At the end of a bruising battle, Boxer takes a relaxed approach

On her final sprint to turn out the vote, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer bounded into a diner in Toluca Lake. She projected the relaxed air of a candidate who felt she had the odds on her side after one of the most bruising races of her career.

Dressed in a coral suit, with her husband, Stewart, at her side, the three-term senator moved briskly from table to table at Patys Restaurant, signing candidate trading cards and yard signs. Waitresses carrying hot mugs of coffee swerved to avoid the television cameras and photographers as Boxer made her way around the narrow diner. She stopped to bounce on her hip a strategically situated 9-month-old wearing a “Babies for Boxer” bib.

Three women supporters from Studio City, who met while volunteering for President Obama in 2008 and now call themselves the “ObamaPod,” waved her over to their booth, telling Boxer in unison that they’d made “thousands” of phone calls on her behalf.

“Are we feeling pretty good? Are we winning?” the candidate asked them.

“We’re winning. You’re going to win,” Helen Giroux told her.

Before the candidate arrived, Giroux and the rest of the ObamaPod gushed over Boxer’s moxie.

“She sticks to her guns and is not swayed” said Kay Clarke.

“That’s right, she doesn’t back away,” Lisa Hopgood added.

Boxer showed some of that trademark spunk at her next stop — a rally at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles with gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown and other Democrats.

Blasting rival Carly Fiorina’s “ Sarah Palin values,” Boxer warned that her opponent would “take us back to those old Bush economic policies, the same old Wall Street mentality that transformed a thriving economy into the great recession.”

“I know these are tough times. We are working as a team, every single day, to turn those tough times around,” she told them. “Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for helping me in this election so I can get back there and fight for all Californians.”

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