Schiff, Rogan Campaigns Pass Up Summer Vacation This Year

EARLY START: You’ve heard about abstaining from drink before the sun sets over the yardarm? No Christmas shopping ads until after Thanksgiving? And no heavy politicking before Labor Day?

Well, forget the niceties, says Democratic Assembly hopeful Adam Schiff, who has launched a tough July offensive against his GOP foe, state Assemblyman James Rogan (R-Glendale).

In a letter to about 20,000 Republican households, Schiff is trying to shake GOP moderates out of the Rogan camp by lambasting the incumbent for supporting school vouchers and opposing abortion rights and bans on the sale of assault weapons.

Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, also attacked Rogan, a former Municipal Court judge, for accepting financial support from “a group of wealthy Orange County fundamentalists . . . (that has) spent millions over the past two years to elect state legislative candidates who share their extremist social agenda.” Unfortunately, Schiff adds, “Mr. Rogan has adopted far too many of their misguided policies.”

According to Parke Skelton, Schiff’s top political strategist, the Schiff campaign has also begun a phone survey of Republicans to get their views on choice, gun control and Christian fundamentalism. The response, Skelton said, has been “very good” after Republicans are told about both candidates’ views. “We’re seeing about 45% of the Republicans saying they’d support Adam,” Skelton claimed.

That’s a better result than Skelton said he found when he launched a similar, early attack aimed at persuading GOP voters to turn against Republican Brad Parton in a 1992 South Bay race between Parton and Debra Bowen. Bowen, the Democrat, won that year in what was seen as a big blow to Christian fundamentalists’ efforts to become a major political force.

Rogan, feeling the heat, has struck back with a mailing of his own to GOP households.

“We know the Democrats have targeted our district as one of their top five seats to take away from Republicans,” Rogan wrote in a letter to voters last week. This has meant, among other things, that the state Democratic Party has begun a voter registration drive in the 43rd District to bring “new liberals to the Democrat Party,” he said.

Worse still, Rogan noted, the Democrats are signing up new voters “in welfare offices,” the letter gasped.

Rogan urged his readers to help “get the 43rd Assembly District off the Democrat target list” by volunteering to help with a voter registration drive aimed at rounding up Republican voters and by contributing financially to his campaign. “Help ensure that the liberals will never find a safe haven in the 43rd Assembly District,” he concluded.

With all this passion stirring about, 43rd District voters can forget about those politics-free dog days of summer.

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OLIVE BRANCH POLITICS: Republican congressional candidate Richard Sybert is still having a tough time with Bob Hammer--even after beating the runner-up by nearly a 3-to-1 margin in June’s GOP primary.

Hammer said earlier this month that he would not back Sybert’s bid to unseat U.S. Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) because of the way the former senior aide to Gov. Pete Wilson roughed him up during the GOP primary. The campaign included attacks that questioned Hammer’s credentials as a businessman and accusations that he was an indifferent citizen for failing to vote in several elections.

But Sybert refused to take no for an answer, and in a letter this week he mounted a fresh offensive to win Hammer over. In a personal missive, Sybert said it was his intention to appoint Hammer to the Ventura County Republican Central Committee. Under party rules, Sybert is an ex-officio member of the committee and, beyond that, may name an alternate to serve in his place.

Moreover, Sybert politely warned Hammer that his refusal to endorse him--and his willingness to talk about same to the media--was only helping Beilenson. “You have to know that Mr. Beilenson will use your comments to help himself, and I can’t believe you really want that after everything you said during the primary,” Sybert wrote. “Let’s meet over breakfast or lunch,” the nominee offered.

But Hammer was unmoved.

Thanks for the Central Committee offer, Hammer replied later in the week in a letter of his own. But, he added, his plans don’t include getting deeply involved in party affairs, at least for the time being. “I’m trying to earn a living again,” Hammer told The Times, repeating his unwillingness to back Sybert.

Hammer is not alone as a holdout.

Realtor Emery Shane, another GOP primary candidate in the 24th Congressional District, also has resisted Sybert. And again Sybert persists.

In a letter to Shane this week, Sybert urged reconciliation. “We all nurse grievances from the primary, but I don’t think that justifies aiding and abetting the opposition, and I assure you Beilenson will take what you said and use it in the campaign.” As for the nastiness of the campaign, “that’s the nature of the beast,” Sybert wrote.

No word from Shane on how he’s taking this latest peace overture.

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QUOTAS: GOP candidate Gary Forsch is hoping east San Fernando Valley voters will be surprised--and angered--to learn that U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City) backed a little-known amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1991. That remains to be seen.

No question that it’s a tough sell for a virtually invisible congressional candidate to wow voters with tales about the twisted complexities of a legislative brouhaha from three years ago. But in this case the 1991 debate turned on the hot-button issues of quotas and the use of race norming to score hiring and admission tests.

Asked about quotas recently, Berman said they were “obnoxious” to him and would not support them.

But Forsch, manager of a family-owned hardware store in Sun Valley, claims if that’s really Berman’s view, the congressman should have voted against the so-called Towns Amendment in 1991.

Critics have pointed out that this measure, sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus and named after its author, U.S. Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-New York), did NOT ban the use of quotas nor racial preferences in hiring tests, unlike compromise civil rights language that was being simultaneously backed by moderate House Democrats in 1991.

“That which is not banned is permissible,” Forsch has argued in his effort to place the quota-system yoke around Berman’s neck. “Since Mr. Berman did not insist upon the prohibition of quotas and race-norming, he has left the door open for their use.”

But Berman claims his opponent is way off base.

Granted, the Towns Amendment did not speak to the issue of banning quotas--but neither did it explicitly support them, Berman said. “Nor did it increase the penalties for using a gun during commission of a crime. It didn’t do a lot of things,” the congressman noted.

Moreover, in a subsequent vote, Berman observed that he supported an amendment to the civil rights bill that did contain explicit language banning the use of quotas.

Expect to hear more about quotas from Forsch, who has also advertised his position as well as Berman’s in the Jewish newspaper the Heritage.

Quotas are particularly objectionable to Jews because they are often the ones most adversely affected by them, said Forsch, who is Jewish. The GOP candidate added that if elected, he would support federal legislation patterned after a state initiative sponsored by Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco) and Bill Leonard (R-San Bernardino) to prohibit the use of racial preferences in government hiring, school admissions policies and contracting.