Rohrabacher Won’t Coast This Campaign

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher breezed through every reelection in his 10 years in Congress. This time, there’s a well-funded Democrat bent on ending that streak.

Democrat Patricia Neal has pulled together a six-figure campaign war chest, a phalanx of Democratic consultants and pollsters and a formidable fund-raising base from her contacts as past president of the California Assn. of Realtors.

Last week, Neal’s campaign got a significant boost with endorsements from the California Federation of Labor, a coalition of 150 unions, and from the Building and Construction Trades unions of the AFL-CIO.

It is the first time the union federation has endorsed in the 45th Congressional District, which covers the north beach communities. The labor federation typically endorses and helps fund only candidates it believes can win, and it believes Neal can beat the conservative Huntington Beach Republican.

The endorsement means that during the critical final weeks of the campaign, member unions are being encouraged to donate the maximum $5,000 each to Neal from their federal spending committees.

Union leadership was impressed with the high marks Neal received from union members in the district, and more than half of the members there are Republicans, said Bill Fogarty, executive secretary of the Orange County Central Labor Council.

He said Neal has a shot at copying the 1996 upset of nine-term Rep. Robert K. Dornan by Democrat Loretta Sanchez. Sanchez defeated Dornan by 984 votes, becoming the county’s first Democratic member of Congress in 12 years and the first woman ever.

“We’re seeing Pat put it together like Loretta did,” Fogarty said. “With Loretta, we were saying, ‘We have a race here’ and people in Sacramento and Washington were saying, ‘Yeah, right.’ ”

Labor also wanted to help Neal because of Rohrabacher’s support for Proposition 226, the failed ballot initiative in June that would have barred union dues from being spent for politics without permission. The initiative was co-written by Rohrabacher campaign boss James Righeimer.

“I’m glad to see them throwing their money away,” responded Righeimer, a real estate agent who has known Neal for 15 years.

Neal already has a lot to spend. Her campaign said the challenger has raised about $300,000 so far, half of it coming from a personal loan she made to her campaign committee. Rohrabacher’s camp said he has raised about $100,000.

But Neal faces a formidable hurdle. While Sanchez ran in a district with a Democratic voter edge, Neal’s hopes for winning the 45th District bump smack against its registration. Half of voters there are Republicans, while 32% are Democrats.

Rohrabacher also is a proven vote-getter. In the June primary, he collected nearly 52,000 votes against two GOP challengers while Neal got about 19,000 votes against one challenger.

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Taking a page from Sanchez’s strategy, Neal is hoping to fashion a coalition of Democrats, ethnic minorities, moderate Republicans and voters who support abortion rights.

California Democratic Party official Bob Mulholland said Neal has the benefit of history, with come-from-behind Democratic wins in traditional GOP districts by Sanchez, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Torrance) and Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher (D-Pleasanton).

“If I were Rohrabacher, I wouldn’t be taking off on any surfing weekends between now and the election,” Mulholland said.

Also assisting Neal is the Democratic Foundation of Orange County, whose early pledge in 1996 to back Sanchez was a critical boost for the first-time candidate. The foundation will support Neal through an aggressive get-out-the-vote effort, said its president, Wylie Aitken.

Neal’s first mailer is scheduled to hit homes today. While it doesn’t mention that she’s a Democrat or that she’s running against Rohrabacher, it pledges that Neal will protect Social Security and Medicare from “the Republican budget ax.”

The mailer also highlights her support for the death penalty, bans on assault weapons and a requirement that violent criminals serve all of their jail terms.

Neal has been working coffees and speaking before community groups with the message that she has a chance to win regardless of the greater GOP voter registration because the district’s demographics have changed in the past 10 years.

“Rohrabacher has never really had a challenger who was viable, so he’d get the endorsements and raise the money,” she said. “His arrogance has been that because of [his winning] margins, the district hasn’t changed. But he’s voted against everything the district seems to be standing for.”

Chief among those votes, she noted, are ones against Medicare and Social Security funding, against federal funds for communities with military-base conversions and against funding for the Environmental Protection Agency. He also opposed the Family and Medical Leave Act.

“Dana does not have any other verbiage except ‘pinko, communist, liberal, tax-and-spend left,’ ” she said. “This is a guy who avoided going to Vietnam and who jokes about [past] drug use. He’s still in the Evil Empire, bring-down-the-communists mode. We’ve gone beyond that. We need to clean up the coastline and protect a woman’s right to choose.”

Another Neal critique of Rohrabacher falls closer to home: the convictions last year of his wife, Rhonda, on charges stemming from her involvement in a GOP plan to assist a Democratic decoy candidate in a key Assembly race in 1995.

The ultimate winner of the race, Assemblyman Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach), is still fighting criminal charges that he misreported thousands of dollars in contributions.

“Character counts,” she said. Rohrabacher has been “more active in butting into other elections than doing anything for the district.”

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Unruffled by the criticism, Rohrabacher said any attacks on him through his wife or Baugh, whom he endorsed for office, will backfire.

“My voters know who I am and what I stand for,” he said. “You have a bunch of liberals paying attention to liberal pundits and convincing themselves that they reflect public opinion.

“Pat Neal has every right to run, but I don’t believe someone tied in with big unions and the liberal left has a chance in a conservative Republican district,” he said.

Rohrabacher said his voting record reflects district preferences locally and nationally. Voters have agreed with him enough to return him to office each time with nothing less than 61% of the vote.

For example, he was a leading opponent of public funding for most services to illegal immigrants. As chairman of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, he refashioned policies to allow private and commercial investment in space, a popular position in his aerospace-heavy district.

Rohrabacher also obtained more than $900,000 in federal money earmarked for repair of the Slater flood control channel in Huntington Beach. And he helped change flood map designations, which resulted in lower insurance rates for thousands of district residents.

He admits to a strong anti-abortion voting record in Congress, but said it isn’t “one of my major areas of focus.” One focus has been his successful effort to eliminate federal funding for most programs benefiting illegal immigrants.

As for being called an extremist, he said the label is unfair.

For example, Rohrabacher recently voted against fellow Republicans who attempted to repeal President Clinton’s executive order that bars evaluations of federal hirings or promotions from being based on sexual orientation.

“I don’t think when someone applies for a federal job or promotion that they should be asked about his or her sex life,” he said. “Just because President Clinton does something doesn’t mean [Republicans] should automatically oppose it. But I don’t believe in any special rights for any group based on their sex.”

Rohrabacher said he hopes to return to the district for the final push of the campaign. He hasn’t appeared yet with Neal at any forums but doesn’t rule it out.

Aitken acknowledged that Rohrabacher isn’t as vulnerable as Dornan was two years ago and that Rohrabacher spends more time in Orange County than his former colleague did. But Rohrabacher’s viewpoints are out of step with the increasingly moderate district, Aitken said.

“We’ll have to see if people in that congressional district are as fed up with him as [central county voters] were with Dornan,” Aitken said.

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45th District Candidates

Dana Rohrabacher

Rohrabacher was elected in 1988 to represent Orange County’s north-central coast. In 10 years in Congress, he gained a national reputation for opposing funding for aid programs benefiting illegal immigrants and for being a leader on space policy.

Born: June 21, 1947

Residence: Huntington Beach

Family: Wife, Rhonda

Education: Graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from Cal State Long Beach, 1969; attended Los Angeles Harbor College; master’s degree in American studies from USC, 1975.

Career highlights: Speech writer for President Reagan, 1981-88; former editorial writer for the Orange County Register. First elected in 1988; member of the House International Relations and Science committees.

Issues: Opposes the sale of high-technology information to the Chinese; voted against spending bills, the Brady gun-control bill and funding for the International Monetary Fund; supports protections for U.S. patent holders overseas and private and commercial investment in space.

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Patricia Neal

Neal has been a real estate agent in West Orange County for 24 years and is past president of the California Assn. of Realtors. She conducts leadership training, long-range planning and budgeting classes for the Board of Realtors and has served on the Rancho Santiago Real Estate Advisory Board since 1980.

Born: Dec. 12, 1930

Residence: Huntington Beach

Family: Widow of retired Lt. Col. Jack Neal; four grown children; five grandchildren.

Education: Graduated from St. Anthony’s High School, Long Beach. Attended Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles and UC Berkeley.

Career highlights: President, California Assn. of Realtors, 1994. Named Realtor of the Year twice by the local Board of Realtors.

Issues: Supports federal programs for more local police officers, as well as the Brady gun-control bill, funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and anti-pollution protections, abortion rights and family planning programs and an increase in the minimum wage.