Rogan Aide Accuses Schiff of Guilt by Association

The manager of Rep. Jim Rogan’s reelection campaign attacked Democratic challenger Adam Schiff on Tuesday for attending a forum with a Los Angeles Muslim community leader, saying it “raised some questions about the associations he plans to keep” if elected to Congress.

Rogan (R-Glendale) was invited to the forum on “the role of alcohol in crime,” but declined to attend because one of the hosts, Salam Al-Marayati, “seems to be an apologist for Muslim terrorists,” said Rogan campaign manager Jason Roe.

Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, called the allegation “an absolute outrage.” Schiff’s top campaign advisor called it “preposterous.”

The forum, co-sponsored by the Muslim council and local Presbyterian, Mormon and Unitarian churches, took place Sunday at Crescenta Canada Family YMCA in La Canada. Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, and Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti were the featured speakers.

Roe cited the July 1999 withdrawal by House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) of his nomination of Al-Marayati to a commission on terrorism after leaders of some Jewish groups objected to the appointment.

“It seems to me odd that Sen. Schiff would feel comfortable, especially as a Jew, to be participating in this event,” Roe said.

“Serving in Congress means voting on serious foreign policy and national security issues, and I think this raises some questions about the associations [Schiff] plans to keep,” Roe added.

Roe also said: “I’m going to have photographs in a few days here of him hugging Salam Al-Marayati.”

Al-Marayati said the Rogan campaign’s attack “shows a lack of intellectual integrity on their part.”

“What they’re doing is un-American,” he said. “It goes against the values of pluralism and civilized discourse. They’ve made a decision to exclude American Muslims from their campaign.”

Al-Marayati also listed more than half a dozen events he has attended with Rogan over the last five years, including two fund-raisers for the congressman. Al-Marayati said he twice brought schoolchildren and Muslim constituents to Rogan’s congressional office. And he recalled introducing Rogan to a group of students at the Muslim New Horizon School in Pasadena.

“We know each other very, very well, and I’m surprised that comments like that are coming out of his campaign,” he said.

Roe denied that Rogan excluded Muslims from his campaign, citing the support of Irshad Ul-Haque, a Muslim recently named head of the Glendale Chamber of Commerce. He also said that Al-Marayati might have “showed up at some event that Jim was at.”

David Lehrer, the Los Angeles regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, a group that objected to Gephardt’s naming of Al-Marayati to the congressional terrorism panel, defended him against the Rogan team’s attack.

“We have had and continue to have substantial differences with Salam Al-Marayati on a variety of issues,” Lehrer said. “But that doesn’t mean that we or others ought to shun him or treat him as a pariah. There is room for civil political discourse, as witnessed by the variety of co-sponsors of the program with Salam last Sunday.”

Parke Skelton, Schiff’s campaign consultant, called Roe’s remarks “astonishing,” saying Al-Marayati is “a very respected leader.”

“Is Jason Roe alleging that the Mormon Church is somehow complicit in international terrorism as well?” Skelton said. “It’s just a preposterous allegation and typical of the kind of guilt-by-association mudslinging politics of the Rogan campaign.”