Is There a Chill in the Air?

In October 1994, the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee threw a fund-raiser in Beverly Hills with First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, attended by Barbra Streisand, Whoopi Goldberg and more than 1,000 other figures drawn from the entertainment industry.

The luncheon was considered a rousing success at the time, raising $250,000, which the committee then distributed to liberal abortion-rights candidates across the country.

But less than two weeks later, as they watched the election returns, the women spearheading Hollywood’s best-known and most influential political action committee watched what they deemed a political disaster unfold before their eyes.

From coast to coast, liberals were toppling like bowling pins as the Republican revolution led by Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and his “contract with America” overturned decades of Democratic Party rule in the House of Representatives.

“We freaked out and went into depression,” recalled the committee’s then-executive director, Lara Bergthold. “We rushed to get the money out and 12 days later we sat in front of the television and watched [New York Gov.] Mario Cuomo and [Texas Gov.] Ann Richards and all these people tank. The capper of the evening was watching [California Republican Rep.] Sonny Bono win.”

Two years later, this disenchantment deepened after President Clinton signed the welfare reform bill. Some committee members didn’t show up for a gala fund-raiser featuring Clinton that the committee co-hosted at Green Acres, the old Harold Lloyd estate in Beverly Hills.

Today, the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee is no more. After years of soul-searching and intense debate over the growing influence of money in politics, the 275-member group decided it wouldn’t play the money-chasing game anymore. The doors close at the end of this month.

“We will no longer collaborate with a system that promotes the buying and selling of political candidates,” the members said in a statement that stunned the political world.

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The demise of the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee provides a case study not only of the disenchantment felt about the growing influence of money in politics, but the frustration certain liberals feel when they see politicians enter into compromises on key issues. Well-known liberals in movies, television and music say they are pulling back from party politics, transferring their energies to issue politics, or simply rethinking which candidates they will support.

Actor-director Warren Beatty, who for years was one of Hollywood’s major political voices on the left, virtually disappeared from the 1996 elections, causing people to wonder if he had dropped out of politics.

“You don’t drop out of politics--you can’t drop out of politics--but you can become less active or more active in certain forms of politics,” Beatty said. “Politics is not a sport. Winning isn’t everything. Leading is. I have no interest in a Democratic Party that seeks to become a liberal Republican Party just to win.”

Beatty believes politicians should lead, not follow, explaining: “The success of people’s careers in politics by winning elections doesn’t interest me very much, but people who make good ideas clear, do.”

Danny Goldberg, president of Mercury Records and a longtime liberal Democratic activist, said the “moneyed compromising” that goes hand-in-hand with politics today has caused a “real melancholy” to settle over liberals like himself.

“Just signing onto the Clinton-Gore agenda is sort of in conflict with my beliefs,” Goldberg said. “I think people are going to want to be a little more focused on the people they actually believe in as opposed to going through the tortured logic of [supporting] the lesser of two evils.”

Margery Tabankin, a political and philanthropic advisor to Barbra Streisand and Steven Spielberg, said the heavy emphasis on money during the 1996 election left people in show business feeling “depleted.” As a result, she said: “I think you are seeing less campaign interest, less electoral interest, but you still have a lot of issue-driven political activism.”

“I think anybody trying to raise money right now is going to have a tough time,” HWPC member Adena Smith put it bluntly. “People are burned out. The enormous requests for money were more than I’ve ever seen.”

Hilary Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Assn. of America, said she thinks recording artists have simply turned off of party politics. “Many recording artists are drawn to issues today as opposed to politics,” Rosen said. “I think people are discouraged because they perceive politics as a zero-sum game.”

Even the biggest contributors aren’t immune.

David Geffen, for instance, has not yet decided how involved he will be in the next election. Geffen, the billionaire co-founder of DreamWorks SKG, now shares the stage in terms of political clout with Lew Wasserman, the legendary former chief of MCA Inc.

Using his entertainment contacts, Geffen raised $10 million for the Democratic Party during the last election cycle. At two private dinner parties held last year at his Malibu beachfront home, Geffen raised $1.7 million from among two dozen entertainment and business figures who had come to hear Clinton. The guest list included current MCA chief Edgar M. Bronfman Jr., producer Steve Tisch and record industry executive Jerry Moss.

But, says Andy Spahn, head of corporate affairs at DreamWorks, “In the short term, we have pulled back--certainly during the first six months of 1997.

“David raised a tremendous amount of money in the last [election] cycle, particularly for the president,” Spahn said. “But his focus right now is on building DreamWorks SKG. He remains very active philanthropically. He just is not aggressively involved in political fund-raising right now. Perhaps as we move into 1998 and we begin to focus on the gubernatorial race we’ll get active again.”

Judith James, the producing partner of one of Hollywood’s most politically active actors, Richard Dreyfuss, said fund-raising has become such a relentless pursuit that she understands why people, even rich Hollywood types, are turned off when constantly hit up for cash.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if people are feeling their only value is access to money--and that is demeaning,” James said.

USC political science professor Herbert E. Alexander, director of the Citizens’ Research Foundation, which studies political financing, said he believes the era of the million-dollar fund-raising gala is not over but it could be harder to stage them with the women’s committee now disbanding.

“I think it’s going to be harder to have a fund-raiser [in Hollywood] but I don’t think it’s impossible,” Alexander said. “Money is still needed. Parties will still be out seeking it. Candidates will still be out seeking it.

“There are a lot of wealthy people in Hollywood and maybe they can’t all give $500,000 or whatever Geffen gives, but they can give $25,000 in the aggregate or $1,000 to a candidate,” Alexander added, noting that some of the biggest contributors may “withdraw a bit” since large political contributions are now routinely scrutinized by the news media because of the current spate of fund-raising scandals.

Although the next round of elections is still a year away--and the next presidential election even further off--candidates are already trekking to Hollywood. This constant need to feed the election monster has created what political insiders now term “The Permanent Campaign.”

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From the days of the studio moguls, show business and presidential politics have been inextricably linked. Al Jolson drummed up support for Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge. MGM’s Louis B. Mayer cultivated Herbert Hoover’s friendship. Movie barons Jack and Harry Warner organized a star-studded campaign pageant for Franklin D. Roosevelt. And Frank Sinatra became a fixture of John F. Kennedy’s Camelot.

In his book about Hollywood and politics, “The Power and the Glitter” (Random House, 1992), author and Times National Political Correspondent Ronald Brownstein wrote that historically, the shared attraction of Hollywood and Washington could be reduced to a simple equation: “Celebrities looked to politicians to validate them as part of the company of serious men and women; politicians looked to celebrities to validate them as part of the company of the famous.”

But in recent years, the Hollywood-Washington tango has become most of all a dance for money. The Hollywood Women’s Political Committee, skilled at raising small sums from many contributors, felt increasingly outgunned in the face of escalating campaign costs. The new reality was that fewer and fewer politicians the committee supported accepted PAC money. And the political parties were going after big contributors who thought nothing of writing out checks for $100,000 at a pop.

The importance of money at the national level was never more impressed upon committee members than last fall, when the group agreed to co-host a fund-raiser for Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

In the past, the committee had priced its presidential fund-raisers at $1,000 per person and $2,500 for a patron. That all changed with the Green Acres event, at which Streisand and Don Henley and the Eagles performed.

Sources close to the event said party fund-raisers put it to them bluntly: Either hike the ticket prices or Clinton would not be delivered.

“They felt we had undercharged,” recalled one source who helped organize the event. “They kept saying, ‘You’re leaving money on the table.’ What is so sick about it is we represented the little people in town. To the rest of the country, this was a lot of money, but there were a lot of people who didn’t go because of the ticket prices.”

As a result of the pressure, the cheapest ticket prices were boosted to $2,500 and the top price was $25,000 per couple for those wishing to be included at a smaller dinner with the Clintons.

The event raised more than $4 million for the DNC, but it left a bitter taste for some participants.

A split developed within the women’s committee when some members questioned how the group could in good conscience hand over $4 million after Clinton had signed the controversial welfare reform bill. But what could they do? others replied. The invitations had already gone out printed with the committee’s name.

“You wanted to make a statement about it, but how do you make a statement when you say, ‘Here, Mr. President. Here’s $4 million, but we’re mad at you because of this welfare reform thing,” Bergthold said.

“The attendance wasn’t 1,200 [as hoped for], it was 800, but we made a lot more money,” she added. “It was the largest Democratic fund-raiser in Los Angeles history, but there were a lot of people who we would have liked to have been there who didn’t go.”

Bergthold said the committee didn’t see fund-raisers as simple vehicles for collecting money, but a method of building political capital by energizing the Hollywood community to vote, support other candidates and become engaged on issues.

A few committee members even refused to buy tickets to their own gala. Entertainment attorney Susan Grode declined to state her reasons for not attending except to say, “I chose not to.”

Reflecting on the influence of money in politics today, Grode said: “The things that we prize most about democracy no longer have become accessible to average citizens.”

Party defenders say that the DNC had no alternative but to raise vast sums of “soft money” to avert losing the White House, a very real prospect after the GOP swept to power in Congress in 1994. This “soft money” can only be used for party-building activities such as voter registration drives. There is no limit on the amount of soft money individuals can give, but they can donate no more than $1,000 to a candidate each election.

The money raised by candidates in the 1995-96 cycle was staggering. The Federal Election Commission recently concluded that congressional candidates alone raised $790.5 million and spent $765.3 million, a 20% increase in receipts and 12% increase in expenditures from the presidential cycle of 1991-92.

In a computer study conducted last year by the Campaign Study Group of Springfield, Va., The Times found that the Southern California-based entertainment industry contributed at least $23.5 million to the major political parties, political action committees and candidates running for federal office from 1991 to mid-1996.

A sizable portion of Hollywood’s PAC money comes from multinational corporations that run today’s movie, TV and recording empires. This business side of Hollywood, as opposed to the predominantly liberal creative side, concentrates on pocketbook issues such as trade, regulation and copyrights and contributes to both Democrats and Republicans.

Hollywood has come under increasing attack from politicians of both parties for allegedly poisoning the nation’s culture with high doses of violence and sex in films, TV shows and rap recordings. Congress has mandated that TVs come with “V-chips” so parents can prevent their children from seeing violent shows, pressured broadcasters to institute a ratings system and called for a TV “family hour.”

Ironically, this bipartisan criticism comes at a time when the creative community feels it is being constantly hit on by politicians for campaign donations.

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A major factor in the Hollywood Women’s Committee’s decision to disband was finding candidates it could enthusiastically support. A case in point was Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), whom some members heartily endorsed while others regarded as barely a Democrat.

“There were a lot of reasons not to love her,” one member said, “but we supported her because of [her stand on] choice.”

Few politicians have feasted on Hollywood’s largess as has Feinstein, whose various campaigns received nearly $600,000 between 1991 and mid-1996. But Feinstein often took independent stands (she supports the death penalty) that were at odds with some on the political left.

At the same time, candidates that the committee truly loved such as Sens. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), did not accept PAC money.

So, on Saturday morning, April 12, in the backyard garden of songwriter Marilyn Bergman’s Beverly Hills home, the leaders of the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee made the decision to disband. Ironically, it was the same setting where the group was born 13 years before.

As tears flowed, it was decided that they should immediately telephone Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). The committee had always supported Boxer, who faces a tough reelection battle in 1998.

“Her initial reaction [to the news] was fear,” recalled one member familiar with the conversation. “She is in the fight of her life. But when we read her our statement [about campaign finance reform], she said, ‘Wow, it’s a great statement.’ She knew where we had been on this issue. She certainly is supportive of campaign finance reform, but she takes PAC money.”

The irony is that Boxer, a liberal who favors abortion rights, is exactly the type of candidate that the committee was formed to keep in office.

The reality for Boxer--and other candidates who traverse the Hollywood fund-raising circuit--is that although she can certainly count on individual members to support her reelection, the committee itself will no longer be around to provide a convenient stopping off point for their fund-raising activities.

Before supporting any candidate, the committee had always assessed how each politician stood on the group’s core beliefs, but the overriding issue for any candidate had to be: were they in favor of abortion rights?

That prerequisite led the group into choppy seas. Heated exchanges took place inside the 22-member policy committee, for example, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ Senate confirmation vote. Some members believed that senators who voted to confirm Thomas no longer aligned themselves with the committee’s 100% abortion-rights structure.

Bergthold said the committee decided to cut off funding to Democrats who supported Thomas, even those who had long been supported by the Hollywood group.

Former Sen. Wyche Fowler (D-Ga.) had been a longtime friend of the committee and knew many members personally. But the group refused to give him a campaign contribution after he endorsed Thomas, even though Fowler was engaged in the political fight of his life. Fowler was defeated in 1992.

The committee also refused to support Sen. Charles Robb (D-Va.) in his race against Oliver North in 1992 because Robb voted for Thomas. “That was an ugly one because the choices were so clear,” Bergthold recalled. “But we had set ourselves up. He was no longer 100% pro-choice in our book.”

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While the committee had debated closing down since 1994, members decided to press ahead with the 1996 elections in an attempt to take back the House. There were about three dozen House seats that Republicans had won by less than 5% in 1994, Bergthold said, and the committee believed that by targeting 19 seats, Democrats could triumph.

“Republicans poured a ton of money into those districts,” Bergthold recalled. “We tried to pour a ton of money into those districts, but on a good day it was 2-1 [in favor of the GOP] and on a bad day it was 3-to-1.

“When you looked at how much we were raising and yet still being outspent, it was clear it was spiraling out of control,” she added. “It wasn’t that the money that we were raising was going to beat anybody else, the rules being the rules, corporate PACS were always going to beat us no matter how dogged we were. We were sick of operating in a system that grew by leaps and bounds.”

Producer Sean Daniel, a longtime observer of politics and Hollywood, said he could see why the committee members are frustrated.

“I can certainly understand their frustration with fund-raising always dominating any other kind of political activity,” he said. “But that is never going to change and the committee’s ideological opponents are only going to redouble their efforts. I have to believe that the reshaping of the Democratic Party didn’t set well with them.”

From last September through March, the committee’s board continued to discuss the campaign reform issue.

When it became clear that members wanted to disband, they discussed the merits of becoming an issue advocacy group, but their attorneys scotched that idea, warning that if the committee turned itself into something else, it would face scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service.

The decision to disband does not mean that Hollywood has heard the last of these women. Bergthold, now a political consultant to producer Norman Lear, said something new could begin to evolve this fall, but exactly what that would be is still unclear. She insists it would not be another PAC.

One political source said that another PAC may one day be formed that would seek the involvement of both men and women in show business, but with a different agenda than the Hollywood committee had. Exactly who would join and when that would happen remains unclear.

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Despite all the complaints about money and politics, the fund-raising machine has not been turned off. From fancy Westside hotels to the homes of studio executives, politicians continue to arrive in search of campaign dollars. From presidential aspirants to senators to would-be governors and congressmen, the politicians are still streaming to Hollywood.

Vice President Al Gore has strong ties to Hollywood with John F. Cooke, executive vice president of corporate affairs at Disney, one of his key supporters in the entertainment community. Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), a possible rival to Gore for the Democratic presidential nomination, attended a recent fund-raiser at the home of director Rob Reiner.

Boxer, meanwhile, is holding a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser ($5,000 for a smaller, more exclusive dinner) Monday at the Beverly Hilton Hotel that Clinton is expected to attend.

Other senators who have made recent fund-raising stops are Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who attended a fund-raiser at the home of Disney’s Cooke and John Kerry (D-Mass.), who had a fund-raiser at the home of former Columbia / TriStar Pictures chief Mark Canton and his wife, Wendy Finerman, a producer of the film “Forrest Gump.”

Even Republicans are getting into the act. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) was recently feted at a $500-a-person reception co-hosted by Spielberg at DreamWorks. Specter had sought the fund-raiser after the influential subcommittee chairman championed a $1-million appropriation for the Shoah Visual History Foundation, which Spielberg created to document the histories of Holocaust victims.

Other out-of-town candidates who have made or will make fund-raising forays into Hollywood are Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.), who is likely to run for governor of Massachusetts, and Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Ted Mondale, the 39-year-old son of former Vice President Walter Mondale.

Clinton himself maintains his popularity with a wide segment of Hollywood, with Streisand a key backer. Kevin Costner changed his party registration last fall from Republican to “decline to state” after becoming a Clinton supporter.

It is still too early to see what impact the current disenchantment with campaign politics will have on Hollywood’s participation in the 1998 elections and beyond.

Some believe the political activism that energized the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee will transfer itself to an issue-oriented group, whatever that might be.

The entertainment community is awash in such groups from environmental organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Media Assn. and American Oceans Campaign to organizations with other targeted interests such as Artists for a New South Africa, the Coalition for Free Expression, the L.A. chapter of Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, Death Penalty Focus and Human Rights Watch.

Two other influential groups that deal with issues of the day and mobilize support for various causes are the Creative Coalition, headed by actor Alec Baldwin, and the Hollywood Policy Center.

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But aside from the major corporations that run today’s movie, television and recording empires, nothing else quite mirrors the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee. And with the committee’s sudden demise, many are wondering if something else would rise to take its place.

“It’s a whole new world,” said David Horowitz, president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and a frequent critic of what he sees as Hollywood’s blind loyalty to liberalism.

“The Republicans won [Congress] twice, Clinton is going up in flames, the whole country has shifted and the Hollywood Women’s Political Committee committed suicide in protest,” Horowitz said with a laugh.

However, some members say they have no plans to retreat.

“I can understand why people get discouraged,” said Adena Smith. “But I know that within my circle of friends, both inside and outside the organization, we still feel like there are many wonderful things to be done.”