Pamela Harriman: British Crown of Democratic Soiree

Blame it on the full moon. Or the balmy night. Or the chicken croquettes. Or Pamela Harriman’s well-known charm.

But whenever the elegant British aristocrat, whose husbands have included politician Randolph Churchill, theatrical agent Leland Hayward and elder statesman Averell Harriman, comes to town, Democrats just seem to feel better.

No doubt that’s why Kathleen Brown, the Los Angeles Public Works Commissioner who is exploring a race for California state treasurer, and her husband, entertainment producer Van Gordon Sauter, held a get-to-know-you soiree in her honor Friday night at their Sunset Plaza home attended by some of Los Angeles’ most active Democrats.

“The people who are here are heavy -hitters,” acknowledged Danny Goldberg, the chairman of the Southern California American Civil Liberties Union Foundation.

“Van and I are so happy to have our friends here, and not be asking you for money,” Brown quipped to the gathering. “But, seriously, it is a rare privilege when one is engaged in campaigning for office to take an evening off, to have fun, and to invite your very old friends to meet a new friend of ours.”

Responded Harriman, “I can’t tell you what a thrill it is for me to come back out here and see so many people who are still Democrats.”

For Harriman, whose political action committee, “Democrats for the ‘90s,” is already organized and raising money, the party was just one in a peripatetic list of events planned during one of her rare trips to Los Angeles. Besides a board meeting of the Winston Churchill Foundation Thursday, and a brunch at the home of Hollywood producer Ted Field Sunday, she squeezed in dinner with Billy and Phyllis Wilder, just two of the Hollywood luminaries she had come to know well while married to Hayward. “Of course, a lot of our friends then are now dead,” she noted sadly. “But it’s such fun for me to come back here because it takes me back nostalgically.”

But the primary reason for her West Coast visit was to bring two Democratic committee chairmen from the U.S. Senate, Al Gore Jr. and Tim Wirth, to California to speak about global warming as part of the National Policy Forum series being sponsored by the Democratic Senate Leadership. Lawyer Mickey Cantor, a long-time Democratic activist (“Too long, some say,” he laughed) said he approved of the forums’ purpose. “By sending people around the country like this, you really energize Democrats to be involved.”

‘Heart and Soul of Party’

For most of the party-goers, however, the gathering provided their first opportunity to greet Harriman in person. Businessman Nick Patsaouras, a national fund-raiser for the Dukakis campaign who now is raising money statewide for Democratic hopefuls, described meeting Harriman as “very uplifting. She’s the heart and soul of the Democratic party.”

Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner, who is running for state attorney general, also had never met Harriman before and took advantage of the fact that he is a neighbor of Brown and Van Sauter to come over. “Why not? I just live across the street,” he said.

And Los Angeles entrepreneur Andrei Echevarria, another Democratic activist, found Harriman to be “a very interesting lady. And, besides, I feel a connection to her because I lived in New York City when Averell Harriman was the governor.”

That wasn’t the only Harriman connection, by any means. Kathleen’s father, Pat Brown, was telling anyone within earshot at the party that when he made his first run for governor in 1958 against William Knowland, he sought out Harriman’s advice.

Just then, philanthropist Michael Rockefeller walked in. “Did you say 1958?” Rockefeller asked. “Oh, that was the year my Uncle Nelson beat Averell for the governorship of New York!”