Harkin Jabs Clinton on Meeting O.C. ‘Fat Cats’ : Politics: Democratic contenders add to their campaign finances in Southland. Bush calls Arkansas governor’s breakfast with GOP financiers ‘interesting.’

Two leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination crisscrossed Southern California on Friday, revealing as much about their strategies by their audience as their words.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, a favorite of Democratic moderates, called on the party to assemble “a new coalition for change” and declared himself “a different kind of Democrat” during campaign events that included an extraordinary morning session with Orange County Republican financiers and an evening fund-raiser with Hollywood liberals.

At the same time, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a champion of party liberals, pressed his populist attack on President Bush before black and union leaders in Los Angeles--and swiped at Clinton for “meeting with some Republican fat cats.”

Bush, during a visit in Ontario in San Bernardino County on Friday, brushed aside questions about the rumbles of discontent in Orange County. --He said only that he thought the Clinton breakfast was “interesting.”

Although unaware of the “fat cat” criticism Harkin was directing at him, Clinton took pains to insist that his appearance before the Orange County Republicans signaled the breadth of his appeal--not a desire to move his party to the right.

“What I hope this (breakfast) means is that I have a broad national appeal, because I am a different kind of Democrat,” he said. “The message I gave these folks today is no different than what I’ve said when I’m in inner-city Los Angeles.”

Harkin spent Friday morning in Los Angeles, telling a group of about 40 black leaders that he supports a national police corps program that would allow young people to pay back federal college loans by serving as police officers. “We’ve got to have better-educated law enforcement people,” Harkin said, when asked how he would deal with police abuses in the minority community. “You can’t take some roughnecks and put a badge on them and say go out and enforce the law.”

Clinton has long advocated a similar service plan.

Nonetheless, the dual appearances highlighted some of the sharp distinctions between Harkin and Clinton.

Harkin belittled the proposed middle-class tax cut backed by Clinton and all other prominent Democratic contenders as likely to give Americans only “a dollar a day.”

Harkin added: “You think you can get a lot of people excited about that? Maybe they can use it to pay for a camcorder from Japan and they can videotape our continuing economic decline. Why not pool that money? Invest it in the infrastructure.”

Likewise, speaking to Los Angeles County labor leaders, Harkin disparaged “the so-called free-trade” agreement with Mexico that is under negotiation.

By contrast, Clinton told a group of Arco executives in Los Angeles that if the Administration completes a “good treaty” with Mexico, “I’m going to be strong for it, because I believe it can promote long-term growth for our hemisphere and this country.”

Both candidates focused much of their time on raising money. Harkin held two fund-raisers in Long Beach. Clinton trolled in Hollywood, collecting checks at a luncheon sponsored by TV producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, and at an evening reception held by movie producer Dawn Steel, former president of Columbia Pictures.

Clinton also met privately with a group of agents at Hollywood’s powerful Creative Artists Agency, including Chairman Michael Ovitz.