Democrats Take Aim at Longtime GOP Stronghold : Politics: With reapportionment and Nolan in prison, Glendale-based Assembly district seems up for grabs.

A Democrat in the Glendale-based 43rd District state Assembly seat? Most years the idea of a breach in that Republican bastion would seem laughably quixotic, if not delusional.

But that was before reapportionment, before Bill Clinton and before veteran GOP incumbent Pat Nolan went to prison.

Now Democrats are daring to hope that a 33-year-old former prosecutor, endorsed by several law enforcement groups, can wrest the 43rd District out of Republican hands with a platform that is tough on crime but moderate on hot-button social issues.

Democrats also are drawing comfort from the recent disclosure that a front-running Republican, Municipal Judge James Rogan, is supported by the Allied Business PAC, a group noted for its ultraconservative, Christian fundamentalist agenda.

“It helps identify Rogan with fringe views,” said one Democratic Party official.

The situation worries some local GOP leaders as their party enters a confusing series of elections in the 43rd District this year to pick Nolan’s successor.

“There was a time when Democrats wouldn’t even file to run in this district,” said Glendale City Councilman Larry Zarian, a local Republican leader and Rogan backer. “But the old way of winning is over. Now we have to work hard.”

State Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) predicted recently that there is a good chance the Democratic Party would target the seat for party funding.

“Democrats are excited about our prospects in that district,” said Katz, who represents an adjoining district. “I think we have a good shot in November of taking this seat.”

On May 3 voters will go to the polls to pick a successor to Nolan, who was forced to resign after pleading guilty Feb. 18 to a political racketeering charge. He is now serving a 33-month sentence in a federal prison camp.

If no one gets a majority in that election, the top vote-getters from each party will face each other in a June 28 special election. The winner of this set of elections will fill out the remainder of Nolan’s term, which expires Dec. 5.

In a separate, regular election cycle, the candidates will campaign in a June 7 primary and a Nov. 8 runoff for the two-year Assembly term that begins Dec. 5.

In the past, Republican hegemony was taken for granted in the quiet suburban cities of Glendale and Burbank, the cornerstones of the 43rd District. But the 43rd District--the bailiwick that produced Nolan, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich and U. S. Rep. Carlos Moorhead (R-Glendale)--isn’t what it used to be.

Under the 1990 reapportionment plan, the district gained the Silver Lake and Los Feliz neighborhoods from the city of Los Angeles--additions that eroded the GOP’s historic registration advantage.

Given the greater propensity of Republicans to vote, the district, with a registration that is now 43.3% Democratic and 42% GOP (as opposed to 47% Republican, 41% Democratic before reapportionment) is still considered Republican.

Yet the GOP’s grip on the 43rd District has slipped. In 1992, Clinton carried the newly reconstituted 43rd District--and even took the Glendale portion of it, where 2 out of 5 of its voters reside. That same year, Democratic senatorial candidates Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein also beat their GOP opponents in the district and the entrenched Moorhead won with only 49% of the vote.

The 43rd District, as Democratic political strategist Parke Skelton is fond of saying, is not Orange County.

“This is now a swing district,” Skelton maintains, pointing to the fact that the Glendale and Burbank areas are increasingly populated by young renters, Latinos and Asians, who are more fertile ground for Democrats than the home-owning Anglos of yore.

If these developments were not disconcerting enough to area Republicans, Nolan’s surprise guilty plea suddenly left them without their beloved standard-bearer and frantically casting about for his successor.

Meanwhile, into this rapidly evolving political situation has stepped Democratic candidate Adam Schiff, 33, a Harvard Law School graduate who has been walking precincts since December when he quit his job as an assistant U. S. attorney to become a full-time candidate.

Schiff, and his political handler, Skelton, believe 43rd District voters are anxious about crime, embarrassed by Nolan’s involvement in the current wave of scandals in Sacramento and fed up with the divisive brand of partisanship practiced by their former assemblyman.

If they are right, then a fresh-faced prosecutor like Schiff, armed with a pledge that he will seek bipartisan solutions to the state’s problems, may go far.

Skelton also sees parallels between this year’s 43rd District race--especially if Rogan is the GOP candidate--and the 1992 Assembly matchup between Venice attorney Debra Bowen, now the area’s Democratic assemblywoman, and Redondo Beach mayor Brad Parton.

Parton’s ties to Christian fundamentalists helped alienate some voters and put Bowen over the top, contends Skelton, who ran Bowen’s campaign and now sees a chance to resurrect some of its themes if Rogan, also backed by fundamentalists, is the GOP candidate in the 43rd District.

But others doubt that there’s a Republican crisis brewing in Glendale and Burbank. One of these is Steve Frank, former chairman of the California Republican Assembly, the state GOP’s conservative wing.

“The Democrats are whistling past the graveyard on this one,” Frank said. “This seat is ours to lose, and we will lose it if we go to sleep--but I don’t see that happening.”

Meanwhile, the GOP candidates are engaged in costly and bruising infighting.

The top-ranked Republicans in the special election are Rogan, 36, who has the support of many Nolan partisans, and Los Angeles Community College District Trustee Julia Wu, 56, a Silver Lake resident who beat incumbent Marguerite Archie-Hudson in 1987.

A third major GOP candidate is Peter Repovich, 36, a Los Angeles Police Department community relations officer. But Repovich, who has raised more than $350,000 for his campaign, has opted to skip the special election with an eye toward concentrating his resources on the regular election. His war chest so far is the largest among the Republican contenders.

Repovich and Wu have teamed up in their attacks on Rogan, accusing him of being a Johnny-come-lately to the Republican Party. After being a Democratic Party activist for years, Rogan joined the GOP in 1988 and two years later was appointed to the bench by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian.

Rogan’s conversion has been labeled opportunistic by Repovich and Wu. “He changed parties so he could get a judgeship,” Wu has charged.

Rogan denies it. “I got tired of being the odd man out in the Democratic Party, and the Republicans were welcoming me with open arms,” he said. “Besides, I joined the party when (1988 Democratic presidential nominee) Michael Dukakis was 17 points ahead in the polls against George Bush. I hardly call that opportunistic.”

Rogan also proudly points to his support from the Allied Business PAC as a sign that the integrity of his philosophy and credentials has gotten the stamp of approval from rock-solid conservatives.

Rogan opposes abortion rights, opposes most gun control measures--including bans on so-called assault rifles--supports a voucher program to help families pay for private school tuition, wants to see the National Guard patrolling the U. S.-Mexico border to deter illegal entry and urges the abolition of conjugal visits and other privileges for prison inmates.

Both Wu and Repovich support legalized abortion, although Wu says she would not support tax funding of abortions for the poor. Like Rogan, Wu and Repovich are opposed to limits on assault-weapon ownership, but unlike Rogan, they would support legislation--now being pushed by Assemblyman Katz--to make it a felony to carry a concealed weapon.

On crime and illegal immigration, the three are virtually indistinguishable hard-liners who call for beefing up patrols along the border, ending welfare benefits to illegal immigrants and meting out tougher treatment to violent criminals.

While calling for longer prison sentences, Wu is reluctant to spend more money on new prisons.

“We should not be building modern prisons for prisoners when we don’t even have modern classrooms,” she said.

In his own crime spiel, Repovich, the police officer, adds a dig at Rogan. “We should lock ‘em up and get rid of the soft, double-talking judges,” he said recently. “We pick them up, but it’s the judges who let them go.”

Such campaign talk gives Skelton reason to hope that the Republican nominee--whomever it might be--will be weakened by intraparty squabbling. “I’m for as much democracy for the Republicans as possible,” he quipped.

Meanwhile, Schiff, who faces weaker primary opposition, is focusing his attention on the regular election. Skelton said he sees no advantage in being an incumbent for only a few months and that Schiff should concentrate on Rogan, who Skelton expects to be the GOP nominee in November.

“I think it’s a frightening development that all this extremist money is coming into the district,” Schiff said last week after it was reported that Allied Business PAC is backing Rogan’s campaign.

The PAC and its principals--four Republican millionaires, including savings and loan heir Robert Ahmanson and state Sen. Rob Hurtt (R-Garden Grove)--have given $9,500 to Rogan’s campaign so far, but are prepared to give much more if needed, a spokesperson for the group said last Thursday. In 1992 alone, the group gave $2.2 million to Republican candidates and conservative causes.

Schiff, who ran in 1991 in a special election to fill the Hollywood-based seat vacated by retiring Assemblyman Mike Roos, is pro-abortion rights and would use tax dollars to fund abortions for the needy; he supports banning assault weapons, and opposes a voucher system.

“I think the views of Mr. Rogan and the Allied Business PAC are way out of step with this community,” Schiff said.