political skills. When Hillary ultimately decided to run, she became the first First Lady ever to pursue public office. They bought a home in Chappaqua, New York, just north of New York City, in September of 1999. Some of my male colleagues were surprised and couldn’t understand how or why she’d run, not so much out of malice but concern. I felt their concern was misplaced and a bit condescending.

Chris Dodd, for one, came up to me looking very worried.

“What does she need it for?” he said in the sweetest way. “The New York press is ruthless.”

“Don’t you think women are tough enough to take the heat?” I responded. I really was incredulous, since the women who served with me at the time had gone through the same hellish campaigns as our male colleagues, and we made it. “Hillary has already gone through the hazing stage at every level, and she has proven to be up to the task.”

In any case, Hillary built the support network she needed, was a great candidate, and won the Democratic primary. Her Republican opponent in the general election was Rick Lazio, a Republican congressman. Throughout the campaign, she was accused of being a “carpetbagger,” since she’d never lived in New York State before, but she shrugged it off, visiting every county, taking a “listening tour” in small group settings.

In September, Lazio made a big mistake during a televised TV debate with Hillary by marching over to her podium, brandishing a piece of paper that he called the “New York Freedom from Soft Money Pledge” and demanded she sign it. Hillary refused. His demeanor and invasion of her personal space were startling, chauvinistic, and bullying. It offended me, along with a lot of other women, and was widely regarded as a decisive moment that led to Hillary winning on November 7, 2000, with 55 percent of the vote to his 43 percent.

We were all very excited when Hillary joined us. She didn’t come in there and hog the spotlight or try to take over. Oh, no, she was low key and deferential to Chuck Schumer, the senior senator from New York, and to the other women in the Senate, to everyone. She joined the Environment and Public Works Committee, where Moynihan had made his name as a strong environmentalist. I had been there since 1993 and loved what she did on that committee, particularly focusing on children’s environmental health. She became such a workhorse, on several other committees as well, but what really molded and determined her success as a senator was 9/11, a tragedy that changed the world, and she was in the very middle of it all.

It was just eight months after she had come to the Senate, where she had been absorbing the ways of the Senate, from speeches on the floor to the writing and passage of legislation in committees, adding her voice cautiously and learning the ropes. Then suddenly she was front and center with Chuck Schumer, responding to a vicious terrorist attack, thousands of deaths, and a new, fearful atmosphere for New York City in particular. By that time, Hillary had won the respect of her colleagues. Schumer and Clinton made a formidable team as the Senate passed a number of Hillary’s bills, including the extension of unemployment benefits for 9/11 victims, new funds for emergency preparedness, and expedited benefit payments for first responders.

Hillary was there. She went down to the huge smoking crater at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. She called attention to the hazardous quality of the air around ground zero, despite strong assurances from the Bush administration that the atmosphere was safe and nobody was at risk. She demanded quality medical care for those who spent so much time in the middle of the debris, tirelessly finding remains. She was focused and she didn’t let up. She doubled down when the TV cameras were off.

She and Chuck worked together to get billions of dollars of needed funds to restore the physical and mental well-being of the city they represented.

Along with every single United States senator, Hillary supported the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, saying it was a chance to combat terrorism while improving the lives of Afghan women who were so abused under the Taliban. She didn’t join me in opposing the invasion of Iraq, but gradually shifted her stance, and by 2005 said that Bush’s pledge to stay indefinitely, “until the job is done,” was misguided. And she voted against Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, as well as the confirmation of John G. Roberts as Chief Justice and Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The divorce between Nicole and Hillary’s brother, Tony, happened around the time Hillary took office. It was a hard time for everyone involved. But, as I mentioned, we managed to keep working together politically, and when it came to family affairs, we focused our attention on Zach, Nicole and Tony’s son—my grandson and Hillary’s nephew. Whatever was best for him, we agreed.

My memories of George W. Bush’s administration are pretty much shrouded in despair, punctuated with a few distinct moments of hope.

The first hopeful moment came with the 2004 presidential election and what I thought would be a sure win for our Democratic candidate John Kerry. The economy was stagnant and Bush’s “mission accomplished” speech on May 1, 2003, rang hollow.

I was on the ballot myself for my third Senate term. My opponent was former California Secretary of State Bill Jones, who proved to be my weakest opponent so far.

It was a good year for me to be running. A presidential election brings out the vote, and although I’d taken a very unpopular position against the Iraq War in 2002, it was beginning to be seen as a position of conscience by a senator who didn’t worry about being on the popular side of such a big moral issue. Public opinion was catching up with me.

Bill Jones’s big issue was that I was “anti-military” and I was prepared for the charge when he made it during our TV debate.

I looked at him and told him to lay off.

“Listen, Bill,” I said, “protecting our soldiers from wars of choice that are based on false pretense is not anti-military, it’s pro-military.” And besides, I added: “You never served in the military and my husband did. Stewart was in the Army Reserves for six years so I know what it feels like to be constantly worried about your husband being activated.”

Bill Jones never went there again and I defeated him 57 percent to 37 percent, in a race with the most votes ever cast for a United States senator—just under 7 million—a record I held for eight years. That record stood until Dianne Feinstein overtook me in 2012, garnering 7.3 million votes in that Obama re-election year. Nice for both of us.

But election night 2004 was by no means all good news. Four years after hanging chads, the no-recount recount, and the Supreme Court stealing the election for George W. Bush, we were all very worried and sensitive to potential election irregularities this time around.

Sure enough, the morning after the election, Bush and Kerry were tied neck and neck. It was clear that the result in Ohio would decide the winner. Bush had established a lead of around 130,000 votes, but the Democrats pointed to provisional ballots, initially reported to number as high as 200,000, that had yet to be counted. The electoral vote in Ohio would determine who won that race.

And, wouldn’t you know, there was clear evidence of systematic flaws during the voting process in Ohio. Having felt that we were robbed in 2000, I was nervous, my stomach churning, as I watched the Ohio vote come in. Suddenly pictures appeared on the screen showing impossibly long lines snaking around the blocks in a predominantly African American neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio.

Hours went by, until that afternoon Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell announced that it was statistically impossible for the Democrats to make up enough valid votes in the provisional ballots to win. At the time provisional ballots were reported as numbering 140,000 (and later estimated to be only 135,000).

Faced with this announcement, John Kerry conceded defeat.

But wait a minute, I said to myself. It was raining all that day in Cleveland. What happened to those voters? How many didn’t vote because the line moved so slowly that the polls eventually closed? And what about voters who just couldn’t get soaked for five or ten hours without shelter, for health reasons? And if you were elderly or had a child with you or had a short window to vote because of work, could you have waited hours and hours? Decidedly no. Voting is a privilege for sure, but it is also a right—a right that Americans not only died for abroad in wars, but also here at home.

The next days were unsettling for me. I hadn’t objected to the Electoral College vote after Bush “beat” Gore. Any senator or House member could make an objection to the electoral count in a particular state, but Al Gore had asked us not to dwell on the court decision. He made a remarkable speech about bringing the country together for which he won great praise, and I complied, I never objected. But the price was too high. The terrible damage Bush’s presidency was doing to the country was in full force in 2004, and I couldn’t agree so meekly this time around. It went against the art of tough.

Therefore, at the official counting of the electoral votes on January 6, I joined Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the African-American congresswoman who represented most of Cleveland, Ohio, in a motion contesting Ohio’s electoral votes.

Stephanie was a former judge from Ohio who became a congresswoman following the retirement of Louis Stokes, a fine member with whom I had served in the House. She was sharp and straightforward and I admired her from afar.

I had read some of her comments in the press, saying, “How can we tell millions of Americans to simply get over it and move on?”

When we met, Stephanie, who’d been re-elected to Congress four times, told me that she had personally witnessed voter after voter giving up, not being able to vote, and she was sick about it. I pressed her really hard. I knew the scorn that would come my way from all sides, so I wanted to be on solid ground. Stephanie said she would be very proud to stand with me in the well of the House and object to the certification of the Electoral College vote.

So we did object, Stephanie from the House, me from the Senate. We stood alone. Nobody else who could do anything about it really cared, not even one other senator. People basically looked at us askance, as if to say, “You are on a fool’s errand.” Years later, though, a few people who could have done something about it finally said we did the right thing.

Kerry himself said later that is was impossible to really know whether the Ohio vote reflected the voters’ will. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, expressed his concerns, citing “substantial voter suppression and unreliable machines.” He used words like “unethical” and “manipulation.”

And did I mention the voting machine controversy? The voting machines used in the 2004 Ohio presidential elections were manufactured by Diebold Election Systems. The chairman of the board and CEO of Diebold was a generous contributor to Bush’s re-election campaign, had visited the president’s Texas ranch, and pledged to help “Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President.”

The touch-screen voting method of the Diebold machines, by the way, created no paper trail. You voted and that was it. No way to have a recount. An open invitation to corruption.

We had already decertified all Diebold Election Systems touch-screen voting machines in California because of security flaws. Studies indicated all kinds of problems in these machines compared to other voting machines.

Nevertheless, Stephanie and I were laughed at, hooted at, even scoffed at.

The comments of my Republican colleagues were colorful. Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio couldn’t wait to spew his venom at me, senatorial courtesy aside. Here he was about to win a big victory, as not one senator would stand with me, but he felt compelled to address me personally:

“Because I am limited under the rules to five minutes, I will not have the time to respond to the wild, incoherent and completely unsubstantiated charges that have been made…”

He quoted from an editorial that said I was “driving myself further toward the political fringe and that long grass is already tickling my knees.”

Of course he ignored the newspaper editorials that confirmed the voting irregularities. Apparently he had absolutely no sympathy for his own Ohio colleague Representative Tubbs Jones, who deserved at least some respect, not to mention his own constituents who were unable to vote due to impossibly long lines and the rain.

Here’s an interesting postscript to Mike DeWine. He did lose his re-election race for the Senate two years after his righteous outburst about the integrity of the Ohio voting system. He was replaced by an extremely effective progressive named Sherrod Brown.

Ultimately, we were only able to delay the inevitable electoral vote count for four hours. I said, “We cannot keep turning our eyes away from a flawed system.” I knew there were undisputed reports of a shortage of voting machines with no alternative equipment, discriminatory challenges at polling places, and obstruction of voting. There were some reports that some students at Kenyon College had to wait in line for ten hours, the last votes being cast at four a.m. In Columbus, in a black neighborhood, it was substantiated that people waited for four hours in the rain. Many left without voting.

Long lines suppressed the vote. The Washington Post reported that six of the seven wards with the fewest voting machines were Kerry wards, while twenty-seven of thirty wards with enough voting machines were the wards that voted for Bush.

And me? After the grass tickled my knees from the political fringe?

I won another election to the Senate by more than one million votes, while Ohio became the Florida of 2004, and I believe another presidential election result remained under a cloud called George W. Bush.

Four years later, on August 20, 2008, we lost Stephanie Tubbs Jones. She died in her car from a cerebral hemorrhage, way too young at fifty-eight. It was not only a loss to her family but to the cause of equal justice and fair voting and all the issues she believed in.

I really miss her. Stephanie and I were thrown together by our shared sense of outrage and injustice. She saw the suppression with her own eyes; the civil rights movement was in my DNA. She was a great partner. We made our voices heard and I am proud of that.

Too many people like Stephanie have been lost in my time. Paul Wellstone, Ted Kennedy, John Chafee, all of whom woke up every day with one thought: whom can I help? These were my kind of senators.

The lines in Ohio were a sample of what was to come in the presidential election of 2012. We saw them in Florida and Virginia. Why is it always in Democratic areas? It made me have that same wave of unease and dread when I saw those lines. Had it been a close election, who knows what could have happened?

Are we now at a time and place in which Democratic candidates have to win with large margins just to be sure the election won’t be stolen? It has become clear in state after state, with the help of the court that overturned part of the Voting Rights Act, that voting is becoming harder and harder. Lines around the block, ridiculous voter ID laws, smaller windows for early voting… these are just some of the obstacles.

In January of 2013, I wrote a simple bill, co-sponsored by Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, which is called the LINE Act. That stands for “Lines Interfere with National Elections.” It’s simple. If you had to wait more than a half hour in line while waiting to vote, then your county needs to write a remedial plan for the next election approved by the Justice Department. Remedies could include more voting machines, more early voting, and more voting precincts. This is not rocket science.

Chuck Schumer of the Rules Committee called a hearing on the bill and the testimony by Nelson and me went very well. Clear questions and clear answers. I thought we would get that simple bill through.

Chuck told me that the ranking Republican on the committee, Senator Pat Roberts, with whom I have a cordial relationship, thought the bill was good and contained common sense. But then he said he simply couldn’t support it. This is so sad. What’s happening to Republicans? It must be that when more people vote, Democrats win. End of story.

It’s so simple. Don’t fear the voters, work for them and their rights, and then they’ll vote for you.

But the Republicans don’t get it. There has been a red state epidemic of voter suppression laws. They are asking voters to bring the kinds of identification that are very difficult for low-income voters, students, or senior citizens to obtain, like a driver’s license or a photo ID that sometimes requires a long trip to the county seat to acquire. Passports are fine, but you don’t need a degree in voter suppression to know who has those.

The voting rights battle is another example of the need for constant vigilance. It has been such a long and arduous road from women’s suffrage to the African American vote. Who would have thought that in this century we would still be facing this new form of voter suppression?

But I see hope. The media is very aware of this problem and it is being exposed. Also, if we can’t pass the bills we need to stop it, people will find a way to vote regardless. They will get angry that something is being taken away from them and they’ll be determined to preserve it. We are already seeing organizations gearing up to be of assistance, driving people to the courthouse, helping them obtain the ID they need, and advocating for them.

When Americans see elderly voters of all races on television telling their stories about being blocked from the voting booth after a lifetime of voting, it begins to make a difference in public opinion. When they see college students being challenged at the polls as they try to vote for the first time, they’ll be angry. They see that all this talk about “voter fraud” is basically just that—talk. It’s a disgrace that Congress and the Supreme Court are not advocating for this basic right.

We need a change in Congress and the courts so that those institutions passionately back the right to vote for all of us. Voting in America is nothing less than the centerpiece of our nation. It makes our democracy the envy of the world. But that change requires more, not fewer, people voting, doesn’t it?

In 2004, my old friend and colleague Dick Durbin, the senior senator from Illinois, took me aside to tell me about this great candidate running for the Democratic Senate primary in Illinois in 2004.

“He’s only forty-three years old, a very smart and charismatic African American, Columbia University, Harvard Law School, worked as a community organizer and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.”

“What about his political experience?” I asked. “How did he get to be running for senator?”

“He’s represented the thirteenth district in the Illinois Senate for three terms, lost an election for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, but looks strong to win the Democratic Party primary in March. I think he’s on his way to Washington, D.C., for sure.”

“Sounds impressive,” I agreed. “What’s his name?”

“Barack Hussein Obama.”

“Wow… well,” I said, in one of my great prognostications, “he may be great, but who is going to vote for a guy whose name will remind them of Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, for that matter. He’ll never win that Senate race.”

“No, listen, Barbara, the guy has something special. No kidding. There’s only one man my wife would leave me for… Barack Obama. You’ll see… just wait,” he said.

I did wait and see. Dick was right. I was wrong. In March of 2004, Barack won an unexpected landslide to become the Democratic candidate for senator, which made him an overnight rising star in the national Democratic Party.

A few months later, I was in Chicago, raising money for my own 2004 Senate campaign at a private party in someone’s home, when this very tall, beautiful woman walked into the room. Her entrance definitely started a buzz.

“Who’s that?” I asked the hostess.

“Michelle Obama,” she told me. “Barack’s wife.”

I thought how nice it was for her to stop by while her husband was running himself.

The first time I saw Barack in action was when he delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. Stewart and I never missed a convention. I’ll never forget the terrific speech he made.

“We’re not a red country or a blue country, we’re a red, white, and blue country,” he said. “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the United States of America.”

Nine million people were watching this on TV and I’m sure they were all as impressed as I was.

“In no other country on Earth is my story even possible,” he proclaimed. “A skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too. The audacity of hope is God’s greatest gift to Americans, allowing me to feel optimistic that the lives of average Americans can be improved with the right governmental policies.”

Right after the speech political commentator Chris Matthews said, “I just saw the first black president.” And he was right, too.

In November, Obama was elected to the Senate with 70 percent of the vote. When he arrived in Washington, he was on two of my committees—Environment and Public Works, and Foreign Relations—so I was able to watch him make a difference in every debate he engaged in. He made you see the issues just a little bit differently and he challenged your assumptions. I remember working with him, but more than that, I remember watching him. He was so effective as a speaker, whether the issue was lead in children’s toys or the war in Iraq. I remember he tried to bridge both sides, find common ground, all the time. And he was very good at that. I also found Barack to be kind of an old soul. Even though he was so much younger than me, we could talk about shows and plays and songs from my generation. He just had a wonderful way about him. We had an easy relationship.

Then everything turned upside down. Not our camaraderie, but his forward momentum and its impact.

One day late in 2006, Barack approached me on the floor of the Senate where we were having a series of votes and asked if I could step outside the chamber for a moment. So we went into the senator’s lobby, a private hall with couches and chairs, and sat down, one of us on a couch, the other on a chair.

“Barbara,” he said, “I’m thinking about running for president next year. What do you think about that?”

I was shocked. It was very sweet and respectful the way he did it, but I was shocked. I didn’t expect it.

“Really?” I managed to say, in a kind of choked-up whisper.

“Really. This coming election.”

I knew that Hillary Clinton was already the prohibitive favorite.

“You know Hillary is running and she’s going to win. She’s a wonderful candidate. She’s organized… Have you thought that maybe this isn’t the best time for you to do this? It’s early, you’re young.” My voice trailed off.

“Yes, of course I know I’ll be considered a long shot,” Barack said. “But my instincts are telling me something else. I have a feeling about this.”

I was about to try to talk him out of it, but then I thought of the times in my own career when everyone said I didn’t have a chance.

“Barack, you have to follow your heart. If you feel this is your time, then go for it. You gotta do what you gotta do, because you’ll always regret it if you don’t.”

But then I added again: “Hillary’s going to win, so you better be prepared. You’ll never beat Hillary.”

That was my attempt to give him a dose of reality. But he didn’t let it go.

“You never know.”

And then he smiled that fabulous smile and ducked back into the Senate chamber.

Two things about that conversation:

1. I was wrong (again) about his chances.

2. He was right to go for his dreams, just as Hillary was right to go for hers.

I don’t know if he talked to a lot of other people, asking for their opinions. I don’t know if he came to me because he thought I’d be for Hillary and wanted to see my reaction. But I do know his running created an impossible situation for me. A few months later, when the campaign started up full steam ahead, I told the press it was like choosing between a sister and a son. I respected and cared so much for both of them. It was an impossible choice.

My solution was to not campaign for either one of them, which was not well received by Hillary’s supporters. Luckily, I wasn’t running for re-election myself in 2007, so I was able to maintain a low profile. At least for a while. Then I got in trouble with Bill and Hillary. Well, really just Bill.

Barack announced he was a candidate in the primary campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on February 10, 2007. Nine days later, he appeared at a major fund-raiser for me in San Francisco. It was highly unusual for a presidential candidate in a tough primary fight to make such an appearance at the start of his or her own campaign, but Barack had promised this to me, as we both knew how crucial it was for me to begin fund-raising in earnest for my 2010 election. Yes, my next campaign was three years away, but that’s the way it works. You have to start fund-raising early.

Barack’s staff tried to get him out of it, but he insisted. He’d given his word. I’m glad he came, because our event was fantastic, a huge success on all levels. My friends and supporters in San Francisco loved him.

His appearance, however, set off alarm bells in the Clinton camp, since I’d told everyone I wasn’t going to campaign for either side. I tried to explain that this was just a follow-through commitment he’d made to me before the primary campaign began, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t believe me. And from that moment on and for a long time afterward, President Clinton didn’t speak to me. Oh, maybe a “hi” and “bye” when it was unavoidable, but that was it. The big chill.

For example, 2010 turned out to be a terrible year to be running as a Democrat. President Clinton went all over the country for everyone else—but not for me.

I understood why Bill did that. He felt I had failed to support his wife in 2007, when she was in what turned out to be a tough and ultimately losing campaign for the nomination. Well, I have a husband. Stewart still remembers every single individual who didn’t help me in my 1972 election to the Marin Board of Supervisors. Spouses get hurt. Husbands take it hard. So I understood President Clinton’s cold shoulder.

After 2010 the ice broke. I was so relieved. I was never angry at Bill. Loyalty is loyalty to him. He’s tough and I respect it and never took it personally. That’s being tough too.

In contrast, Barack called me on my cell phone and left me a voice message after he learned I would stay out of the race. He told me that he understood how tough that was for me, and that he appreciated it. I never deleted that message and have it still.

Barack won the primary in 2008, in any case, so then I was free to help our standard-bearer. I worked hard to bring the Hillary camp into the Obama camp, saying shortly after the primary vote that “we women should be proud, not angry. The glass ceiling has been shattered. Hillary said it herself. It’s been shattered by her and it’s been shattered by Barack.”

And when Wolf Blitzer asked me on CNN, “How can you bring those Hillary supporters around to actually support Barack Obama?” I shot back, “As much as people in the media like to report bad news, I think when everyone takes a hard, cold look at these two candidates, McCain and Obama, and sees what they represent and believe in, women particularly will flock to Obama’s side, not only because of his life story and the fact that he was raised by a single mom and a grandma, or that he’s married to a working woman who has to balance all the demands of a busy career and being a mother, but because of the voting records of the two men on women’s issues—the freedom to choose, equal wages for equal hours, fighting sexual abuse and domestic violence.”

Meanwhile, I issued what would be the first of many statements pointing out the dangers of having Sarah Palin running for vice president.

“The vice president is a heartbeat away from becoming president, so to choose someone with not one hour’s worth of experience on national issues is a dangerous choice… If John McCain thought that choosing Sarah Palin would attract Hillary Clinton voters, he is badly mistaken. The only similarity between her and Hillary Clinton is that they’re both women. On the issues, they couldn’t be further apart. If he wanted to choose a woman, he should have chosen Senators Olympia Snowe or Kay Bailey Hutchison.”

In October, the Obama campaign asked me to go around the country to help them turn out the women’s vote, the Jewish vote, the progressive vote. I said yes, yes, and yes, and went to Ohio, where I represented Barack at a debate with McCain surrogate Governor Linda Lingle of Hawaii at a Jewish center in Cincinnati. I also went to Florida with our dear friends the Bergmans and the Goldbergs, where we did our part to get out the Jewish vote for Barack. Gary Goldberg had written the iconic TV series Brooklyn Bridge and regaled the seniors with stories from the old days. They loved it. I also went to Minnesota and wound up back in California where my campaigns had started.

I went to the Democratic headquarters in Marin where they were working on getting out the vote. One of my pitches from that appearance was this:

“About Sarah Palin: I’d rather have a vice president who thinks, not winks.”

I’m sure this quip had nothing to do with it, but California went for Barack Obama 61 percent to 37 percent. He defeated John McCain 52.9 percent to 45.7 percent in the popular vote and 365 to 173 in the Electoral College. What had seemed impossible had happened, to the great joy of millions of Americans, including me: we had our first African-American president.

Not only that, in mid-November 2008, President-elect Obama and Hillary Clinton discussed the possibility of her serving as his secretary of state. Hillary did ask me what I thought about that, and I told her I thought it was great.

“I hate to lose you from the Senate, but secretary of state is a huge honor and responsibility and the president needs someone high-profile as he deals with so many economic problems at home.”

Confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began on January 13, 2009. Two days later, the committee voted 16 to 1 to approve Clinton, and on January 22, 2009, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve her appointment.

President Lincoln, who was the first to put together his “team of rivals,” would have been proud. And I was so proud of Hillary. She was strong to have seen her dream die and yet help her rival’s dream come true.

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the forty-fourth President of the United States was on a blustery cold Tuesday, January 20, 2009. It set a record attendance for any event held in Washington, D.C. It was seen on television and the Internet all over the world. My fellow California senator, Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, acted as the day’s master of ceremonies, the first woman to preside over a U.S. presidential inauguration. The San Francisco Boys Chorus and San Francisco Girls Chorus performed and Aretha Franklin sang “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”

I still have to pinch myself that all this really happened. A miracle!

As usual, I had a dose of reality. With a house full of guests who’d all come to celebrate, my basement pipes froze and water shot throughout the basement, making it a nightmare with torn-out carpet and loud fans throughout. But we put it into perspective and didn’t let it “dampen” our joy.

By then, Nicole had married Kevin Keegan, Zach’s Little League baseball coach, and they had moved to a wonderful Capitol Hill historic Victorian with room for Stew and me in the basement. Nicole’s family now included a brother for Zach, Sawyer, born in 2009. Two more grandchildren also added to our joy: Zain and Reyna, born to Doug and Amy in 2007 and 2009. The timing of this happiness couldn’t have been better, given what was to come.

Elections are tough. The only one I’ve ever lost was my first in 1972 for Marin County supervisor, and it was to a very nice guy. Most of my other opponents in the ensuing forty years weren’t as nice, and in all candor, I wasn’t always so nice either.

When you’ve been battle-hardened by tough opponents, you learn that simply telling the voters your stand on the issues may not be enough to win. Not even explaining your deeply held views and having enough funds to do it in a captivating way may be enough. That’s because your most unsavory and unscrupulous opponents will often distort your story and your positions and even the essence of your being. Eventually you see yourself depicted in the media, negative advertising, and public debates in a way that you can’t recognize any longer as truly you.

No opponent did that better to me than Carly Fiorina, my last opponent in 2010.

Fiorina was then a fifty-five-year-old former business executive. She had been the chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005 and an executive at AT&T before that. While she was chief executive at HP, the company lost half of its value. In 2005, Fiorina was forced to resign as chief executive officer and chair of HP following “differences [with the board of directors] about how to execute HP’s strategy.” Not only that, my staff found out that she’d been ranked frequently as one of the worst tech CEOs of all time.

For example, Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld at Yale University Business School described her as “the worst tech CEO because of her ruthless attack on the essence of this great company,” noting that “she destroyed half the wealth of her investors and yet still earned almost $100 million in total payments for this destructive reign of terror.” NBC, CBS, and USA Today said pretty much the same thing about her.

The Los Angeles Times wrote that Fiorina had conservative positions, opposed abortion, and voted for Proposition 8, which defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman, thereby prohibiting same-sex marriage.

In one of her attack ads on TV, Carly called my concern about global warming “worrying about the weather” and claimed the scientific research on the subject was “inconclusive… I think we should have the courage to examine the science on an ongoing basis.” She accepted large contributions from the coal industry as well as from Koch Industries, the multinational oil, chemical, and energy company well known for its $400 million (and counting) in fines for environmental violations and hundreds of millions spent on conservative politicians and institutions. She also opposed the carbon pollution legislation I supported, and thought any efforts to control greenhouse gases would cost three million jobs and be “massively destructive.”

By October 22, it became public that Fiorina had contributed $6.5 million to her own race. I guess she thought that her run for the Senate, despite not having one minute of experience in any elected office, would offer her a diversion from thinking about her record in the private sector, where she was repeatedly fired. And it appeared that she saw no impediment to her ambitions. Well, it’s a free country! Good luck.

When Bill Jones had gone on the attack back in 2004, I pointed out that in contrast to him, my husband had served in the National Guard and could have been called up for active duty for a period of six years. I talked about how anxious my family was every time there was an international crisis and therefore we totally understood the anguish felt by families of National Guardsmen who were being called up in unprecedented numbers. That particular opponent never brought up that line of attack again.

About three weeks before the election of 2012, however, a right-wing blog supporting Carly Fiorina called my Senate office to say that I had no proof that my husband actually served in the military.

“We want to see proof,” they demanded, “or we’re going to write that Boxer made it all up.”

What?

My campaign staff took over the request.

“This is easy,” they told me. “Just find the discharge papers.”

Really? Let’s see… the discharge papers were more than forty years old. We searched everywhere. Meanwhile, the bloggers kept calling and threatening to run the story. When we couldn’t find anything in our usual files for that kind of old paperwork, we decided to call the Army. Surely they would have copies of the honorable discharge papers. But they had no way of tracing them quickly because when Stewart was in the military they didn’t store any records by Social Security number, but rather his ten-digit military identification number, which of course we didn’t have.

We asked them how long it would take them to find his papers without that number. They said, “Oh, just a few months.” We only had a few days!

“Deadline’s up. We’re going with the story that your husband never served in the military,” the blog people threatened again.

“You can’t do that. He really did serve,” we protested. “One more day…”

Scouring our home, I found a store-bought card that I’d sent Stewart on the occasion of his military discharge. It was dated 1961, frayed around the edges. In it I had written one of my quickie rhymes:

Those manly days are over

Those days of strength and brawn

And now you know the answer,

To son, “Why were you born?”

You served your country to the end

Never wandered, never roamed

You stayed at Dix, your honor high

and made it your new home

Now six months are over

You’ll miss those lovely men.

But I’ve got special news for you,

I’ve signed you up again!

Would this be proof? Knowing what was at stake, I doubted it. If the Fiorina campaign could say that I made up a part of my life story, they would probably say I made up that card with the silly poem too.

Here I was arguing in the press about jobs, the economy, war and peace, women’s rights, and education and behind the scenes, in between prepping for appearances and press conferences, I’m rummaging through every part of my house looking for a forty-year-old document. Part of me was laughing but another part was crying.

Then I discovered that love really can conquer all.

In a last-ditch effort to find the ID number, I searched the laundry room. I readily admit I am not a great housekeeper. It’s definitely not my strong point and one reason is that I’m a saver. I may have a case of what psychologists call a “hoarding disorder.” But in this case it was a blessing.

I stood next to my washer and dryer, surrounded by shelves of old detergents and fabric softeners, when I noticed that in one of my little cubbyholes, packed in with unopened packages of sponges, was an old box.

I took it down, opened it, and there was a packet of letters, which I took out to read with trembling hands. They were love letters written on crinkly onionskin paper from Stewart, dated 1961, and each with a return address from Fort Dix, New Jersey, including his ten-digit military ID number.

And that saved us from this made-up garbage. The army sent us the discharge papers and the public never learned about this ridiculous diversion. This incident shows how you never know going into a campaign what will hit you and when, especially when you run against someone like Carly Fiorina.

The main lesson of a high-profile race is that you can’t hide your record or your character. To learn all you had to know about Carly Fiorina, all you had to do is meet with even a couple of the wonderful people she’d stepped on as she went up the ladder of corporate America. You can’t outsource thousands of jobs and bring pain to so many so callously without paying a price yourself. We met with some of those people, and they were willing to tell the truth about the way she treated them.

In any case, something else occurred that suddenly revealed the true Carly Fiorina. It was even more bizarre than the video they produced showing my face as one huge, swollen, hot air balloon floating from Washington, D.C., to California, where I’d been an elected public servant since 1976, all the while mumbling nonsense, looking like a freak, and finally exploding with a big pop from all the overinflated hot air.

I had to hide that one from my grandkids.

But what I’m referring to as unexpected and bizarre is something else, a totally absurd and ultimately very damaging event that Fiorina didn’t plan. But, as I said, your character comes out in a campaign, try as you might to control things.

Dana Milbank told the story in the Washington Post. Carly Fiorina got a rather unfriendly welcome to the big leagues yesterday. She made the rookie mistake of assuming the video camera and microphone she was wearing while having her makeup done for an appearance on KXTV in Sacramento were not turned on. So a video with sound was created for everyone to watch as she scrolled through her BlackBerry, yawned and said of her opponent Barbara Boxer, “God, what is that hair?” She laughed and touched her own hair, adding, “Sooo yesterday.”

The Huffington Post ran the story with a blazing headline GOP SENATE CANDIDATE MOCKS BARBARA BOXER’S HAIR, and also ran the complete video with Fiorina’s entire open mike moment. Other print and broadcast media covered it in similar fashion all over country. It went viral.

So it wasn’t my ideas, my politics, my philosophy, the recession, women’s rights, the environment—no, her focus was on my hairstyle, which she dubbed “so yesterday.” Well, the campaign took a big turn—not to my hair, fortunately, which does have a life of its own—but to her character.

Our campaign strategy shifted to ads with a few of the thirty thousand former employees explaining their suffering as she shipped their jobs overseas while rewarding herself with millions. The picture that emerged of Fiorina from those sad testimonies, plus her own self-inflicted hair comments, was of someone self-absorbed, nasty, and greedy.

With only one week until Election Day, however, the Fox News/Rasmussen and Reuters polls reported there was less than three percentage points between Fiorina and me. So we decided to bring in the big guns, and make a “full-court press,” as my husband, Stewart, the former basketball star, would say.

First President Obama came to Los Angeles with me just eleven days before the election.

“In two events at the University of Southern California,” reported RTTNews, “Obama lauded Boxer, calling her one of his ‘all-time favorite senators… Barbara is somebody who’s got more fight in her than anybody I know. And she’s always fighting for the right reason.’ Obama credited Boxer’s support for the Democratic legislative achievements of the past two years, from enacting a middle class tax cut, creating jobs and rebuilding roads in the stimulus bill, to standing up to insurance companies and fighting for the health of her state with healthcare reform.

“Boxer,” RTT went on, “an 18-year incumbent, finds herself this year in an unexpectedly close race with former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in a state where a GOP victory could upset Democrats’ control of the Senate.”

At USC that day, I added,

“While my opponent was laying off thirty thousand workers, she was taking a hundred million dollars in pay and perks for herself, including twenty-one million dollars on the day that she was fired. Imagine that. The average Californian would have to work two hundred years full time to make what my opponent took on the day she got fired.

“Now Carly Fiorina says she wants to go to the U.S. Senate from California,” I added, “and do for the country what she did for HP. And that’s exactly what we’re worried about, isn’t it?”

After that, Barack came up to San Francisco for a reception at the Fairmont Hotel and dinner at the home of Ann and Gordon Getty.

First Lady Michelle Obama was also an enormous help, raising more than $150,000 for California Vote 2010, a joint committee for me and the Democratic National Committee.

“It’s because of folks like Barbara that we accomplished health care and financial reform in such a short time,” she said. “We believe in some simple truths: if you’re sick, you should be able to see a doctor… and you should be able to earn a living wage.”

Never one to stay in the background, I couldn’t help but add: “This race is between someone who wants jobs in China and someone who wants them in Chino.” Okay. Not so brilliant, but it sounded good in the moment.

What Barack and Michelle Obama did for me at the very end of the campaign really made a difference, I’m sure, adding to the momentum of Carly’s “caught on the air” attack on my hair. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had a bad hair day. I figured if every Californian who ever had a bad hair day voted for me, I would win big. And I did.

I beat her by ten percentage points, 52.2 percent to 42.2 percent. I had 5,218,441 votes and she had 4,217,366. And that’s how I was re-elected to the Senate for the fourth time.

Big sigh of relief.

Back to work.

One of my favorite poems relates to my 2010 Senate win over Carly Fiorina:

As I struggled to keep my state blue

Amid jobs that were falling and few

That Carly would care

To focus on hair

It’s clear that she hasn’t a clue.

It’s a fact that my hair

Is sometimes a mess

But I think that voters would clearly confess

If a senator’s hair’s always perfect and right

She’d probably have little time left for the fight.

While she feathered her nest

And had the best hair

The voters said no by a one million share.

They stuck with the lady who didn’t have fashion

But worked for them hard

With all of her passion.