Fund-Raisers Pit POW Stripes Against Hollywood Stars

Former presidential candidate John McCain helped Rep. James Rogan (R-Glendale) bring in $70,000 for Rogan’s reelection campaign at a fund-raising dinner in Bel-Air this week.

For Rogan, it was appropriate that the senator from Arizona was helping. After all, McCain, although he didn’t know it at the time, played a role in Rogan’s decision to switch from Democrat to Republican.

Rogan told the 150 supporters at the $500-per-plate dinner that Robert H. Finch, a Republican lieutenant governor during Ronald Reagan’s term as governor of California, had urged Rogan to change parties and challenged him to make a decision after watching the two parties’ national conventions in 1988.

One hot issue at the time was desecration of the flag, and leading Democrats were speaking out against a constitutional amendment outlawing flag burning.

Rogan said he was deeply moved by a speech in which McCain described how, as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, he and others had fashioned a small American flag out of twigs and twine. When guards found the flag, they beat the prisoners, but McCain said they made another one, because it held a symbolic importance to them.

“Jim picked up the phone right after McCain’s speech and told Finch, ‘I am switching parties,’ ” said Jason Roe, an aide to Rogan and his campaign manager.

The Tuesday fund-raiser has helped Rogan raise more than $4.5 million for a campaign to defeat state Sen. Adam Schiff of Burbank, his Democratic challenger.

Schiff has also turned to Bel-Air for fund-raising help, although his star attraction is of a different order of magnitude.

Barbra Streisand will co-host a Sunday brunch fund-raiser for Schiff on June 11 in Bel-Air, according to Schiff’s campaign.

Actor Tim Matheson, who plays the vice president on the NBC television series “West Wing,” and actor/director Rob Reiner are also co-hosts.

The brunch will take place at the home of Sherry Lansing, chairwoman of Paramount’s Motion Pictures Group, and her husband, William Friedkin, the director of “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection.”

Gov. Gray Davis is also expected to attend.

To the Rogan campaign, the brunch confirmed that President Clinton was rallying his Hollywood friends behind Schiff as payback for Rogan’s role in his impeachment trial. Rogan was a House prosecutor.

“These people could care less about Adam Schiff if it weren’t for impeachment,” Roe said. “These are Clinton lovers.”

Schiff, on the other hand, said the only people in the entertainment industry whom Rogan seems to like are the ones backing him for reelection.

“These are the people creating jobs in our district,” Schiff said. “They’re fine when they’re supporting him, and when they don’t, they become the Evil Empire.”

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AGITATOR: With his bushy beard and biker clothes, Dick Symonds cuts a different figure than did his grandfather, Bob Symonds, and he is playing a much different role in the development of the San Fernando Valley.

Bob Symonds built the Valley Plaza Shopping Center in the 1940s.

Dick Symonds, who runs a motorcycle parts shop in Lake View Terrace, was elected recently to a citizens panel to oversee redevelopment of the northeast Valley, and has emerged as one of its most outspoken critics of the Community Redevelopment Agency and its plans for massive development of the area.

That leading-critic role was cinched recently with an audacious vote that has many area activists shaking their heads and smiling.

Symonds heads the outreach subcommittee for a citizens panel set up by the city agency to oversee creation of a redevelopment program for 6,835 acres of the northeast Valley.

At a recent meeting of the subcommittee, Symonds voted to offer an alternative.

He and the only other committee member present voted to slash the project’s size. Severely. He voted to change the boundaries of the proposed project to include just one acre.

“We looked at North Hollywood and nobody was happy with what the CRA has done there,” Symonds said. “If they have one acre and they show us how much better they can make it, we could judge how they could do on a larger area.”

The recommendation, which Symonds said was suggested by someone in the audience of the May 22 subcommittee meeting, will be sent to the Project Area Committee for consideration.

It is highly unlikely the project area will be so severely reduced in size. Councilman Alex Padilla, who represents the area, has offered a compromise to cut the project area in half, to about 3,400 acres.

Still, others say they are glad Symonds has taken on the role of anti-redevelopment agitator.

“He is quite a character,” said John Del Guadio, another member of the committee. “I think he is just concerned about losing his property, like we all are.”