CANDIDATES IN CONTRAST : PAIR OF BABY BOOMERS DO BATTLE TO FILL LONGTIME MOORHEAD SEAT.

Byline: Lee Condon Daily News Staff Writer

The race to succeed longtime Congressman Carlos Moorhead, R-Glendale, features two baby boomers from opposite sides of the tracks.

Assemblyman James Rogan, R-Glendale, 39, tells of being the son of an unmarried waitress, and spending part of his childhood in San Francisco living on welfare and food stamps.

He dropped out of high school in the 10th grade and took odd jobs to support his younger siblings, while getting his general education diploma on the side. He later paid his way at the University of California, Los Angeles, law school by working the night shift at a bar called Filthy McNasty's in North Hollywood, where he said breaking up fights was part of his job description.

Democrat Doug Kahn, 43, said he grew up in Philadelphia, and was sent to boarding school in Massachusetts when he was 11, shortly after his parents were divorced. He ran his own typesetting business for several years, but has devoted much of his time since 1992 to trying to win the 27th Congressional District seat.

He has used hundreds of thousands of dollars of inheritance money to help finance his three campaigns.

``It's his story vs. my story,'' Kahn said.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior associate with the Center for Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate School, said, ``It's really a fascinating juxtaposition in terms of their biographies.''

In that sense, she said, the race reminds her of the battle between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon for the White House in 1960.

But in a district that has been a Republican stronghold for decades, the Democratic challenger has to have deep financial reserves, she said.

``It's going to take a Democrat with a lot of money to make a race out of it,'' Jeffe said. ``The candidate here has to be someone who is a self-starter.''

Although Kahn has financial clout, political observers give Rogan an edge in the Glendale-Burbank-Pasadena area, a Republican political stronghold, which Moorhead has held since 1974.

Rogan, a former Glendale Municipal Court judge who won his Assembly seat in June 1994, downplays the demographic edge.

``This was always a district where all the Republican had to do was win the primary and the game was over. That is no longer the case,'' said Rogan, who keeps on his office wall a campaign poster of Thomas Dewey, the best known presidential loser who was expected to be a sure winner.

While Kahn lacks political experience, he took 42 percent of the district vote in the 1994 race against Moorhead. A slight majority of registered voters also now favor Kahn, with 128,637 Democrats to 119,807 Republicans, according to county figures.

Rogan likes to tell stories about his past to explain his position on legislation.

Ask him about his support of welfare reform and he'll tell you a story about his mother, who he said went to jail on charges of felony welfare fraud. The current welfare system only perpetuates families' financial problems and gives them little incentive to change their lives, he says.

``(My mother) thinks I'm the one who disgraced the Rogan name by going into politics,'' he said.

Ask Rogan about gun control and he'll tell you how he worked his way through law school as a bartender in a rough North Hollywood neighborhood, and about the night he used his gun to save his own life when a patron was stabbed to death right in front of him.

``Law-abiding citizens will follow these (gun control) laws, criminals will not,'' Rogan joked.

Ask him about issues like paddling youngsters as punishment for graffiti vandalism, and he'll tell you how he was threatened with a spanking by his high school principal after he was caught smoking in the boys room, and how it helped straighten him out.

He switched from the Democratic Party in 1988, saying it had become too liberal for him. A former prosecutor, Rogan could be unconventional. Once, in a drunk driving case he closed without saying a word: Instead he filled up 10 plastic cups with beer, glanced at the family of the victims, looked at the defendant and snapped his fingers. The jury returned guilty verdicts in less than an hour.

Kahn said the anecdotes that Rogan shares are a method to explain away his ``right wing'' voting record.

``I think we've had enough of government by cliche,'' Kahn said. ``He's trying to make himself appear as a moderate.''

Kahn said his challenge will be to show that Rogan is more conservative than the voters in the district he is running in.

Kahn said Rogan's quick rise is not surprising.

``In the California Republican Party the way you get ahead quickly now is to be to the far right,'' Kahn said. ``He is a complete captive of the gun lobby. His liability is his beliefs and his votes.''

Rogan says he doesn't hold extreme views, as evidenced by his ability to work with legislators from both parties.

Kahn, who said he looks to President Kennedy as his political hero, said: ``He had a message of public service that I've taken with me.''

Kahn worked as a reporter at a Seattle weekly for several years before settling in Altadena in 1986. For several years he ran a typesetting business called Cold Type, but he closed it in 1995 to run full time for Congress.

``I've acquired some money late in my life,'' Kahn said. ``It's family money. I've used every other cent to bring some common-sense representation to the district I live in.''

Currently Kahn serves on the board of several nonprofit groups including Planned Parenthood Pasadena and the Pasadena AIDS Service Center.

Kahn loaned his own campaign $400,000 to win a hard-fought primary against Barry Gordon, former president of the Screen Actors Guild, but won't be able to afford as much in the general election.

Rogan and his wife, Christine, live in Glendale with their twin 4-year-old daughters, Dana and Claire.

Kahn and his wife and two daughters, Sophie, 6, and Isabel, 16 months, moved to Pasadena, from Altadena, in 1995.

Besides Rogan and Kahn, three minor-party candidates are in the race.

Elizabeth Michael, a 39-year-old Glendale resident, is running as a Libertarian.

Walt Contreras Sheasby, 54, is running as the Green Party candidate. The Sierra Madre resident is running with Ralph Nader's party to focus attention on campaign finance reform.

Martin Zucker, a 58-year-old writer who lives in West Los Angeles, is running as the Natural Law party candidate who wants to come up with better methods to lower medical costs, reduce crime and reduce the budget deficit.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, map

PHOTO (1) James Rogan

Touts poor background

(2) Dou g Kahn

Risking his inheritance

MAP: 27th congressional district

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