Hollywood PAC Quits to Protest Money in Politics

The Hollywood Women’s Political Committee, a pugnacious Los Angeles organization that fused money and celebrity into liberal political power for more than a decade, decided Saturday to cease operation in what it characterized as a protest against the rising tide of money washing over the political system.

“We will no longer collaborate with a system that promotes the buying and selling of political office,” the group’s Policy Committee said in a statement read to its members at a meeting in Beverly Hills.

Founded in 1984, the group has been the most influential Hollywood political organization of its generation--and a leading source of funds for liberal causes and candidates nationwide. With members ranging from studio executives and agents to writers, lawyers and stars like Barbra Streisand, the group disbursed nearly $6 million directly to candidates and groups and participated in fund-raisers that collected millions more.

“It is not with enormous happiness that we do this, but with a sense that we would become part of the problem and not part of the solution if we continue,” said entertainment attorney Susan Grode, a founding member of the organization.

The group’s decision to commit what amounted to a form of ritual suicide could leave a gaping hole in liberal Los Angeles. But Grode and others in the organization said they hope the dramatic gesture will spur a wider debate on the campaign finance system.

“I think people are going to be angry and think it is naive of us,” said Margery Tabankin, a former executive director of the group who remains active in its operation. “But as long as you are participating, you are freezing the system from changing. If you change that dynamic, maybe something new can emerge.”

Ellen Miller, the executive director of Public Campaign, a campaign reform advocacy group, said the unexpected decision may make Democrats in particular “stop, look and listen. When one of the largest and high-profile organizations in the country opts out of the game, it draws attention to how awful the game is.”

Though some political professionals considered the group prickly to work with, its help was avidly sought by hundreds of Democratic candidates and organizations prospecting for Hollywood money and celebrity endorsements. When it pulled the plug on Saturday, it had operated longer than any significant political organization in Hollywood history.

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In its statement, the group complained that the increasing price tag of campaigns alienated “the vast majority of Americans” who cannot contribute large sums, and meant that “anyone without a personal fortune or connections to great wealth cannot be elected to public office.”

Though it did not endorse any specific campaign finance reform proposal, in the past the group has backed contribution and spending limits, and bans on both political action committees and unregulated “soft-money” donations.

The decision also reflected a growing frustration in the group about raising larger and larger sums for candidates about whom it was less and less enthusiastic. Staunchly liberal on virtually all issues, the group had grown increasingly alienated as the political debate in both parties has tilted rightward through the 1990s. In recent years, Tabankin said, the group had found it difficult to find even Democratic “candidates who met [its] criteria . . . “ for support.

Television producer Pat Tourk Lee, another leading figure in the organization, said the support of President Clinton and many congressional Democrats for last year’s welfare reform bill sharpened that discontent: “That really lit a fire,” she said. “It was really disappointing the way a lot of people voted for that.”

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Organized by a group of nine women that included songwriter Marilyn Bergman, producer Paula Weinstein and television executive Barbara Corday, the group formally launched its PAC shortly after the 1984 Democratic convention that nominated Geraldine Ferraro as the first female vice presidential candidate.

The group firmly established itself in the political firmament two years later when it sponsored a glamorous concert at Streisand’s Malibu home--the first time she had performed in public in many years--that raised $1.5 million for Democratic candidates, at the time among the most ever collected in a single night.

The group followed that model through the 1990s, helping to raise millions of dollars for Clinton at galas in 1992 and 1996, where Streisand and other prominent entertainers like Tom Hanks and the Eagles performed. It also organized delegations of celebrities for liberal events like the 1989 and 1992 Washington marches supporting abortion rights.

Especially early in its existence, the group’s support was sometimes controversial; in 1986, for instance, Republicans attacked several Democrats who received HWPC contributions for accepting aid from an organization in which Jane Fonda, still controversial for her opposition to the Vietnam War, was a member. But those attacks faded by the late 1980s.

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More recently, several members said, the group felt besieged less by its opponents than its friends. The relentless pace of fund-raising, and the increasing demand for large soft-money contributions, produced a “cumulative” frustration with a fund-raising system that appeared insatiable, Grode said.

Though officials with the group said its decision to disband was not a protest against the Democratic fund-raising in the 1996 campaign, they also acknowledged that the huge sums collected on both sides last fall crystallized their discontent. “Is it just about Bill Clinton? No,” Tabankin said. “But I don’t know a wealthy Democrat who isn’t embarrassed about [the 1996 fund-raising] and doesn’t feel squeamish about it.”

Grode said the group had been discussing the possibility of disbanding in protest since 1994, and had testified before Congress in favor of eliminating PACs as far back as 1989. But the organization began to seriously consider closing its doors only after the 1996 campaign.

Through several weeks of internal debate, the group’s leaders also considered retaining its existing structure, but shifting its focus more toward advocating for campaign finance reform. But ultimately they concluded that it would be “hypocritical” to continue raising large sums to advocate for reducing the role of money in politics, one source said. Finally, the group’s governing Policy Committee decided to recommend dissolution at a meeting Wednesday night.

“We have always had this set of [liberal] principles we were trying to organize around,” said one source familiar with the internal debate. “And what finally became clear to us was that until the money situation was dealt with, we were never going to get anywhere.”