SHORTLY AFTER JAMES ROGAN of California was elected to Congress two years ago, he set out on a mission: to have a conversation with each of the 434 other members of the House of Representatives. It took him two years, but eventually Rogan collected a signature for every person in his congressional face-book. He says, “I wanted to at least have a chance to meet every one of my colleagues.”
His meticulous, earnest approach to politics is one reason Rogan — one of the 13 managers in the Senate trials of President Clinton — has emerged as a quietly influential member of the Judiciary Committee. His willingness to throw himself into the minutiae of the case against the president, coupled with his hawkish views and extensive legal background, commended him to his committee colleagues. It didn’t hurt that he was fiercely opposed to Trent Lott’s plan for a truncated trial, or that he was passionately eager to tell the senators why he and his fellow House managers need to call witnesses. Similarly, Rogan has stood out for advocating that everyone from Kathleen Willey to the president should testify before the Senate.
Rogan’s zeal was rewarded with a slot on the opening day of the trial. His presentation about President Clinton’s grand jury perjuries didn’t disappoint. In an argument lasting nearly two hours, he methodically recited the facts of the case against the president, highlighting matters large and small. He took particular offense at Clinton’s characterization of the early stages of the relationship with Monica Lewinsky as a “friendship” — she, by contrast, testified that Clinton didn’t know her name until after she had serviced him. And Rogan shredded Clinton’s claim that he wasn’t paying attention when his lawyer, Robert Bennett, asserted that Lewinsky’s “no sex” affidavit was true: The president, noted Rogan, had paid close enough attention to register that Bennett had referred to the absence of sex in the present tense.
Rogan’s moment in the spot-light — he’s also scheduled to join Henry Hyde in delivering the all-important closing statement — is the culmination of a meteoric two-year rise through the House GOP ranks. He started by winning a slot on the Commerce Committee, a plum usually reserved for much more senior members. Then, in the aftermath of the July 1997 attempt to depose Newt Gingrich, the speaker brought Rogan into his inner circle. Six months later, he was tapped to fill a vacancy on the Judiciary Committee, once again leapfrogging many more senior members. When President Clinton’s legal troubles began to mount, Gingrich asked Rogan to prepare a comprehensive report on past congressional investigations and impeachment proceedings. And shortly after the November elections, Bob Livingston asked him for a memo on how to maintain party unity with a narrow majority.
There’s little precedent for a House member’s finishing his first term with so many achievements. To those who know Rogan and his personal history, this rapid ascent has been at the same time predictable and surprising.
Predictable because Rogan has been a success at everything he’s tried in his professional life. In the 1980s, he spent five years as a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles County. In one memorable closing argument in a drunk-driving case, he said nothing, opting instead to pour 10 cups full of beer to illustrate how much the defendant had consumed, and then snapped his fingers four times to symbolize the number of deaths the driver had caused with one accident (the driver was convicted). His success as a DA won him an appointment to the municipal bench when he was just 33, making him the youngest judge in California. Four years later, in 1994, he resigned to run for an open seat in the state Assembly, and just a few months after his election, his colleagues elevated him a majority leader. Rogan reached the next rung on the greasy pole in 1996 when he won election to the House, filling the seat held by a retiring Republican.
But Rogan’s achievements don’t seem foreordained in light of his personal background. His parents, a cocktail waitress and a bartender, never married, and he didn’t meet his father until he was in law school. He was reared by relatives: first his grandparents, in San Francisco’s gritty Mission district; then, after they both died, his great aunt; then, after she died, his alcoholic stepfather and his mother, who was in and out of jail for welfare and credit-card fraud. When he was in the 10th grade, he dropped out of school and supported his siblings by working in a pizza parlor and selling vacuum cleaners.
A passion for politics helped keep Rogan afloat. As a boy, he collected politicians’ autographs, and his desire to study the political system spurred his return to school two years after he dropped out. He earned a high-school equivalency degree, then entered a Bay Area community college, from which he transferred to the University of California, Berkeley, earning a degree in political science. He went on to UCLA law school, where he made law review. Having conquered so many obstacles to get where he is, Rogan says one of his guiding principles in politics is, “I’m way ahead of the game already. And so losing an election is hardly a big threat.”
Today, Rogan’s blend of social and economic conservatism makes him a poster boy for Reagan Republicanism. But during the Reagan years, he was firmly ensconced in the Democratic party, and in the 1980 presidential primaries he even campaigned for Ted Kennedy over Jimmy Carter. Gradually, he found the liberalism of the Democratic party more and more unbearable, and finally he switched. Yet he’s maintained good relations with Democrats — he singles out fellow Californians Henry Waxman and Howard Berman, in particular. A few years ago, the Los Angeles Times called Rogan “that rare breed of right-wing Republican: a born-again, conservative Christian who is not an immediate turn-off to liberal Democrats.”
Rogan’s comity will serve him well, now that House Republicans are indicating they want more cooperation and less confrontation with Democrats. His performance in the impeachment proceedings has only heightened expectations that his speedy rise through the House ranks will continue. Rep. David Dreier, a fellow California conservative and chairman of the powerful Rules Committee, says, “I would love to see Jim become speaker.” Others talk about the Senate; some even of the White House.
The expectations could all be for naught if Rogan’s pro-Clinton district is angry enough about his impeachment work to oust him in 2000 (his margin of victory slipped to less than 4 points last November, down from 7 points in 1996). But that’s not holding him back. His view is that some principles, such as prosecuting presidential perjury and obstruction of justice, should supersede political concerns. “There’s more honor in taking a principled stand and losing,” says Rogan, “than in compromising oneself and staying in office.”
Countless other Republicans have expressed the same sentiment recently. The amazing thing about Rogan is he seems to believe it.
Matthew Rees is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
