Rogan’s Flair for Internal Party Politics Catches Eye of Newt

Some days after the unsuccessful coup attempt against House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. James Rogan (R-Glendale) got a call from his wife, Christine.

“I didn’t know you were in the speaker’s inner circle,” she said to her husband. Rogan said it was news to him too.

But there his name was, listed in the Washington Times as a key advisor in helping the embattled Georgian stave off the rebellion.

Rogan figures said inner-circle status was conferred upon him after a reporter saw him leaving a key strategy meeting with Gingrich and his loyalists.

The surprise, Rogan said, was that he was invited to the meeting in the first place, albeit at the last minute.

“I was wondering why I was even there since I just got [to Washington],” Rogan said.

Then Gingrich turned to him for counsel.

You see, while new to the Beltway, Rogan is an old hand at internecine GOP warfare from his days in the California Assembly.

He had shared some of those experiences at a Republican gathering and someone apparently thought they bore repeating.

Rogan said he told Gingrich and friends how the Assembly GOP leadership first tried to woo its rebelling members back into the fold, but ultimately had to play hardball to get results.

But the larger lesson, Rogan said, was that unifying behind the leadership was preferable to--and more productive than-- squabbling within the GOP family.

Not exactly rocket science, as Rogan would be the first to admit. But hey, just as long as they spell the name right.

“The next thing I know,” Rogan said wryly, “I’m in the ‘inner circle.’ ”

Sounds of Silence

Television and newspaper reporters are used to having politicians brush off their questions with a terse “No comment.”

But Jack McGrath is not. A community activist in Valley Village, McGrath is still steaming over Mayor Richard Riordan’s appearance on a call-in show on the city’s cable channel during which the mayor declined to address McGrath’s questions about subway work in North Hollywood.

In fact, he was so incensed that he filed a formal complaint with the assistant general manager of the city’s Information Technology Agency, which operates the cable channel.

“We do not live in a totalitarian society where our elected leaders tell us what questions we may ask,” he wrote in his complaint.

The dispute started last Thursday, when Riordan appeared on a broadcast of “Los Angeles Tonight” and invited viewers to call in to ask about any city matter.

McGrath called to ask the mayor to comment on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plans to demolish Bud’s Red Hots, a small restaurant in North Hollywood, to make way for the Red Line subway station. Riordan currently chairs the MTA.

But McGrath said he was told by studio staff that the mayor did not want to discuss the matter over the air and was abruptly cut off.

Riordan’s spokeswoman, Noelia Rodriguez, saw it differently.

She said the mayor didn’t take McGrath’s call because he had already addressed an MTA question early in the show and felt he should move on to other topics.

In addition, she said an MTA official was asked to call McGrath back the next day to answer his question.

“We only had a certain amount of time to address many different topics,” she said.

Next time, McGrath may want to try an old reporter’s trick: Open with a softball question that gets the mayor talking. Then when you have his attention, launch that old hardball.

Dollars and Sense

Although Valley secession talk has been in the wind for more than a year now, hard cold facts about its economic ramifications have not been forthcoming.

Even the widely accepted premise that the Valley generates a disproportionately large share of the city’s revenue but gets too little in exchange, stands unproven--and unrefuted.

Now, making good on a promise made by former State Board of Equalization member Brad Sherman, who is now a Democratic member of Congress, a study is being launched to identify just how much sales- and use-tax revenue comes from the Valley.

Sherman’s successor and former aide, John Chiang, said the study will take six months. It’s not a simple matter because many retailers don’t break down their sales by geography, Chiang said.

While not every return will be audited, a representative sample of 15,000 returns should move the discussion from the theoretical to the concrete.

“We’re also asking for community involvement,” Chiang said.

Legal Lament

State Senate candidate Bob Oltman claimed the moral high ground last year, when he filed a libel suit against primary election opponent Paula Boland.

Now a bench warrant has been issued for his arrest.

Oltman’s problems stem from his failure to appear in court in Burbank on July 18--and again Monday when the warrant was issued by a judge.

It seems that even though Oltman eventually dropped the suit before it went to trial, he was ordered to pay attorneys’ fees to the tune of $24,000 to Boland’s lawyer, Charles Bell. Oltman is appealing the fee award.

While the Court of Appeal ruminates on the matter, Bell asked for the money or a cash bond to guarantee payment, which is standard operating procedure, he said.

That’s when Oltman--and his attorney Allan Dollison--became scarce, neither responding to written notices nor showing up for court, Bell said.

The libel claim involved statements in Boland’s campaign mail saying that Oltman opposed a ballot measure expanding the death penalty law to other crimes. He was on record supporting it.

Oltman won a round in court, when a judge said there was enough evidence of libel to merit a trial.

Boland appealed that ruling but before a final decision was made, Oltman dropped the suit. By that time, Boland had lost the general election.

Although he didn’t make it to court, Oltman is hardly in the wind. The businessman was at his office Thursday, lamenting his return to the limelight.

“I’ve never gotten such publicity, and I’m not even running for anything,” he said.

As for being a no-show in court, Oltman and his attorney said they were working on posting the required bond.

Oltman said he knew about the court date. “However, due to unforeseen circumstances, I got lost in the mire.”

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QUOTABLE: “The frustration with employers is they have to interview thousands of people just to hire a few workers.”

Councilman Mike Hernandez, on an upcoming survey of Valley businesses to find out why jobseekers aren’t qualified for available positions