Rogers, like many candidates from across the nation, is hitting the political circuit spread out this week across New York City.

10:26 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 31, 2004

BY JOHN E. MULLIGAN
Journal Washington Bureau

Journal photo / Connie Grosch In New York yesterday, GOP congressional candidate Dave Rogers, center, talks with Jim Ellis, PAC chairman for Tom Delay, at the New England Clambake, aboard the aircraft carrier Intrepid. At left is his campaign manager, Christian Winthrop.

NEW YORK -- Dave Rogers is in Harlem, rolling the rock up the hill again.

The Republican congressional candidate from Portsmouth emerges from a friend's down-at-the-heels car, straightens his suit jacket and mounts the stairs to a grand old temple of a building on upper Fifth Avenue.

"Dave, Dave, Dave!" exclaims his host, Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality, who ushers him beneath the banner declaring, "CORE Welcomes GOP to Harlem."

Inside, over beef kabobs and fat shrimp, Rogers opens the next round in the unending struggle -- for money, for publicity, for high-powered contacts -- that is every long-shot candidate's run for office.

At least this candidate has the name-brand military background and the famous opponent to use as a handy verbal calling card for hawking his wares at the giant political trade show known as the Republican National Convention.

"Dave Rogers, Navy SEAL running against Patrick Kennedy," he says, thrusting out his right hand to a stranger at the venerable civil-rights group's reception, and another potentially profitable campaign conversation is launched.

The scene from that reception on Rogers' first day at the convention was repeated again and again -- East Side, West Side, all around the town that is for this week the center of the Republican universe.

The national spotlight is trained, of course, on President Bush's reelection campaign, but the one-stop-shopping facet of the convention is crucial for hordes of office-seekers, consultants, pollsters, lobbyists and other politicos from city council to Congress.

Rogers has a modest role in a larger, long-running drama in the House of Representatives. It has been a decade since then-Rep. Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., made history by sweeping the Republicans to majority control for the first time in half a century. Yet control of the House still hangs by a relative handful of seats.

Once more, the Democrats vow to seize back majority control, which would take a net gain of only a dozen or so seats, depending on how the counting is done. But that seems a very tall order to most observers, for a variety of reasons.

"The Republicans still look very solid for retaining their majority," said Amy Walter, a House campaign analyst for Washington's independent Cook Political Report.

"We are not a targeted race," Rogers acknowledged flatly, meaning that Republican leadership doesn't think enough of his chances to invest heavily in the race for Rhode Island's first congressional district.

That reality was reflected in the fact that Rogers missed out on one of the most useful perquisites of the national political convention -- the precious moment of stage time traditionally given to a handful of the hundreds of candidates for various high offices.

But Rogers, who works as a technical manager advising the petroleum industry, looks on the bright side. "We're one of the few national races because everybody knows who my opponent is," he explained at another reception -- this one for moderate Republicans at The Sky Club, an exclusive aerie atop Park Avenue's Met Life Building that has spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline.

Rogers also has a proven ability to raise money. As a political newcomer in 2002, Rogers raised and spent about $2 million to win a tough three-way Republican primary and then challenge Kennedy. But Rogers raised a large proportion of his money through direct-mail solicitation, which is a costly way to bring in campaign cash.

"Raising a lot of direct-mail money is not hard to do when you're running against a guy whose last name is 'Kennedy,' " said Walter, alluding to the fact that the Kennedy name is a symbol of liberalism that attracts campaign dollars from conservative donors.

Walter said Rogers faces a hard climb since four years have elapsed since Kennedy's term as chairman of the House campaign committee, a job that took him away from Rhode Island and into such controversies as the shoving of a Los Angeles airport security agent.

Rogers said he will pound at the charge that Kennedy supported authorizing the war in Iraq strictly for political reasons -- to which Kennedy chief of staff Sean Richardson responded, "The congressman did not play politics with war."

Still, "Navy SEAL running against Patrick Kennedy" is a good calling card in this town this week, and Dave Rogers is playing it for all it's worth.