White House Taken Off List of Sites for Donor Thank-You Parties

Clinton administration and Democratic Party officials have decided not to hold future events at the White House for campaign donors to avoid further intensifying the raging controversy over past fund-raising practices.

Two proposed events to thank or energize Democratic backers at the White House were held at other locations in recent weeks amid mounting criticism of the use of the Executive Mansion to woo contributors in the 1996 election campaign. A third event that was proposed for the White House will also be scheduled elsewhere, officials said.

“We are not, at the moment, bringing donors to the White House or having [similar] events there,” said Alan D. Solomont, the recently installed Democratic National Committee finance chairman.

“We don’t think that inviting supporters of the president, including people who made contributions, to the White House was a mistake at all. But, until we move out of the current environment--where every action is looked at with suspicion by some--we are going to engage our supporters in other places.”

President Clinton’s practice of hosting coffees at the White House for a range of participants who included generous financial backers and of inviting many major contributors to stay overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom are among the actions that have come under fire in the growing controversy over fund-raising practices.

Solomont had proposed a reception for the Democratic Business Council and a second event for major donors at the White House in a Jan. 7 memo to Harold M. Ickes, then-deputy White House chief of staff. Ickes requested that these events be scheduled at the Executive Mansion and that a reception for Democratic supporters on the weekend before Clinton’s inauguration Jan. 20 also be held in the White House, Solomont said.

“But . . . we decided, because of all the events going on around us, to keep [such events] off campus,” a senior administration official said Wednesday night.

The Washington Post reported that two top party fund-raisers said that they were told that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton declared the Executive Mansion off limits for events intended to encourage well-to-do donors.

While unable to confirm that, the senior administration official said: “There was a general consensus in the White House that it was not worth the hassle.”