Boxer hits Fiorina on immigration in a new Spanish-language ad

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Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer waded into immigration politics in her first Spanish-language ad, hammering her Republican opponent, Carly Fiorina, for supporting Arizona’s controversial new immigration law.

The spot, which is airing this week on Spanish-language stations in Los Angeles, San Diego and Fresno, includes the central themes in Boxer’s English-language ads, which blast Fiorina for overseeing some 30,000 layoffs and relocating jobs abroad while chief executive at Hewlett-Packard.

But they also fault Fiorina for her silence on what steps should be taken, if any, to deal with the estimated 12 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Fiorina has maintained that discussion of immigration reform is a distraction from the federal government’s chief responsibilities of securing the border and creating a viable guest worker program.

The Boxer ad uses Fiorina’s statement in a May primary debate that comprehensive immigration reform isn’t needed “to do what must be done,” to argue in the ad that Fiorina opposes legislation addressing the issue.

“Fiorina is against comprehensive immigration reform,” the ad’s narrator says, “and prefers a discriminatory law like the Arizona law. She is not with us. Her only interest is herself.”

Boxer’s ads follow an independent effort to help Fiorina in the Latino community by the National Organization for Marriage and the Susan B. Anthony List, which raises money for female candidates that oppose abortion rights. Those Spanish-language ads, which aired in the same markets as Boxer’s, took on Boxer’s support for abortion rights and gay marriage—making the case that Boxer “doesn’t share our values.”

In response to the Boxer campaign’s new ad, Fiorina spokeswoman Andrea Saul said Boxer’s opposition to that temporary worker program and her record on water issues in the Central Valley had proved Boxer “is no friend of California’s Latino community.”

“With that track record it comes as no surprise that Boxer is trying to distract voters from the truth about her failure of over 28 years on the issues their community cares most about,” Saul said.

Fiorina trailed Boxer by a 38-point margin among likely Latino voters in a recent Los Angeles Times/USC poll.

-- Maeve Reston

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