CA-Sen: Carly Fiorina Puts Barbara Boxer on the Ropes?

Apparently so.

It looks like that demon sheep has showed up snarling on Sen. Barbara Boxer’s doorstep.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, the controversial Silicon Valley executive who exploded into the California Senate race with a series of colorful viral videos, is holding the Democratic senator to at least a tie, according to two polls released in the last week.

An automated SurveyUSA poll published Monday showed Fiorina narrowly ahead of Boxer, leading the three-term senator, 47 percent to 45 percent. That’s within the poll’s four-point margin of error, but it comes just days after the Field Poll showed Boxer with only a narrow advantage in her fight for a new term, leading Fiorina by three percentage points.

Whichever result is closer to the mark, there’s little doubt that California has quickly become a marquee Senate battleground, with Democrats on the defensive in one of the country’s most reliably liberal states.

Boxer campaign manager Rose Kapolczynski pointed to the Field result in a fundraising appeal over the weekend, calling the race a virtual tie – “Dead heat. Tossup. Neck and neck.”

“If anyone was taking our victory for granted — well, this news should be a wake-up call. We don’t have a vote or a moment to spare,” Kapolcynski wrote. “I’m going to tell it to you straight: we’re under 50 percent of the vote and our opponent is at our heels.”

As I said before don’t count Boxer out but with Republican Meg Whitman mounting a tough, sustained media campaign against long-time Pol Democrat Jerry Brown and with high California unemployment, it looks like an anti-incumbent year.

I don’t see California’s economy improving by the November elections and voters are bleh on President Obama’s performance in turning things around. Californians will be looking to mix things up and this will mean giving a new candidate, Carly Fiorina a chance.