Clinton, Harkin Add to Finances in Southland : Politics: Arkansas governor meets with Orange County Republicans. Iowa senator confers with black and union leaders in L.A.

Two leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination criss-crossed 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 session with Orange County Republicans and a 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.”

In a day that underlined the importance of California money to the cash-starved Democratic hopefuls, the most dramatic--and incongruous--event was Clinton’s breakfast with about 60 Orange County business executives at the Pacific Club in Newport Beach. After his speech, Clinton won promises of support in the Democratic primary from co-hosts Kathryn G. Thompson, an Orange County developer, and Western Digital Corp. Chairman Roger W. Johnson.

“What I’ve heard the governor say that is appealing are words like growth, cut costs, real investment, competitiveness around the world,” said Johnson, who added that he has voted Republican in every presidential race since 1960. “Those are not partisan words, those are words that I can support.”

Thompson, a member of Bush’s elite “Team 100” top contributors in 1988, said that in her opinion, Clinton “has some excellent ideas. I hope that he wins the nomination for the Democratic primary. But Thompson added: “I have not yet abandoned my support for President Bush at this time.”

Bush, during a visit in Ontario 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 told reporters. “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 supported 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 most other 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 television producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, and at an evening reception hosted 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.

Times staff writer David Lesher contributed to this story.