Timing of Nolan Charges Bothers Backers, Rivals

“Why now?” they’re asking.

Democrats and Republicans alike saw political overtones in the decision of a departing U.S. attorney to file racketeering and money-laundering charges against veteran Assemblyman Pat Nolan (R-Glendale) four years and eight months after he was identified as a target in a federal corruption sting and only days before the statute of limitations was to run out.

It’s the timing that bothers them.

“Whatever information they have this or last week, where was this information two or three years ago?” asked Glendale political consultant Allen Brandstater, a longtime friend and ally of Nolan.

“Does it take this long to assemble a case or does it take this long to fabricate a case? That’s the question reasonable people should ask.”

Those who had no inkling that Nolan was about to be indicted said they assumed, after nearly five years of silence by federal prosecutors, that the case had been dropped.

“They kept him dangling long enough,” said former Glendale City Councilwoman Ginger Bremberg, who for years maintained what she said was a cordial, though not close, association with Nolan. “Yea or nay, I think it would have been resolved several years ago.”

Bremberg said she was surprised by the news that Nolan had been indicted, along with state Sen. Frank Hill (R-Whittier), because she had long thought the case was dead.

Generally, Republican officeholders in conservative political circles in Glendale and Burbank jumped to Nolan’s defense.

“I never found fault with his integrity,” said state Sen. Newton R. Russell (R-Glendale), who has routinely campaigned and worked with Nolan for more than a decade.

Similarly, Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich said that he reacted “with shocked surprise” at Nolan’s indictment and that he was “confident that Nolan will be exonerated.”

However, to Nolan’s Democratic opponents, who more than two years ago lost hope that the case would yield them any electoral advantage, suspicion over the timing was at least mollified by a sense that justice was finally served.

“I feel vindicated,” said Jeanette Mann, director of affirmative action at Cal State Northridge who unsuccessfully challenged Nolan in 1990, hoping that he would be indicted that summer. “I was told over and over by the Republicans of the district that there was no substance to this and I was just engaging in a smear against Mr. Nolan.”

Mann’s campaign manager, Jonathan Furhman, viewed the timing of Tuesday’s indictment as a trick on history.

“I think had this happened three years ago, Jeanette might now be serving in the Assembly and you might see a different Assembly right now,” said Furhman, who also ran unsuccessfully for a Pasadena Assembly District seat in 1992. “I guess it does make you wonder a little bit whether there were party considerations in the timing of the investigations.”

But Nolan’s supporters were equally sure that the long episode had twisted history in the other direction.

“I have every reason to believe if this issue had not come up, Pat Nolan would have become governor of California sometime in the foreseeable future,” former Burbank Mayor Al Dossin said. “I know I considered him a young, bright, rising star.”

Nolan has been reelected three times since his office was searched by FBI agents at the conclusion of the sting, Dossin pointed out, saying that showed that the electorate retained confidence in Nolan. In the same way, each camp had its own political conspiracy theory.

Both Mann and Furhman said they had heard rumors since 1990 that as long as a Republican was president, there would be no indictments of Republicans in the federal sting that involved five state representatives. Mann confessed to being unsure, even when the subsequent indictments of three Democratic state senators seemed to buttress those suspicions.

“People who had high state offices indicated they didn’t think it was political, but that the Justice Department was doing a good job,” Mann said. “Others said they just don’t indict Republicans. The timing would lead one to conclude that politics had a great deal to do with it.”

Nolan’s former Los Angeles office manager, Bob Haueter, had no doubt that the indictment resulted from political considerations--by a U. S. attorney concerned about just such rumors that he gave Republicans an unfair break.

“Here you have the U. S. attorney who has been asked by (Democratic President) Clinton to resign. Does it look good?” Haueter asked.

“Now he can leave and say, ‘It wasn’t just a Republican operation. I indicted two Republicans too.’ ”