Rousselot Will Try Political Comeback : Elections: Former GOP congressman and John Birch Society member hopes to return to Capitol Hill by running in the newly drawn 25th District.

John H. Rousselot, the ex-California congressman who once was an official of the ultraconservative John Birch Society, said Friday he hopes to make a political comeback by running for Congress in northern Los Angeles County.

Rousselot has worked as a Washington lobbyist and assistant to former President Ronald Reagan since Rousselot was voted out of office in 1982. He said he rented a home in Lancaster last week and is getting political advice from veteran Republican strategist Stu Spencer in preparation for a run in the newly drawn and heavily Republican 25th Congressional District.

Rousselot, 64, faces several conservative Republicans seeking the GOP nomination in the vast district, which covers the northern half of Los Angeles County. Among them are former Los Angeles County Assessor John Lynch, Santa Clarita City Councilman Howard (Buck) McKeon and Assemblyman Phillip Wyman (R-Tehachapi).

First elected to Congress in 1960, Rousselot served seven terms before losing in 1982 to Rep. Matthew G. Martinez (D-Montebello) in a heavily Democratic district stretching from Bell Gardens to Azusa. Rousselot opted to run in that district after his was carved up in the 1982 congressional reapportionment.

Rousselot was public relations director and West Coast governor for the John Birch Society before resigning in 1979 while gearing up to run against U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston--a move a Birch spokesman criticized as political opportunism designed to make Rousselot look more moderate.

Rousselot said he quit after the organization’s founder, Robert Welch, charged that former President Dwight D. Eisenhower had been a Communist agent and that Winston Churchill was a traitor to England.

In 1983, Rousselot joined the Reagan White House as a special assistant for business matters. He served as Reagan’s Western states campaign coordinator during the former President’s successful 1984 reelection drive.

From 1985 to 1988, Rousselot was president of the National Council of Savings Institutions, a Washington-based lobbying group for banks and savings and loans.

In 1989, he headed an investors’ group that tried to buy troubled Lincoln Savings & Loan from Charles H. Keating Jr., who was convicted of securities fraud.

Rousselot’s attempted purchase of Lincoln fell through after federal regulators seized the S & L in April, 1989.

Paul Clarke, a GOP political consultant who has run campaigns in the San Fernando Valley, said that although he views Rousselot as “the ultimate straight shooter,” his S & L background is bound to become a campaign issue.

“Someone artful in campaign mail will say: ‘Well, he had dealings with Lincoln and you know what happened to its president,’ ” Clarke said. “They’ll make the innuendo. Somebody will bring it up, fair or not.”

Rousselot agreed that his opponents may try to attack him for his S & L ties but said he is “not defensive . . . at all” about them.

“I did nothing illegal, improper or unwarranted during the time I was president” of the savings industry association, he said.

Since 1989, Rousselot has been a Washington lobbyist.