Candidates Vigorously Courting Armenian American Voters

Rep. Jim Rogan (R-Glendale) sends voters a letter typed in the Armenian alphabet to trumpet his record as a “true friend and staunch ally” of anyone who can read it.

Not to be outdone, his challenger, state Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), stammers through a banquet speech in Armenian, one syllable at a time.

Perhaps most daring of all is Assemblyman Jack Scott (D-Altadena), who is contending for state Senate. The courtly Texas native dazzles viewers of Armenian cable TV with his language skills in an ad promoting the census. With a touch of his Southern twang, “shnorhagaloutiune,” the Armenian word for thank you, rolls off his tongue.

Welcome to the newest frontier of ethnic politics in Southern California.

A surge in registration of Armenian American voters in the Glendale area over the last two years has led candidates for Congress and the state Legislature to court them with an unprecedented barrage of television ads, mailings, phone calls and campaign events.

Every major-party campaign in the area is mining computerized lists of voters with names that sound Armenian to target them for ethnic appeals. The candidates have come to view Armenian Americans as a crucial bloc that could make or break their campaigns.

“Frankly, they will decide this Rogan-Schiff race,” Los Angeles political consultant Eric Hacopian said. “This is the largest group of swing voters. Whoever gets them wins this election. Period.”

The battle for their support in the 27th Congressional District is especially intense because it’s one of the most competitive and expensive House races in the nation. Democrats see Rogan as one of the most vulnerable Republican incumbents, and they need to pick up just six seats to win control of the House.

The district, which covers Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena and several adjacent communities, is home to more residents of Armenian ancestry than anywhere outside Armenia. About 300,000 live in the Los Angeles area, nearly one-third of them in the 27th District, according to the Armenian National Committee.

In the hotly contested races in the overlapping 21st state Senate and 43rd Assembly districts, candidates also are fighting for the pivotal Armenian American vote.

“Anyone who’s politically ambitious in the area is courting them,” Hacopian said. “This is a whole maturation process for a community that’s coming into its own politically.”

Candidates in the area have wooed Armenian Americans for years, but two developments have heightened their potency in the 2000 elections.

First, thousands of Armenians who emigrated from Iran, Lebanon and the former Soviet Union in the 1980s and early ‘90s have recently become citizens eligible to vote.

Second, the Glendale City Council campaign of Rafi Manoukian, an Armenian American, was coupled last year with an aggressive voter registration drive, called “25,000 in 2000,” that put several thousand new voters on the books.

Since 1992, the number of Armenian American voters has more than doubled to roughly 23,000 in the congressional district, according to Political Data, a Burbank firm that sells voter information to campaigns.

The new voters are less conservative and less affluent than earlier generations that rallied behind Republicans such as George Deukmejian, the governor of California from 1983 to 1991. Indeed, over the last 18 months, Democrats slightly outnumbered Republicans among Armenian Americans who registered in the district.

To candidates in close races, the new voters are an enticing opportunity, so they’re showering them with attention.

In Asbarez, the leading Armenian newspaper in Glendale, campaign advertising is up more than 50% over the 1998 election cycle, said Ara Khachatourian, the editor of the paper’s English-language edition.

On local Armenian TV stations, the candidates have become fixtures of news and talk shows.

“Everybody and his brother, they were here,” said Vache Mangassarian, a Rogan supporter who hosts a nightly show on the Armenian National Network from his Glendale studio.

So far, four of them have run TV commercials in Armenian: Schiff; Republican Assembly contender Craig Missakian, an Armenian American; and two losers in the Democratic primary, Assembly candidate Paul Krekorian and Senate hopeful Scott Wildman.

Schiff made his Armenian commercial the first TV ad of his campaign for Congress. It showed him meeting with Armenia President Robert Kocharian and speaking at a commemoration of the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Turks from 1915 to 1923.

A Krekorian ad was more upbeat. A fast-tempo Armenian folk tune nearly drowned out the narrator as words written in the Armenian alphabet scrolled down the screen: tradition, family, youth, security and future.

In his state Senate campaign, Scott appeared during the primary race in a state-funded public service announcement urging Armenians to fill out census forms. At the beginning, he introduces himself: “Parev, yes Assemblyman Jack Scott-yan.” At the end, he reappears with a smile and takes a brave crack at thank you: “shnorhagaloutiune.”

Rogan, whose letter to voters was a solid page of Armenian script, plans to shoot a TV ad starring former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, a champion of Armenian causes, touting his record on Armenian issues, said Rogan campaign manager Jason Roe.

“The Armenian media is a critical element of what we’re going to do,” Roe said.

Legislation addressing Armenian concerns has become a staple of incumbents from the Glendale area. Rogan, Schiff, Scott and Assemblyman Wildman (D-Los Angeles) have all sponsored measures related to the genocide.

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Armenian themes also have found their way into campaign mud fights. Rogan’s team took a shot at Schiff last week for missing a state Senate vote on a bill to enable genocide victims and their heirs to file insurance claims in California. (Schiff, who sponsored the bill, said the Senate session was called “at the last minute,” and he went to a fund-raiser instead.)

“How can the Armenian community depend on him to be there when they need him if he’s willing to blow off a vote on legislation important to their community to attend a fund-raiser?” Roe said.

Schiff’s campaign, in turn, distributed a scathing anti-Rogan news release from the Armenian American Democratic Leadership Council. A group official, Raffi Asatoorian, hammered Rogan’s deputy chief of staff, David Silverstein, for attending an American Turkish Council conference in Washington.

“Despite the fact that Congressman Rogan represents the largest Armenian American constituency in the United States, his staff, amazingly, is running around Washington at social events with lobbyists who make a living denying the Armenian genocide,” Asatoorian said.

(Said Roe: “They completely distorted something innocent to make it look sinister.”)

Some Armenian Americans are enjoying the attention. At Fremont Park in Glendale, where elderly Armenians gather to play backgammon, Serob Saroukhaian recalled TV images of Rogan’s visit last year to Armenia. The trip convinced him to vote for Rogan.

“He helps Armenians,” said Saroukhaian, who emigrated in 1987 from Iran to Glendale via Texas. “We are nationalists.”

His pal, Nassis Harbedian, was flattered by all the courting (“I like someone who’s thinking about Armenia”), but unmoved.

“Which one is Democrat?” he said. “Always I am choosing in the list Democrats only: Armenian, Spanish, American, I don’t care.” Republicans “are going behind rich people. The Democrats are thinking about middle-class people.”

For many of the new voters, the local campaigns are their first experience of democracy.

“You could vote in the Soviet Union, but they weren’t fair elections, and your vote didn’t really determine the outcome,” said Vicken Papazian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee’s Western Regional Office. “It was more part of a farce.”