Local Issues Key to High-Profile Race

By JEAN MERL

April 18, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Does anybody care about impeachment anymore?

The Republicans’ historic prosecution of President Clinton last year has cast a long shadow on--and brought lots of money to--what is probably the hottest, biggest-spending congressional race in the nation. But the voters who will determine the outcome--and possibly help change the balance of power in the House of Representatives--have other issues on their minds.

From the rustic hillsides of the San Fernando Valley’s Sunland-Tujunga district in the west to the elegant mansions of San Marino in the east, from the entertainment industry complexes in Burbank to the bustling restoration of Old Pasadena, voters in the 27th Congressional District say they care most about such things as their neighborhoods, schools, traffic and open space.

These and other strictly local concerns are grist for the widely watched, high-stakes battle for the rapidly changing district in suburbs northeast of Los Angeles. There, conservative Republican Rep. James E. Rogan of Glendale is facing the reelection challenge of his life from Democratic state Sen. Adam Schiff of Burbank.

Rogan gained national prominence last year when he helped prosecute the president, impeached because of the White House sex scandal.

Democrats, who need to gain six seats Nov. 7 to take control of the House of Representatives, see a top possibility in the quickly shifting voter demographics of Rogan’s district, marked by a steady drop in Republican registration and a rise in numbers of ethnic minorities. And, Democrats figure, if they can exact a little revenge on Rogan for his prominent role in Clinton’s impeachment and Senate trial, so much the better.

But last year’s impeachment trial is hardly uppermost in voters’ minds here, although some of Rogan’s constituents complain that he neglected district needs in favor of his impeachment role.

Here, parochial concerns hold sway. In Burbank, it’s the airport, where explosive, shuddering noise from departing jets has earned the tidy neighborhood of one-story stucco homes to the runway’s south the nickname Bomber Alley.

In Glendale, the hot issue is the massive Oakmont View housing development proposed for a pristine swath high in the Verdugo Mountains.

“I think people on the street are concerned with how things affect them here at home,” said South Pasadena Mayor Dorothy Cohen.

Cohen, along with other South Pasadena City Council members, has been fighting to keep Caltrans from extending the Long Beach Freeway through her town’s neighborhoods of fine old homes and huge trees. South Pasadena has allies in parts of Pasadena, which also lies in the proposed freeway extension’s path, and in the affluent foothills city of La Canada Flintridge, where residents worry about spillover traffic.

Schiff contends that Rogan is out of step with his changing constituency on such hot-button issues as gun control. Rogan opposes most stricter legislation and in 1996 received a Defender of Freedom award from the National Rifle Assn.

Schiff, however, is putting so much emphasis on purely local concerns that Rogan’s people joke that the first-term state senator seems to be running for a City Council seat instead of for Congress.

But Rogan also has staked out roles for himself on key issues in various communities, and he and Schiff have taken similar positions on some.

Both oppose completion of the wildly unpopular freeway, for example. And last year each sponsored his own “summit” on the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport, where controversies range from the size of a badly needed new terminal to calls for an overnight curfew on flights.

Political experts from Washington to Los Angeles expect the race to be extremely tight. In a National Journal article last month, analyst Charlie Cook labeled the race a tossup, one of only three in California and just 16 in the nation.

Some, however, including Washington-based political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, give the edge to Schiff because he bested Rogan, 49% to 47%, in the March 7 primary, despite being vastly outspent by Rogan. (Libertarian Ted Brown and Miriam R. Hospodar of the Natural Law party also are running.)

Allan Hoffenblum, a Los Angeles-based GOP consultant and publisher of the California Target Book, which tracks legislative races, also gives the edge to Schiff. But he cautions that it would be a mistake to count out Rogan, a talented campaigner who has won tough races before.

Rogan, 42, beat Schiff, 39, twice for an Assembly seat in 1994, in a special election for an unexpired term and then for a full term. Against different opponents, Rogan won the congressional seat two years later in a hard-fought battle and was reelected in 1998 with less than 51% of the vote.

“The problem Rogan has is that his district is going south on him,” Hoffenblum said, noting that Republican registration has dropped 7% since 1994, and Democrats now outnumber Republicans 44% to 37%.

“The only way Rogan can win is to show he represents the local interests. . . . Those local issues are very important.”

Impeachment’s Funding Effects

Rogan’s impeachment role, however, made him a hero to conservatives and Clinton-haters across America, and they have helped him raise a stunning $3.8 million so far. By March 31, the end of the last campaign reporting period, he had spent all but $978,500, much of it on fund-raising and cable television ads during the primary, but his campaign said Rogan expects to raise about $2 million more.

Of the 13 House managers who prosecuted the president, Rogan faces the most difficult reelection challenge by far; most of the others are in safe Republican seats.

Impeachment has benefited Schiff’s campaign too; he has drawn contributions from Democrats and others angered by what they saw as an unwarranted, divisive and costly attack on the president.

Schiff had raised almost $1.9 million by the latest reporting period’s end, but had spent less than half and had $968,000 on hand. His campaign expects he will need at least $3 million total.

The district includes:

* Six independent cities with strong civic identities--most of Pasadena and all of Burbank, Glendale, South Pasadena, La Canada Flintridge and San Marino.

* Sunland-Tujunga, a working-class foothills community on the eastern edge of the San Fernando Valley that is part of the city of Los Angeles.

* La Crescenta and Altadena, unincorporated areas in the San Gabriel foothills.

Primary voting patterns highlight some of the political differences among the district’s communities.

Rogan carried wealthy, heavily Republican San Marino in the primary, as well as affluent La Canada Flintridge and the Los Angeles communities. By a narrower margin, he also won in his political base, Glendale. The once largely white, Republican bastion is increasingly home to several ethnic groups, especially Armenians, and technology- and entertainment-related jobs.

Schiff prevailed in Burbank--burgeoning with the entertainment industry and no longer the working-class company town it was when former aviation giant Lockheed was the main employer--and in Pasadena, South Pasadena and the unincorporated areas.

The district has been increasingly hospitable to Democrats. It voted for Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and, two years later, favored Gray Davis in the governor’s race and Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate race. The three seats in the state Legislature that overlap the district, all once strongly Republican, moved into the Democratic column in 1996.

Political analyst Hoffenblum attributes the Democrats’ increasing fortunes to a steady rise in the numbers of middle-class Latino, Asian and African American voters.

In 1990, according to census data, slightly more than 64% of the district’s population was white, 18% was Latino, 9.5% Asian and 7% black. By 1999, whites made up about 53%, Latinos 26%, Asians 13% and blacks nearly 8%, according to Claritas, a market research and demographic analysis firm. About a third of the population has completed at least four years of college.

Growing Clout of Armenian Americans

Glendale’s thriving Armenian community has doubled during the last decade, according to Vicken Papazian, western region executive director of the Armenian National Committee. Estimated at between 55,000 and 63,000, Glendale’s Armenians make up nearly a third of the city’s population.

They are increasingly prominent in civic life, Papazian said, citing Armenian candidates in area legislative races and the election last year of Rafi Manoukian to the Glendale City Council. Many Armenian Americans in the late 1970s and 1980s became Republicans so they could vote for George Deukmejian for attorney general and governor.

Now they are increasingly registering Democratic again, though numbers of Armenian Americans now are active in each party, Papazian said.

The growing entertainment industry is also bringing changes. In Burbank’s Media District, scores of small post-production companies have taken their places near longtime giant mainstays Warner Bros., Disney and NBC. Glendale is home to DreamWorks’ animation campus, and Disney plans to build its 10,000-employee Grand Central Creative Campus nearby.

Last year, Glendale voters elected two Democrats--Manoukian and Gus Gomez--to City Council seats, which are technically nonpartisan but have long been held by Republicans.

Gomez, the top vote-getter in that April election, said his messages of hillside preservation, parks and other quality-of-life issues connected with voters across ethnic and partisan lines.

“We found there was a tremendous amount of frustration with what people see every day when they drive to and from their homes,” Gomez said.

A potentially important factor is the fight over Oakmont, where a developer wants to build 572 houses on a 238-acre tract in the Verdugos. It is one of the few remaining parcels available for development in Glendale, which for years allowed builders to cover the hillsides with housing. Oakmont would disturb deer and bobcats and disrupt streams that feed a riparian oak forest.

Both Schiff and Rogan say they prefer to see the land publicly purchased and preserved as parkland. Schiff helped procure $5 million in state funds to buy it. (The developer said that is not nearly enough.) Rogan got federal money for two additional appraisals, but the Glendale City Council did not take it.

Rogan, however, has angered Oakmont opponents by voting for building industry-sponsored legislation that would make it easier for property owners to sue cities in federal court over development rights. The Glendale council recently voted unanimously to oppose the bill, dubbed the Private Property Rights Implementation Act, saying it would gut local control over projects such as Oakmont. (The bill, HR 2372, has passed the House of Representatives.)

A Rogan spokesman said his boss followed his beliefs that property owners are entitled to protections from foot-dragging local governments. He downplayed the significance of the measure in the Oakmont debate.

“It’s about doing what’s right, not about doing what is politically expedient,” said Jeff Solsby, a spokesman for Rogan.

Schiff’s campaign hopes Rogan’s vote will anger previous Rogan supporters in the Glendale hills.

“This is quite fortuitous,” said Parke Skelton, Schiff’s campaign consultant, whose remarks underscored an emphasis on local issues.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Shifting Demographics

The 27th Congressional District is undergoing changes in the ethnicity of its residents, and Republicans are losing ground.

ETHNIC MAKEUP

1990

White: 64%

Latino: 18%

Asian: 10%

Black: 7%