REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK : Party Convention Is Convention of Parties : Celebrations: Big names, big bucks, big stars, big talk. A Bush ambassador shows up. And there’s the Camelot nostalgia.

Robert S. Strauss was hustling Russian aid. Bill Clinton’s money men were after that last few hundred thousand to retire the campaign debt. Party Chairman Ronald H. Brown was feted as a Democrat his law partners love to know. The Kennedys traded in Camelot nostalgia. And 4,928 delegates bargained in nothing less than old friendships and home-style canapes.

From skylight rooms to trendy hideaways to the New York mayor’s Gatsbyesque mansion, the real business of the Democratic Party began in earnest Sunday at dozens of rollicking parties.

If you don’t believe it, ask a movie star. Who knows better?

“It’s about jobs; it’s about power; it’s about acceptance,” said Robert Downey Jr., looking slightly embarrassed as he stood in the middle of a Greenwich Village Reebok sneaker store at a fund-raiser to get young people to vote. “Why else would people be here?”

The President knew his ambassador to Russia this week would be with Democrats crazed to run him out of office. But George Bush didn’t care.

“I am a statesman,” warbled Strauss, former Democratic Party chairman, looking serious. “I am not a cheap politician anymore.”

More than 350 people--old guard pols, media heavyweights and big league donors--came to the breakfast co-hosted by Democratic benefactor Pamela Harriman in Strauss’ honor at the Skylight Room of the Waldorf Astoria. But few seemed to believe his self-described transformation to pure statesmanship.

“Bob is a Democrat,” said California state Treasurer Kathleen Brown. “It’s like being a Catholic. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. Once a Democrat. . . .”

Strauss certainly was a politician Sunday.

In classic, smooth, Texan Straussean down-home-but-watch-it style, he was pressing Congress members to support the President’s $620-million aid bill for republics of the former Soviet Union.

“I picked up 8 to 10 votes for my bill,” Strauss announced. “You know I really just came to the convention to see a lot of old friends.”

Near the coffee and juice, old friends were chuckling about “the new Strauss.”

“Bob looks good, gained a little weight,” said conservative columnist Rowland Evans.

Every delegation had a bash. All 56 found adventure. The Arkansans went to Brooklyn. The Georgians went to Staten Island. New Jerseyites rode around Manhattan--their favorite suburb--on a boat.

And the Californians, well, they walked a block.

Macy’s welcomed the California delegation by opening their famed Seventh Avenue department store, a block from Madison Square Garden. The welcoming party had everything from tacos and beer to brie and wine laid out among the shopping bargains.

Several delegates for former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., who stood out with their jeans, sport shirts and running shoes, were typically politically correct as they worried that a financially troubled corporation paid for the bash.

But few stayed away. “I came for the free food,” Brown delegate Phil Fetzer said. “It’s expensive here in New York.”

Don Novello, who played Father Guido Sarducci on “Saturday Night Live,” said: “I just heard there was a party!”

They were all there. All those toothy, mop-haired men and intense women, now gray but still lean.

All those Kennedys.

But nobody understood their heritage better than New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, who gave a stemwinder about why we should all care about Robert F. Kennedy.

“People say Democrats should veer away from the old traditions, and when you press them, what that means is the Kennedy years,” Cuomo told the crowd at Mayor David N. Dinkins’ mansion on the East River.

“But God forbid that Robert Kennedy should ever be seen as obsolete,” said Cuomo, whose son Andrew married Robert Kennedy’s daughter Kerry. “These are not ordinary people. They were anointed by history to play a special role in our society.”

The party was a fund-raiser for Robert Kennedy’s foundation. It was also a big coming-out party--yes, another one--for the newly wed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and his bride, Victoria Reggie.

The Massachusetts senator, 60, talked about how Reggie, 38, had promised him they would have a romantic extended honeymoon in New York.

“We’re going to have dinner in New York, we’re going to see interesting people, we’re going to be at Gracie Mansion,” the senator recalled his wife telling him. And then he deadpanned and gestured around the room clogged with Kennedys and stars like Glenn Close and Carol Channing.

“So we’re going to find out about this marriage,” said Kennedy. “By Thursday,” the day the convention ends.

Times staff writers Josh Getlin, Ron Brownstein, Glenn Bunting, Victor Zonana and Tracy Wilkinson contributed to this story.