This pastime is very much in line with Rohrabacher’s office motto, “Fighting for freedom and having fun,” which is everywhere. Rohrabacher drinks from a coffee mug embossed with the phrase, a wooden plaque engraved with the slogan hangs in his personal office and the motto has even popped up on an outgoing voice mail from his office.
Rohrabacher first began “fighting for freedom” as a teenager campaigning for Reagan during his first gubernatorial bid in California. During that race, Rohrabacher’s passion for the Gipper ran so deep that he even camped out on his lawn one night in an effort to talk to him about the group Youth for Reagan.
As Rohrabacher tells it, Nancy Reagan initially wouldn’t allow her husband to go talk to the stranger on the lawn, but Ronald Reagan eventually got past her.
“Reagan came running after me,” Rohrabacher remembers. “He had shaving cream on his face and said, ‘Wait a minute! Wait a minute!’ So I had a nice conversation with him and that started a relationship that lasted all my life, until Ronald Reagan passed away.”
He later worked for Reagan, who is immortalized in the office with a large display of photographs, campaign posters and other mementos. One photograph shows Rohrabacher chasing Reagan and a gaggle of media with a giant microphone during his time as assistant press secretary in the 1980 presidential campaign.
“I recorded every word Ronald Reagan said so that no one would ever misquote him,” Rohrabacher says.
Another, more startling image shows Reagan appearing to punch a young, bearded Rohrabacher in the face aboard Air Force One. He is quick to explain that the president was simply showing him how he used to throw fake punches when he was a film actor.
It was while working in the Reagan White House that Rohrabacher took an active interest in combating communism and became what he calls a “freedom fighter.” Rohrabacher got to know the leaders of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, who were fighting against Soviet occupation of the region.
His belief in the cause ran so deep that he eventually headed to the battlefield. In the weeks before his 1988 election to Congress, Rohrabacher packed his bags and joined a mujahedeen infantry unit on the front line.
“I figured I had two months to do what I wanted before the State Department strangled me,” he says.
Rohrabacher ended up going through some artillery barrages. A small piece of dark shrapnel mounted on a plaque in his office recalls the period.
These days the only fighting Rohrabacher sees is on the House floor. Now that he is a husband and father, he spends more time at home and less time in harm’s way.
But if he ever needs a reminder of the adventures of his youth, all he needs to do is look around his office to take a stroll down memory lane.
Roll Call has launched a new feature, Hill Navigator, to advise congressional staffers and would-be staffers on how to manage workplace issues on Capitol Hill. Please send us your questions — anything from office etiquette, to handling awkward moments, to what happens when the work life gets too personal. Submissions will be treated anonymously.
