Cox, Rohrabacher Trying to Make the House a Home

In certain ways, they could hardly be more different. One is perceived as a button-down establishment Republican; the other, a maverick conservative.

But the clean-shaven C. Christopher Cox, a lawyer in a dark gray suit, and the bearded Dana Rohrabacher, a speech writer in a maroon V-neck sweater and sport jacket, clearly have one thing in common: Both are being closely watched in the nation’s capital as they settle in as Orange County’s newest congressmen.

The two men, who became friends while working in the Reagan White House, are ensconced in a pair of the safest GOP congressional districts in the country. That gives them a measure of job security that makes it likely that they will someday have the seniority to be real power brokers on Capitol Hill.

During their first week on the job, after being sworn in Jan. 3, Cox was already being pegged by veteran Republican congressmen as a rising star and was chosen by his fellow new GOP lawmakers as president of the freshmen class.

As for Rohrabacher, he had barely taken possession of his new office when he delivered a fiery speech at a gathering here on a favorite topic of the conservative right: “freedom fighters” around the world.

Though they appear to be taking very different courses in articulating the conservative agenda, both Cox and Rohrabacher are off to strong starts in their first term in Congress. But it is a long climb to the top.

“You don’t usually get your first choice around here,” Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) said of the biannual competition for House committee assignments.

In Washington, committee assignments are the measure of a congressmen’s influence. For it is in the standing committees of Congress that legislation is molded and complicated bills are hammered into shape.

Cox had aimed high in his preferences for an assignment: He wanted a seat on the House Budget Committee.

“Which is real tough for a freshman,” Cox conceded between meetings with Lewis and other House leaders, “and I keep getting reminded of that every time I mention it.”

Still, there was no harm in trying. And Cox, 36, had impressive credentials--USC and Harvard Law School and a stint with the Orange County office of the prestigious law firm of Latham & Watkins before going to Washington for 2 years as a lawyer in the White House. He had also conducted a winning congressional campaign, after returning to Newport Beach, in which he had been a dark horse to succeed Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach) in the 40th District.

In his bid for the Budget Committee, Cox got the support of the California Republican delegation and a pledge from Lewis, a member of the Executive Committee on Committees, that he would support the request.

Cox had particularly wanted to be on the Budget Committee because he had worked up legislation to reform the budget process, a project he began in the White House. Among other things, Cox’s proposal would place new restrictions on congressional spending.

But despite his lobbying, Cox was passed over for the Budget Committee.

His first committee was to be Public Works and Transportation, which interested him less but is of great importance in a district in which highways, airports and the stalled Santa Ana River Flood Control Project are major concerns. It is considered a good assignment for a first-term member.

As some compensation, Cox did well on his second committee: He was assigned to Government Operations. If he is lucky, he can propose some of his budget reform ideas there.

As for Rohrabacher, the 41-year-old Lomita Republican got his first choice: Science, Space and Technology, which he wanted because of the heavy concentration of high-tech and aerospace industries in his 42nd District, which straddles the border between Orange and Los Angeles counties.

“I’ve always believed that with freedom and technology, America can win the world,” Rohrabacher said enthusiastically, sitting behind the large oak desk he had only recently occupied. “This appointment will permit me to put that philosophy to work.”

But in his own words, Rohrabacher got the “booby prize” for his second committee: the District of Columbia Committee . The panel is the last on most lists of members of Congress because the issues that are dealt with are difficult--gay rights, AIDS, budget matters--and there is no publicity payoff in their home districts.

Rep. Lewis tried to console Rohrabacher.

“I told him the value, really, was the Redskins tickets,” Lewis joked. “But he said he didn’t watch football.”

“The most surprising thing you see and feel and hear is the partisanship of the House,” said former Rep. Daniel E. Lungren, the six-term veteran who was Rohrabacher’s predecessor. “No one understands that, even if they work down at the White House, until they become a member of the House and see it for themselves. It colors everything.”

Even before they were sworn in, Cox and Rohrabacher got a lesson in partisanship: When asked whom they wanted for House Speaker, they responded “Michel.” But in the Democratic-controlled House, Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Illinois) lost, inevitably, to Rep. Jim Wright (D-Texas).

The new congressmen’s second vote, on the same day, drove home the point that hardball partisan politics runs the House. It came in the midst of Cox’s swearing-in party, after he was called back to the House floor by a code of bells and lights from the clock above his office door. Rohrabacher, at the same time, headed for the House floor from his office a block away.

But they may as well have stayed where they were. In a straight party-line vote, the House adopted an intricate rules change that would benefit the majority Democrats at the expense of Republicans.

“This is called raw political power being exercised,” Rohrabacher fumed to Cox as they dashed across Independence Avenue while afternoon clouds gathered over chilly Washington.

Still, let it be noted that the rookies were able to preserve, at least for a day, a 100% attendance record for House votes.

“This is how you vote,” former Rep. John G. Schmitz, the arch-conservative who once represented Cox’s district, advised Cox as the new congressman rushed out the door for a floor vote. “You find someone you know and like, and you ask him how to vote.”

Advice, though usually not quite as blunt as Schmitz’s, flows like rhetoric in Washington, and no newcomer can escape it. It comes in official forms, from orientations on procedural matters to think tanks eager to educate new members on myriads of issues from defense to the economy. And it comes unofficially from the congressional community.

Because Cox and Rohrabacher had worked in Washington and were familiar with many of the problems facing Congress, they skipped most of the issues seminars for new members.

“I didn’t need a bunch of Harvard Ph.D.’s telling me what to think about national issues,” Rohrabacher said.

Even the more mild-mannered Cox got a little tired of hearing what he should or should not do.

“At this point, I’m over-oriented,” Cox said even before he officially arrived in Washington. “It’s good advice, but eventually it sinks in. You don’t need to hear it anymore.”

“Once you’re sworn into the Congress of the United States,” said former Rep. Badham, who retired from the seat won by Cox, “you’re treated like a different person.”

One day about a year ago, Cox and Rohrabacher talked to each other on the way to lunch in the White House mess and decided they would run for Congress in the districts being vacated by Badham and Lungren.

For them, the good news is they succeeded. The bad news is neither has received a paycheck since.

Rohrabacher has gone through his entire savings, and Cox recently has been living on his promises to an understanding landlord and other creditors that very soon things will improve. For a short time before Congress convened Jan. 3, Cox literally had no place to stay in Washington. He asked the people who were renting his house the year he was in California running for office if he could stay in the basement until they move out and he moves back in.

“You’re supposed to go through this so you can relate to the homeless and the dispossessed,” Cox said at the time.

But better times are ahead. The new congressmen’s first paycheck is due Feb. 1, and, in a stroke of luck, President Reagan has recommended that the base pay for a member of Congress be raised in February from $89,000 to $135,000. This will take effect unless Congress votes it down.

And then there are the famous congressional perks now available to Cox and Rohrabacher.

To name just a few, there is free membership in the congressional gym, street parking privileges anywhere in Washington (except in front of fire hydrants) and lots of “fact-finding” trips to pleasant places. And with the congressional franking privilege, their signatures on the upper right-hand corner of an envelop have a monetary value: they are as good as stamps.

On a less tangible level, there is the deference accorded to members of Congress anywhere they go in Washington, from restaurant waiters to taxi drivers to police officers, who will change a traffic signal on Independence Avenue to speed lawmakers’ dashes to the floor for votes and quorum calls.

There is also that thrill--surely it lasts longer than the first week--of being addressed, finally, as “Congressman Cox” and “Congressman Rohrabacher.”

“Seniority . . . is important in Washington,” said Rep. Ron C. Packard (R-Carlsbad), whose district includes portions of Orange County. “You have to wait your time and wait your turn.”

As one of their first official acts in Washington, Cox and Rohrabacher joined in a game played every 2 years in Washington: the office lottery.

They drew numbers along with the other 30 congressional freshman members who were vying for the dregs of offices so remote or cramped that they were rejected by the other nearly 400 members of the 101st Congress. Their lottery numbers: Cox, 5, and Rohrabacher, 20.

Cox ended up with three rooms on the fifth floor of the Cannon Office Building--just about as far from the House floor as a member of Congress can get. The floor is sometimes referred to in Washington as “Siberia.”

While larger than some of the other House offices scattered in three buildings, the suite is in a section of Cannon that is said to be nearly impossible to cool down during Washington’s sweltering summers.

“The sun is right there,” said Doug Wilburn, Cox’s acting chief of staff, pointing out the window to the sun as if it were actually within reach. But there was one good thing: So far there was no evidence of “anything creepy-crawly.” (Cockroaches have been known to infest Cannon.)

Wilburn and two other Cox staffers, acting press spokesman Paul Wilkinson and secretary Janice Yetman, spent the first few days attempting to bring order out of chaos in the office. But it was nearly impossible. There was no sense unpacking boxes; there were as yet no file cabinets. And moving furniture into place was a waste of time, since the painters were due momentarily.

And then there was the matter of paint. Cox wanted his office, now gray with white trim, to be painted a nice shade of off-white to brighten it up a little. But while Cox was at the Capitol casting a vote, the building supervisor had come and gone with his paint chips. He was adamant: off-white was not on the government building palette.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Cox protested later, pointing to the off-white ceiling. “Is he the commissioner of paint, or taste?”

Rohrabacher, who for 7 1/2 years was a White House speech writer, set up shop in the Longworth House Office Building, a few steps closer to the Capitol than Cannon. He is, luckily, on the first floor; Longworth elevators are notorious for long waits, and voting records sometimes depend on the alacrity with which members can get to the chamber after bells signal the 15-minute warning.

Still, Rohrabacher is not pleased. His view is a huge urn-like fixture on C Street. And, he complained as he struggled to close his inner office door over a burp in the carpeting, his work space is too small.

Even before his office was repainted, Rohrabacher had hung a couple of mementos on the random nails left from the previous occupant’s pictures and plaques. The first to go up, of course, was a picture of Rohrabacher’s hero and former boss, Reagan.

To brighten his view, Rohrabacher had placed two sculptures on the window sill: a small Statue of Liberty and a ceramic of John Wayne, whom Rohrabacher knew through Orange County Republican circles. Wayne’s statue, Rohrabacher said, projects the “solid conservative image” he wants.

Besides, he said, Wayne taught him how to drink tequila: on the rocks with a twist of lime.

“Something I finally had to learn: You can’t do everything you want in Congress,” former Rep. Lungren said. “You have to learn to be selective on issues you’re going to go 100% for.”

Rohrabacher has the makings of a conservative maverick in the mode of Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), to whom he is most often compared in Washington--with good reason: Rohrabacher’s first act after being elected congressman was very “Dornan.” He slipped into Burma illegally and delivered an impassioned speech to that strife-torn country’s “freedom fighters.”

It was apparent from Rohrabacher’s first week in office that he would be focusing on such matters during his tenure in Congress. Two days after he was sworn in, Rohrabacher delivered an ardent speech in Washington to the United Forum for Democracy and Human Rights in Burma. “People are fighting for freedom in the far corners of the planet, and it is the tyrants and oppressors who are in retreat,” Rohrabacher said in that speech. “The people of Burma are part of this great historic advance of human freedom.”

Later, in his office, Rohrabacher said he takes a particular pleasure in being able to say things in his own speeches that he could not get into the addresses he wrote for President Reagan. One such line: “smug little tyrants with blood on their hands spouted off Marxist slogans to justify their oppression. . . .”

“I’m very happy to be able to use phrases like that,” Rohrabacher said, obviously enjoying the new-found independence of being a member of Congress. “And I’m the final approver of the copy.”