All Quiet on the Rohrabacher Front

U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) declined to talk to The Times for this article.

Actually, Rohrabacher won’t talk to The Times about anything. He’s been giving us the silent treatment for two years.

Last time I talked to him was election night 1992. I was a rookie reporter in Orange County, sent to a swank hotel to watch Republican mucks watch returns roll in. It was not the best night for the GOP.

George Bush “ran one of the most incompetent campaigns in history,” the surfer-lawmaker said, which I diligently jotted down. “Bush handed the presidency to the Democrats.”

Five years later, I landed in The Times’ Washington bureau to cover California’s congressional delegation. So I rang up Rohrabacher.

No chance, press secretary Natasha Clerihue said when I asked for a comment about, literally, the weather (El Nino). Not in this lifetime, was the basic response when I suggested a get-to-know-you chat with the congressman.

Nothing personal, Clerihue explained politely. He won’t talk to anyone from The Times.

I complained that Rohrabacher was cheating his constituents, robbing readers of insight about their man in Washington. If she cared, it didn’t show.

*

Rohrabacher talks to the Orange County Register. He talks to the New York Times. He talks to Surfer magazine.

But not to us.

Not since December 1995, when the paper decided not to publish an opinion article he wrote about the recall of California Assembly Speaker Doris Allen (the editors said it was redundant; they had run a letter from him a month before that made similar points).

That recall election was the one in which Republicans proffered a decoy Democrat to split the opposition and help their candidate, Scott Baugh, cruise to victory. Baugh was elected to the Assembly--and he now awaits trial on charges of perjury and campaign fraud. Also snared in the scandal was Rohrabacher’s campaign-manager-turned-wife--Rhonda Carmony, who pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy and fraud.

This wasn’t Rohrabacher’s favorite news story.

He says the headlines were hooey, the GOPers made innocent technical errors rather than conspiring to commit crimes, and that the entire prosecution was motivated by Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael Capizzi’s political ambition.

But I had nothing to do with that, I protested to Clerihue. Never wrote a word about Rhonda Carmony or Scott Baugh. If I’m going to get frozen out, I’d at least like it to be my fault.

Clerihue was very nice about it. But the answer was still no.

Rohrabacher has been consistent: In May, he clammed up about GOP leaders’ role in the Allen recall saga. In the fall of 1996, he declined to discuss Sally Alexander, his 82-year-old electoral opponent, who had challenged him to a surf-off. A few months earlier, he was mum when a former chief of staff was killed in a plane crash.

And back in January 1996, just after his boycott began, he gave the proverbial “no comment” when The Times asked about his being named legislator of the year by Orange County Republicans.

He talked to Times reporters only if they caught him in the hall and didn’t draw attention to where they worked; formal requests for interviews were always denied.

*

Usually when pols keep quiet it’s about something sensitive or sticky--not surfing. Sometimes, a source shuts off a particular reporter. But a blanket boycott? I was determined to change his mind.

Covering a science committee hearing on El Nino, I caught a Rohrabacher line about how the weather weirdness was working wonders for the surf, and I tossed it into the story. I took copious notes when Rohrabacher spoke on the House floor, and quoted him whenever it was relevant. I went to his news conference about closing a loophole in immigration law.

But when I went up afterward to ask a question, Rohrabacher’s lips were sealed. I said I was from The Times; he said nothing. When I called his office as part of a survey of Southern California lawmakers’ campaign fund-raising habits, he would not come to the phone.

No interviews, no access, no comment.

This in a town where staffers are judged by how often their bosses’ names appear in the paper. Where some politicians spend more time talking to the media than to their spouses. Where conventional wisdom says lawmakers need newspapers more than the other way around.

A couple of weeks ago, Clerihue called with an olive branch: Rohrabacher had written another opinion piece. If it ran, maybe we could talk about ending the boycott.

Only I don’t decide what goes on the opinion page. And Rohrabacher’s essay was 1,600 words--double The Times’ limit. Clerihue said her boss refused to cut it, and was shopping for another venue.

“Now he says he’s not going to even talk to L.A. Times reporters if they catch him at home, on the street or here in the halls of Congress,” Clerihue reported, upping the boycott a notch.

So I don’t know what Rohrabacher thinks about Iran’s recent overtures to the United States, or the Asian financial crisis, or the California schools crisis, or the state of the union, or the national budget, or anything else. I can tell you how he voted, but I can’t explain why.

Meanwhile, there are 51 other California House members to talk to, so I’m keeping busy. But I’d really like to hear from Rohrabacher.

Dana, please call.