For us, the choice in the race between Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and her Republican opponent, Carly Fiorina, resolves itself into a simple proposition: Issues matter, especially in the United States Senate.

Fiorina is intelligent, energetic and accomplished in the private sector. But on too many issues she reflects the doctrinaire conservatism that is ascendant in the Republican Party.

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer visited a Palm Desert company Friday not just to provide a pat on the back, but to signal that a shot in the arm may be on the way.

“We’re going to need to embrace this clean energy future, and you’re doing it right here,” the senator said in a news conference at Renova Energy Corp., 75-181 Mediterranean Ave. “Not only are you creating jobs, but you’re creating the next generation of clean energy workers.”

With her U.S. Senate race stuck in a dead heat, Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer tried to appeal to swing voters Tuesday by asserting that she will be a better protector of the environment – and green jobs – than her GOP opponent Carly Fiorina.

Boxer appeared briefly in South San Francisco Tuesday at Solazyme, a 100-employee company that is pioneering a technology that extracts oil from algae. There she stressed her opposition to Proposition 23, a measure on the November ballot that would badly damage AB32, the state’s landmark climate-change law.

Senator Barbara Boxer made a stop at Scripps Memorial Hospital, Encinitas on Friday to tour its rehabilitation center and learn about its role in treating soldiers with brain injuries. She came away more than a little impressed.

“Scripps has treated over 100 Marines in the program,” noted Boxer during a brief press conference after her tour, “and 77 percent of these Marines have been able to return to their units.”

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer renewed her commitment Monday to securing federal assistance for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan to accelerate 12 of the region’s transit projects, completing them in one decade instead of three.

Facing unrelenting attacks on her effectiveness as a lawmaker by her campaign rival, Republican Carly Fiorina, Boxer tried to highlight her policymaking skills by joining Villaraigosa, as well as environmental, business and labor leaders for a “working group” discussion that unfolded in front of a dozen reporters and a line of television cameras at City Hall.

Reporting from Santa Barbara — With images of the Gulf Coast oil spill still fresh in voters’ minds, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer campaigned in Santa Barbara on Wednesday, arguing that Carly Fiorina’s support for additional oil drilling off California’s coast could threaten the jobs of nearly 400,000 workers whose livelihoods depend on the coastal economy.

Deliberately making an economic argument as well as an environmental one, Boxer spoke before a backdrop of blue and yellow kayaks at a small adventure touring company where the owner introduced her by asking the audience to imagine how their lives would change if “the devastation in the Gulf Coast were happening here.”

On a call with reporters this afternoon, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) and Gov. Bill Ritter (D-Colo.) urged their Republican colleagues to vote for a $26.1 billion state-aid package.

The bill will come up for a cloture vote — meaning it needs 60 votes to move forward — tomorrow. It is fully offset, meaning it does not add to the deficit. And it will provide much-needed and promised dollars to states to keep teachers on the job and to provide funds for Medicaid.

Officials broke ground Saturday on a new residence hall that will provide 196 units of affordable housing for low-income veterans near Los Angeles International Airport.

With airplanes thundering overhead in close range — sometimes as often as one minute apart — U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, Sen. Barbara Boxer, Victoria Reggie Kennedy (the wife of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy) and veterans from each branch of the Armed Services celebrated the $34.9-million project, which is expected to open in the fall of 2011.

As the worst oil spill in U.S. history continues to bleed across the Gulf Coast, Sen. Barbara Boxer — chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — is taking the panel there next week for a look. Already, she’s ready to rip BP a new well herself. “We know BP has to be held accountable,” Boxer said.

“Obviously, everybody could have done better here,” Boxer said while stopping by the Bay Area for a photo op this week. Buuuuuuut…..

U.S. Senate Democrats, responding to the environmental wing of the party’s base, held together and narrowly fended off a Republican-led effort to overturn the first-ever nationwide regulations to limit greenhouse-gas emissions.

By 53-47, the U.S. Senate blocked a “disapproval resolution” targeting a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finding that rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endanger the public. The finding, issued last year, is the basis for new rules to curb greenhouse-gas emissions from cars, trucks, power plants and other facilities. Businesses have warned that higher costs and job losses will result. The Republicans needed 51 votes to advance the resolution and begin the process of stopping the EPA.