Adam Schiff

By this time next year, voters in Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena will be preparing to decide who will win what could be the most expensive congressional race in recent memory.

And it is a race that may provide the final exclamation point to the historic impeachment trial of President Clinton.

Running on one side in the 27th Congressional District is GOP incumbent Rep. James Rogan, who frequently occupied the national spotlight a year ago as one of the House prosecutors trying the president for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Rogan’s story has been well-documented. A former high school dropout whose mother was on welfare, he worked his way through UC Berkeley and UCLA law school to become a prosecutor, a judge, an assemblyman and finally a congressman, all by 40.

On the other side is Democrat Adam Schiff, 39, a former federal prosecutor who was elected to the state Senate in 1996. Considered a tenacious but thoughtful lawmaker, the Stanford and Harvard Law graduate is chairman of the powerful state Senate Judiciary Committee. He has run against Rogan twice before, in a 1994 special election for Assembly and then again the same year in the general election, which he lost 54% to 43%.

Rogan’s high visibility as a member of the impeachment team has seemingly turned this election into a referendum on the trial and its legacy.

Because of his dogged pursuit of the president, Rogan has become the darling of the conservative movement, raising more than $1 million since the impeachment case ended, his list of donors skyrocketing from 3,000 to 20,000 with money pouring in from throughout the nation.

“Bill Clinton . . . wants to crush me and throw me out of Congress as part of his personal crusade of revenge,” says one of his campaign letters.

But Rogan’s heroic status with the nation’s conservatives has made him a villain to others. He has been described as the “top targeted GOP incumbent in the country,” whose zealous prosecution of the president has galvanized Democrats, who have a 45%-to-39% registration edge in the district.

All of that has put Schiff in the position of running for Congress while carrying the Democratic banner against an opponent who is on the party’s “‘most wanted” list.

As a result, Schiff has begun his own nationwide fund-raising campaign as he gears up to battle the well-financed Rogan.

The Times recently talked with Schiff about the campaign and how it has thrust him into the national spotlight.

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Question: Does it bother you that your run for Congress is being viewed as a sort of national referendum on the presidency and impeachment?

Answer: The national spotlight doesn’t bother me. What does concern me is how much time I need to spend on the campaign. I have a 13-month-old baby girl at home, and it grieves me every time I have to leave the house. But I thought long and hard about the decision to enter the race for Congress. I love the work I do in the state Senate. But I think our district has really been ill-served; a lot of local needs have gone unmet. Our constituents are unrepresented in Congress, and I’d like to change that.

Q: Rogan is raising money nationwide for this campaign. Are you going to be able to keep up with his fund-raising efforts?

A: We have done phenomenally well with our fund-raising efforts. In about eight weeks we raised more than a half a million dollars, which was more than any other challenger in the country. When you go into a race against an incumbent, you never expect to outspend the incumbent. But Jim Rogan has chosen to go on the G. Gordon Liddy radio talk show circuit and appeal to the hard right-wingers around the country. He is sending direct mail solicitations to the same people who used to send money to Bob Dornan. And that will be successful in raising a lot of money. But I am confident that the voters in our district do not believe that right-wingers in Georgia, Texas and Mississippi ought to decide who represents Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena.

Q: But in order to keep pace, aren’t you also going to have to go national in your fund-raising efforts?

A: We’re embarking on a national fund-raising effort reluctantly because we have to stay competitive. But frankly, I think that the precedent that has been set is not a good one. I don’t like having to engage in a national fund-raising effort, but we’re determined to be competitive, and thus far we have done a superb job.

Q: Doesn’t that mean that people outside the district will have tremendous influence on who is elected locally?

A: That would be very regrettable. I think when you look at the whole host of issues that our constituents care about: women’s right to choose, responsible limits on the availability of firearms of great destructive capability, support for public education, restrictions on the access of youth to tobacco--in all of these areas, my views differ from those of our incumbent and the people the incumbent is going to to fund his campaign.

Q: Do you intend to make Rogan’s participation in the impeachment process a campaign issue?

A: The national media wants this to be about impeachment, and I think to the degree that Rogan has made impeachment the sole reason he’s given people around the country to fund his campaign, he’s making it an issue. If you look at his national solicitation that went to more than a million people, there was only one reason, and one reason alone, given to support him in Congress, and that was his abortive effort to impeach the president of the United States. So he’s injecting it into the race, but frankly I think the race ought to be decided on the basis of who has the better track record of meeting district needs and who has the better bipartisan leadership record.

Q: Nonetheless, will you criticize his role in the impeachment process?

A: I certainly disagree strenuously with his performance during the impeachment trial. But what offended me even more than the impeachment proceeding was what he did after the trial. He came back to our district and he said, repeatedly, “If they want to debate impeachment with me, that’s just fine because I’ll shove it down their throats.” I just think that that kind of contempt toward the views of one’s constituents has no place in any office, federal or state.

Q: Rogan in an interview with The Times said, “I hope my opponent . . . tries to make impeachment an issue because that is a debate I want to have. . . . I want to find the Democrat out there, the liberal out there, the person who wants to step up to the plate against me who is going to mouth piety on fighting for women’s rights and sexual harassment laws but then takes a pass when it is his guy who does it.” How do you respond to that?

A: I think the vast majority of Americans can distinguish between the president’s conduct, which was deplorable and immoral, and the conduct of the Congress which transgressed and violated the Constitution to punish him. No one justifies the president’s conduct, but no one can justify what the Congress did either.

Q: What other issues are going to be debated here?

A: I think there are going to be a number of very pivotal issues including the whole debate on gun control. I have strongly supported responsible restrictions on guns. I grew up in a family with guns in the house and do believe that everyone has a constitutional right to bear arms. But I also believe that there are certain weapons that have one purpose alone, and that’s to kill people, and they have no place on our streets. I believe that our law enforcement agents are being outgunned, and that waiting periods and restrictions on assault guns and extended ammunition clips, provisions for child safety locks, all have a place as a part of a comprehensive crime package. I contrast that with someone who is an NRA medal of freedom award winner, who was on record opposing the Brady Bill, who has voted against an assault rifle ban and who has up until now only ridiculed gun control efforts. On tax cuts, I believe that before we give ourselves, or rather the wealthiest among us, a tax cut, let’s put our fiscal house in order. Let’s make Social Security solvent, let’s provide a Medicare drug benefit. Let’s make sure that we have the funding for class-size reduction, and to preserve our jobs and our programs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And then let’s see what we can give by way of tax cuts, and not the other way around.

Q: You’ve run against Rogan before and lost. Will you do things differently this time?

A: I think there are two differences between the race that I had with Jim Rogan in 1994 and this one, the principal one being that in 1994 neither one of us had a record. We were both relative unknowns. And now we both very much have a record. The other difference is that 1994 was a strong Republican year. In swing districts throughout the state of California, not a single Democrat won. I think the year 2000 will be a different environment altogether.

Q: Would you welcome appearances by members of the Clinton administration on your behalf in the upcoming election?

A: I would certainly welcome whatever help I could get. I think there will be a considerable amount of national interest in this race, not only because of the impeachment overlay, but because the balance in Congress is so close. I would imagine that there will be a lot of visits from people who are on both sides of political aisle to our humble precincts.

Q: What form is your national fund-raising going to take, and who are you going to be contacting?

A: We’re going to be reaching out to people who are interested in this race and who support the kind of things I support in the state Legislature. I have no desire to seek support outside the district from people on issues that are antithetical to my constituents.