Rogan's Run

Even if you don't live in California, chances are you have an opinion about Rep. James "Jim" Rogan, from the state's 27th congressional district. As part of the House prosecution team, Rogan played a high-profile role in the failed effort to have President Clinton removed from office last year.

After the proceedings, Rogan portrayed himself as a target for revenge-thirsty Democrats. Sympathetic donors (many from outside California) came to his defense, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into his re-election campaign. By the end of 1999, Rogan had raised a whopping $3 million, making him the best-funded congressional candidate in the country.

But on March 7, Rogan lost the state's open primary. Rogan failed to capitalize on a strong Republican turnout despite having spent two-thirds of his campaign chest ahead of the March 7 vote.

"The only ones that think about (impeachment) are the ones that don't like Rogan," says Jason Roe, Rogan's campaign manager. Roe claims his candidate still won the majority of crossover votes in the primary. He also suggests that Rogan's huge fund-raising success may have caused some supporters to become complacent.

"Impeachment is convenient for what our opponent's trying to do paint Jim (Rogan) as ignoring the district," says Roe.

Opponent Adam Schiff, who won the California beauty contest, has raised the specter of the impeachment by implying Rogan spent months trying to take down the president at the expense of constituents' needs.

But Schiff's campaign manager, Parke Skelton, insists voters are tired of the impeachment issue and want to move beyond it. "The impeachment issue more than anything stripped off the moderate veneer Rogan has attempted to coat himself in," says Skelton.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior associate at Claremont University's School of Politics and Economics, says the democratic challenger can approach the impeachment hot potato "obliquely" by attacking Washington. "I don't know if Adam Schiff needs to bring it up," says Jeffe, who studies California politics.

Indeed, both parties would appear to have little to gain and more to lose by calling attention to the issue. Republicans don't want to advertise their failed prosecution on sex-based charges, and Democrats have no desire to remind voters of Clinton's actions.

"Schiff doesn't want to rattle the cage either," says Jeffe.

GOP strategist Allan Hoffenblum thinks Rogan needs to make the race more about personality more than ideology in order to win in November. Rogan's life story is well-documented; on his web site, fo example, readers may click on "The Rogan Story" and read about his "humble beginnings" and "bootstraps."

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And that's what Schiff is banking on. The Democrat's web site directs voters to pages comparing and contrasting the candidates' voting records.

What's hurt the Congressman, says Skelton of the Schiff campaign, "is the fact that Rogan is dramatically out of step with the voters in the district."

To be sure, Rogan has never won his district by a wide margin. And it's growing more democratic each year. The district demographics alone make Rogan a perennial target, experts say.

"He would have still been targeted even if he'd been a back-bencher (in the impeachment process)," says Hoffenblum.

The 27th district comprises several suburbs north of downtown Los Angeles, including Burbank and Pasadena. More than 40 percent of the population is minority - half of them Latinos. As more of them register to vote, and as more moderates flock to the suburbs from L.A., the traditionally Republican district is swinging toward the center.

The district is also home to several major entertainment companies, such as SKG Dreamworks. The founding fathers of that film studio - Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen - have contributed to Schiff's campaign.

Geffen, who threw a fund raiser for Schiff last summer, told the New York Times he would do everything he could to make sure Rogan lost: "The impeachment hearings made it very clear that [he] is certainly not moderate he is as extreme as anybody else in congress."

Both campaigns concede the impeachment issue plays the largest role in behind-the-scenes fund raising. Rogan's campaign has established a large national network of direct mailing to party members. Schiff, who has raised more than $1 millionhas also benefited from mailers that mention Rogan's role as a House prosecutor.

But no one can say how much the impeachment matters to average voters, especially the all-important independents. In a USAToday/Gallup/CNN poll taken on the anniversary of the impeachment last December, about half of those interviewed said they agreed with the House decision to impeach. That's an increase from a year before, when only 35 percent agreed.

"It (this race) will probably be looked into as a test of impeachment but I hesitate to read too much into that," says Jeffe of Claremont University.

But she adds, "It's probably ground zero" in the race to control congress.