Moorhead’s Move Spawns a Change in Landscape : Politics: Glendale congressman’s retirement is one of many factors that will alter the 1996 election cycle. Others include term limits, an earlier primary and crumbling legislative seniority.

Politicians love to talk about the winds of change, but the 1996 election campaign is beginning to loom as hurricane season in California.

Consider the scrambling in just one slice of the political landscape last week: in the San Gabriel Valley after the announcement by veteran Republican U.S. Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead of Glendale that he will not seek a 13th term next year.

Moorhead’s decision, combined with other factors, means that every major state and federal elective office in the area that includes Pasadena, Glendale and Burbank will be open in 1996. Therefore, no incumbent will be running in the 27th congressional district, the 21st state Senate district, and the 43rd and 44th Assembly districts.

All this in an area that has had only two congressmen over the past 40 years, where the incumbent state senator has reigned for 20 years, and the previous Assembly member served for 16.

“That’s the first time that has ever happened,” observed Peter Musurlian, who has been Moorhead’s top aide in the district, which spreads from the San Gabriel Valley into the San Fernando Valley and the northern reaches of the city of Los Angeles.

But it is likely to be just one of many firsts before California voters mark their ballots 14 months from now.

Political experts knew there would be a lot of change going into the 1996 election cycle. Newly approved limits on the terms of state lawmakers take full effect this coming year. The primary election, in March, will be 2 1/2 months earlier than usual.

The old rules of legislative seniority are crumbling fast in both Sacramento and Washington. Newcomers to the political process are impatient to get things done and don’t mind tromping on political traditions as they pursue their goals.

But the convergence of many political forces may result in more change than many of the experts expected.

“California has never seen anything like the political earthquake that is coming,” wrote political consultant Allan Hoffenblum in his foreword to “California Target Book,” billed as the authoritative guide to the 1995-96 legislative campaign.

By the time the candidates now lining up to run in 1996 actually take office, none of the 120 state senators and Assembly members will have served in his or her house for more than six years.

Surprisingly, to some observers, they will not include 38-year-old Republican Assemblyman James E. Rogan of Glendale.

Rogan has been hailed as a future leader of the Legislature although he is only in his second year in the 80-member House. He has even been designated by other Republicans as their choice to become Speaker when the GOP grabs full control of the Assembly, which they hope to do by the end of this year.

The speakership has always been considered the plum position in the Legislature, second in power to the California governorship. In spite of that lure, Rogan has announced he intends to run for Moorhead’s seat in the House.

Term limits and partisan bitterness that comes from the narrow balance of power in the Assembly already have changed the nature of the speakership barely three months after 15-year Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) lost the post, Rogan and others have noted.

The speakership is evolving into more of a gatekeeper or referee post than a center of power, they say.

“It doesn’t make as much difference who wields the gavel,” Rogan said last week.

Another spinoff of Moorhead’s retirement at age 73 is that Musurlian will lose his federal job as Moorhead’s district assistant. But Musurlian is also provided an opportunity by the accelerating game of musical chairs.

With Rogan aiming for Congress, there will be no incumbent to run in the 43rd Assembly District. So, Musurlian is among the announced GOP candidates for that open post.

The vast majority of incumbents were routinely reelected in the past without major challenge, unless they had made major personal or political errors or were politically out of step with their districts. On the other hand, open seats tend to attract big fields of candidates because no one of them has the built-in advantages in fund raising and public recognition that incumbents enjoy.

Since the mid-1960s, serving in the Legislature has been a full-time job for most members--a lifetime job for some and a political steppingstone for others. But term limits have changed all of that. And Rogan’s yearning for Washington rather than Sacramento is an outgrowth of that change.

Under the old rules, logic would have dictated that Rogan seek a second full term in the 80-member Assembly, and possibly get himself elected Speaker. A respectable job there might then position him for a run for statewide office in 1998.

Attorney general would be a logical fit for the former Glendale Municipal Court judge and Los Angeles County prosecutor. And in 2002, a run for the governorship might be in the offing.

That would be a stunning rise to power for someone who won his first partisan elected office in 1994.

But as Rogan said, times are changing. And so are individual political priorities.

The choice, he said, was of staying in Sacramento and having to engage in constant partisan warfare, or going to Washington, where he could go to work each day saying to himself: “How do you fix America?”

But Washington is a different place, too, even without term limits. That helps account for Moorhead’s decision to retire just two years after Republicans finally captured control of the House and Senate.

Moorhead, a former assemblyman, had long been a loyal member of the GOP. He had one of the most staunchly conservative voting records in Congress.

Going into this session of Congress, as the dean of the California delegation, Moorhead was in line under traditional seniority rules to become chairman of either of two critical House committees: Commerce or Judiciary. But his long years of service and loyal voting record were not enough for many of the aggressive new GOP leaders. They claimed that Moorhead had not been “tough” enough in dealing with Democrats.

They complained he had been too collegial in working with the opposition to win a variety of little battles of interest to his district over the years, when the Democrats were in power.

When the GOP finally gained control, Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the new House Speaker, passed over Moorhead in filling both the Commerce and Judiciary chairmanships.

“Carlos Moorhead is a nice, decent guy who found himself left behind,” one congressional expert said at the time.

Moorhead observed then: “I think mine is a little different style perhaps than what Mr. Gingrich is looking for. . . . I just don’t want to be a mean person.”

Back in the district watching these events unfold was the man Moorhead succeeded, H. Allen Smith, who served eight terms in the House and became the ranking Republican on the all-powerful Rules Committee. In 1972, Smith decided that Republicans would never control the House while he was still active in electoral politics and that he would never become Rules Committee chairman. He decided to retire in 1972 and Moorhead ran for the seat.

Today, the idea of one district being served by only two members over a span of 40 years seems unlikely, and perhaps unthinkable.

Even with change, Rogan still adhered to traditional political courtesy before announcing he would seek Moorhead’s seat. First, he checked to see whether Republican County Supervisor Mike Antonovich was interested in running. Antonovich said no.

Another option might have been to seek the state Senate seat being relinquished by Republican Newton R. Russell of Glendale after more than 20 years. Russell cannot run again because of term limits. But Rogan’s neighboring assemblyman, Bill Hoge of Pasadena, already had his eye on the Senate seat.

With Rogan going for the House and Hoge apparently committed to the state Senate, both Assembly districts will have open elections. Now there is a scramble of candidates for those two jobs.

And if the 1996 Assembly winners win reelection in 1998, they will become instant veterans of the Legislature.