Election ’94 : 27TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

U.S. Rep. Carlos J. Moorhead (R-Glendale), 72, is seeking his 12th term in Congress. The former state assemblyman is married and has five children.

Democratic challenger Doug Kahn, 42, lives in Altadena and owns a typesetting firm. He is married and has one child.

Democrats hope 1994 is the year they send Moorhead, the dean of California’s GOP congressional delegation, packing.

Moorhead got a good scare in 1992 when he received only 49% of the vote while Kahn, who also ran that year, pulled down 40%.

But the incumbent won a little-noticed victory last year when Richard Sybert, a former top aide to Gov. Pete Wilson and a Pasadena resident, quietly decided not to run against him in the 27th District GOP primary. Sybert later moved to Calabasas where he is now running against U.S. Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills).

Kahn has said Moorhead is a tool of the gun lobby, voting against the Clinton administration crime bill, which included a ban on assault rifles. Kahn also contends his opponent is ineffectual and a foe of a pro-choice agenda. In a recent mailer, Kahn said only one of Moorhead’s measures has been passed in Congress in a decade--a resolution to proclaim July 13-19, 1987, “Snow White Week.” Moorhead’s retorts that Republicans are lucky to get any measures passed in a Democrat-controlled Congress.

Moorhead’s chief political aide, John Davies, portrays Kahn as a “man without a country and without a job,” who has lived in five cities in 15 years, run unsuccessfully for the Seattle City Council and only kept himself afloat with a trust fund. “He shouldn’t be running for Congress until he’s at least been on a neighborhood planning board,” Davies said.

Moorhead’s campaign has been a tough, big budget affair. Moorhead, a major recipient of campaign contributions from the entertainment and telecommunications industries, is on a House panel important to these industries.

Registration in this district, which includes Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena and Sunland-Tujunga, is 44% Democrat, 43% Republican.

Also running are American Independent Bill Gibbs, a Glendale businessman, and Libertarian Dennis Dechard, a Pasadena computer systems analyst.