Rohrabacher Joins Rock’s Hagar in Baja Holiday

WASHINGTON —  It’s unlikely that many in the New Year’s Eve crowd at Miguel’s Cantina in Cabo San Lucas recognized the bearded reveler who shared margaritas that night with heavy-metal icon Sammy Hagar. But if they had, odds are that they would have been surprised.

“This is really the only vacation I’ve had” in the last year, freshman Rep. Dana Rohrabacher said Monday of his five-day sojourn in Baja California with the lead singer of Van Halen, perhaps the premier heavy-metal rock band in America. “It really was great.”

An unabashed New Wave Republican, Rohrabacher, 42, made a name for himself during his first year in Congress as a champion of such button-down causes as Sen. Jesse Helms’ attack on federal funding of what he calls indecent artwork and the preservation of special tax status for employee stock ownership plans.

But there is another side to Rohrabacher, whose 42nd Congressional District includes northwestern Orange County. And he is not afraid to discuss it.

“Sammy is a good guy, he’s really terrific,” Rohrabacher said. “Besides loving America and hating communists, what we really have in common is that we love tequila.”

Which is what Rohrabacher, Hagar and “a gang of us” enjoyed at Miguel’s on New Year’s Eve, albeit in cocktail form.

Rohrabacher said: “They lock the doors at 11:30 . . . so nobody could come in--or go out. You were there. Everybody had a really great time.”

Hagar, Rohrabacher said, has a been a good friend--and a political contributor--for several years. They met when Rohrabacher was working as a speech writer for former President Ronald Reagan.

“A friend of mine called me when I was at the White House,” the congressman said, “and we were talking about the entertainment industry and how far left it was, and is.

“And he said, ‘Well, you know there are a couple of good guys like Sammy Hagar. . . . He’s a rock ‘n’ roller who loves America and hates commies. . . . In fact, he had 20,000 kids at a rock concert chanting something obscene about the communists.’

“And I said, ‘Really? This is the kind of guy I should meet.’ ”

So the speech writer invited the California-based rock star to lunch at the White House. They talked music and politics, and a White House official who joined them for lunch persuaded Hagar to record several anti-drug messages, the congressman said.

“He’s anti-drug,” Rohrabacher said. “And I’ll tell you, for a heavy-metal guitar player, that is very courageous.”

He added, “Since that time, we’ve become pretty good friends.”

So Rohrabacher was not surprised when Hagar invited him to Cabo for the New Year’s holiday. He ended up renting a condo near Hagar’s.

The congressman, in fact, drove down from Los Angeles County in Hagar’s just-repaired Ford Bronco, spending five days on Baja’s tortuous roads.

“As you might imagine, the car had a great stereo system,” he said.