Clinton’s Big-Money Machine : Fund raising focused on ‘fat cats’ fuels the Democrat’s campaign. Leading the charge is his dynamic duo--both thirtysomething campaign veterans.

“B ubeleh! How are you?” Rahm Emanuel gushes into a telephone while glaring at a name, phone number and the figure $10,000 written on a yellow pad. “You really have $8,500? In hand? I’ll check you off.”

In a nearby office, Amy Zisook laughs into her phone receiver and coos: “You can’t send another check, Jerry. But I know you have a lot of friends who want to come to our fund-raiser tomorrow night.”

It is the day before Super Tuesday, and Emanuel, 32, and Zisook, 30, Bill Clinton’s paid treasure hunters, are in the Democratic presidential candidate’s Chicago headquarters dialing for dollars.

They are trying to secure a quick $500,000 to underwrite the candidate’s efforts in the Illinois and Michigan primaries today; Michigan is expected to be a tough battle, and for the first time, former Sen. Paul E. Tsongas is outspending Clinton on television ads.

For Emanuel and Zisook, both weaned on Chicago’s money-flush politics, the trip is a homecoming. Since last fall they’ve been based in Little Rock, Ark., so on this snow-blown afternoon their view from the 18th-floor headquarters straight down into Chicago City Hall is particularly sweet--when not obscured by weather.

A reporter once described Emanuel, a schmooze-aholic who helped raise about $12 million for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, as having “an Al Capone-esque” fund-raising style; Zisook, a professional money-raiser since age 23, has a lighter touch, but she, too, can be relentless with the phone.

And in the fund-raising business, the telephone is the milk machine to the cash cows.

For now, all 10 lines into Clinton headquarters are flashing and ringing so frenetically that even Emanuel, who has been known to coax, cajole and browbeat a phone receiver, can’t get a line out. Instead, he grabs a cellular phone and dials.

To a fund-raiser in the South, he yells, “Bobby, this is your favorite Yankee!”

To a woman with the jitters, he harangues, “Take the goddamn Ritalin!”

And when told of plans for a $100,000 dinner, he wheedles, “We should not be gun-shy. . . . We should go for $300,000. But I want to negotiate the (expletive) meal price down--if I have to come in there with a bunch of lawyers.”

A former ballet dancer, Emanuel is again performing: He walks three steps, pirouettes neatly on the ball of a wingtipped foot and paces back. After a few fidgety spins, he finally hangs up, slaps his rib cage and bellows, “This is metabolism fund raising!”

In Clinton’s case, it has been lifesaving fund raising.

If it weren’t for the money--almost $8 million raised in less than six months--Clinton might never have survived the media cackle, first over Gennifer Flowers, a former nightclub singer who alleged a 12-year affair with him, and then over his alleged manipulation of his draft status.

Other factors helped Clinton endure, but the cash bought him time--to counter the attacks with his own positive paid messages and to keep a staff rolling from primary state to primary state, picking up delegates.

“Clearly, if we had not had the financial edge we had coming out of New Hampshire, we might very well have been in the same boat as (Missouri Rep.) Dick Gephardt was in ’88 and (Nebraska Sen. Bob) Kerrey and (Iowa Sen. Tom) Harkin were this year,” says Clinton campaign manager David Wilhelm. “They ran out of gas. We still had gas in the tank.”

The victory in New Hampshire pumped gas into Tsongas’ financial efforts as well, but as of last month his campaign was still raising $1 for every $2 the Clinton money machine was sucking in. (Still, although Clinton has raised twice as much as any other Democrat, President Bush, with $14 million in his war chest, easily outstrips them all.)

But as pleased as they seem, Clinton’s money people are trying not to ease off. If anything, they are milking faster. There is the Rust Belt today, then New York--both expensive media markets--and then California in June.

Last week Emanuel and Zisook were trying to pump up the so-called “fat cats”--100 wealthy men (and a few women) who get a kick out of putting the squeeze on their friends for the maximum $1,000 donation.

As Emanuel so poetically describes his technique for a heavy pitch, “Surround ‘em in love, just love them to death!” Most of these men, members of Clinton’s national finance committee, lap it up. Primarily, they maintain a misty idealism about the candidate, yet many are eager to be with a Democratic winner. A few admit to harboring fantasies of having influence in the White House. But mostly they simply enjoy being players and are in it for the fun.

And no matter what the guys who mau-mau the media claim or the politicos who pressure delegates insist, raising political money is the ultimate contact sport.

On the evening of Super Tuesday, and with Illinois and Michigan already looming, Bill Clinton is doing his part in Chicago. He crams five fund-raisers into a single evening. In fact, he barely utters a word that night that isn’t being paid for by the audience.

Clinton’s first event is a cocktail party at the Navy Pier with about 400 supporters who pay $125 to be in his presence. Later, the crowd thins to 150 people who get a piece of beef and another speech for their $1,000 ticket.

For a man who has just won seven primaries, Clinton’s dinner speech seems subdued. Perhaps it’s the lighting, subtle enough to make diamonds glow like neon. Or maybe the candidate is saving himself--and his voice--for a barn burner he is to deliver later that night. But no matter: He is speaking to the converted, and there’s no press around.

Between events, Clinton and his wife, Hillary, garner $100,000 by rallying the faithful via telephone hookup to dozens of private parties across the country.

Next comes the “yuppie” event in the Hilton hotel’s mammoth ballroom, a real bargain at $35 a ticket. By the time Clinton arrives, the place is jammed and a jazz band is blowing sweet enough to make several TV reporters shimmy while waiting to do their stand-ups. With TV screens flashing news of his victory, Clinton delivers his barn burner, and the crowd swells with cheers.

After that, the evening seems spent. But there is still one more opportunity for the candidate to raise cash. In a presidential suite on the 23rd floor of the Hilton, 50 of the finance committee’s moguls await him.

In the suite, there is fruit, fudge--and a sense of relief. These people needed a victory to keep the money spigot open, and with Clinton again looking like a front-runner there will be no stopping the flow.

Just before 11, Hillary Clinton arrives and works the room. In a few minutes, an exuberant Bill Clinton sweeps in, seeming to glow with an inner sense of well-being. He grabs for double handshakes, hugs and back slaps, utters a lot of “thank-yous” and is gone in 15 minutes.

It was a successful night all around: He won the South and took in $350,000.

Joseph H. Fuchs, a Phoenix real estate developer who’s raised about $20,000 for the campaign, is thrilled: “He’s going to make a great President.”

The next day, the same faces are assembled at 8 a.m. in a hotel conference room. The price of admission is $10,000, and with some nudging each has come up with pledges.

The perk for this second meeting of Clinton’s finance committee is to be treated like a true insider. For the next 90 minutes, the candidate’s top advisers give a briefing.

First up is James Carville, the lanky, in-your-face strategist from Louisiana; then comes pollster Stan Greenberg, a small, tweedy man from Connecticut. Each talks about media misconceptions about the campaign and fields questions.

Next up is Emanuel, who reviews what they’ve raised. “In December, 27 events raised $2.4 million; in January, 27 events raised $1.6 million; in February, 11 events, $2.3 million. We have done in the last 20 days $500,000 in non-event money. . . .”

Then comes Robert A. Farmer, whose work raising $90 million for Michael S. Dukakis in 1988 makes him something of a mythic figure in Democratic circles. He gives a quick motivational talk.

“The good news is, we are where we are today,” says Farmer, now Clinton’s campaign treasurer. “The bad news is, the fuel tank is virtually empty.”

On that note, the contact is concluded. The power people rush to the airport, and it’s back to the office and the phones.

If there is worse scut work in a campaign than fund raising, it’s hard to get anyone to admit it.

No one likes to beg for money--not the candidate, not his operatives, not his friends. In interviews with Clinton’s staff and donors, the remark was made over and over again: “If the American people really understood it, they’d go for public financing. . . .”

When Clinton revved up to run last August, there was $4,490 in the campaign coffers. By September he had $200,000 and had recruited Farmer, a 52-year-old former Republican with a golden Rolodex.

Initially, Farmer played something of an elusive role--so much so that one staffer recently referred to him as “missing in action.” His contributions to Clinton’s competitors also strike some as odd: He gave $1,000 each to Tsongas, Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder and Kerrey.

Farmer insists the donations are a courtesy to the other candidates or to friends who are raising money for them. He also maintains he’s been working feverishly for Clinton since taking a leave from his job in January.

“These contributions were in no respect any lack of commitment to Clinton,” he says. “In my view, they were the right things to do.”

In November, the campaign brought Emanuel down to Little Rock to set up a fund-raising organization, and he, in turn, drew Zisook there. Together, they signed up 10 road warriors, political junkies who would go anywhere to raise money.

Zisook, whose small firm had received $250,000 for running Illinois Sen. Paul Simon’s reelection campaign in 1990, says that when Emanuel called she had already retired from fund raising.

“So here was Amy Zisook, a Lake Shore liberal, agreeing to move to Little Rock for a conservative governor who wouldn’t know her if he passed her on the sidewalk,” she says, rolling her eyes.

But she liked Clinton’s middle-class message and couldn’t resist one more shot at presidential politics. So she squeezed her life into a suitcase and moved south.

Emanuel says the first thing he did when he got to the cramped brick headquarters was to persuade Clinton to spill every name of every person who might be a donor. They started with a list of 200.

In the beginning, Emanuel and Zisook would go over to the governor’s mansion every Sunday to get Clinton to call some of these people. “He was great at it,” recalls Zisook. “If anything, he talked too long and didn’t make enough calls.”

Clinton’s only requirement of his staff was to turn down political action committee money and to set aside 60% of every penny for media ads. The rest was up to them.

The Clinton team did everything else the old-fashioned way: Essentially, they set up an elaborate pyramid. At the top were the paid staff--Farmer, Emanuel, Zisook, et al.

Except for Farmer, in the beginning they all spent their days getting fund-raising shindigs scheduled and pressuring the key members of Clinton’s finance committee who make up the pyramid base. It was the job of these independents, or “bundlers,” to collect contributions. Under federal election law, individuals may contribute no more than $1,000 to a candidate in the primary season--so it takes a lot of calls to bring in a bundle.

Sitting all day in their small office, with three desks, four phones and a window facing the Arkansas Capitol, Emanuel and Zisook rarely ask for money themselves.

Zisook concentrates on the grinding details of organizing 20 or so fund-raisers a month in different cities. “Some days I’m Amy the party thrower; others, I’m Amy the nag,” she says in a perky tone that has many of Southerners who pop into the office calling her “Bubbles,” while she calls them “Bubba.”

The Clintons’ time is precious, so if you want Bill Clinton at your event, you must guarantee to clear $50,000 in donations. If you want some big contributors to ride in a car with him between events, they have to promise to come with $20,000. To get Hillary Clinton at your lunch, $10,000 is required.

One of the biggest goals of any campaign is to find new streams of cash, Emanuel says. He excitedly describes a conversation he had with Randy Close, head of the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a national gay and lesbian lobbying and political action group. Close is attempting to raise $300,000 for Clinton and hopes to work with the campaign on a letter to his membership.

“Gays are the next Jews of fund raising,” Emanuel, who is Jewish, says, sounding much like the character in “The Graduate” who advises Dustin Hoffman that the future is in “plastics.”

In every campaign a fund-raising star is born.

Ken Brody is one such newcomer. Until the mid-1980s, he was a Republican. But after switching “to the party with a heart and a chance to have a head,” Brody joined the Democratic Leadership Council, where he began following the career of a young Arkansas governor.

At age 48, this son of a Philadelphia milk-truck driver decided to “retire” last December from Goldman Sachs to raise money full time for Clinton in New York.

“What I thought we needed desperately was someone who, first, was a sensational human being and, second, had a demonstrable performance and a vision about this country and how to get it moving again,” he says in an interview at his lavish Manhattan apartment overlooking the East River. “I was making a bet that if the American public didn’t realize that Bill Clinton was the best candidate in ‘92, they would in ’96.”

Through several events the New York contingent raised $1.4 million, more than has been raised in any other city for Clinton. (The only higher bloc of money has come from Arkansas, where a remarkable $1.7 million has been donated by barely 10,000 people.) One of the advantages to mobilizing an event that brings in $744,000, as Brody did in January, is that when he has something important to say to Clinton, he gets to say it. Pronto.

Shortly before Super Tuesday, Brody phoned Clinton on the campaign trail to let him know he needed to “stop whining. I told him he was sounding too defensive and people were saying he looked too slick. He needed to get back to his message.”

In fact, Brody believes he can serve Clinton as well with strategy as he has with fund raising. But Brody insists there is no quid pro quo to his work: “Being thought of as someone who could provide advice obviously is appealing. Being a government employee doesn’t interest me.”

Brody, too, believes the country would be better off with public campaign financing, yet he is not concerned that wealthy men like himself might have disproportionate influence on a future President.

“Calls us fat cats or what you want,” he says, “but I can tell you that I for one have the same typical values of any other American. I have the same concerns for this country and the same values.”

Baum reported from Little Rock, Ark., and New York, and Efron reported from Chicago. This article was written by Baum.