Let the Parties Begin--and Bring a Checkbook

Where are the “real” parties? This is the question. This is, in fact, the only question as the Democratic National Convention lands, fully choreographed by now, in Los Angeles. By cell phone and e-mail, by fax and land line, the plea has ricocheted since the Republicans left Philadelphia.

“Are you going to any parties?” the conversation starts, and then, “No--I mean real parties.” It is understood in these circles that there is a difference.

It was understood, for example, that Saturday’s host committee feast for 15,000 reporters and delegates in downtown Los Angeles was not one of the “real” parties. Nevermind the 800 waiters, the four buffets, the 23,000 pieces of sushi, 12,000 beef taquitos, 6,000 barbecued pulled-pork sandwiches. It may have been catered by chef Joachim Splichal’s Patina, but for the connoisseurs, it was too proletarian, too zoo-ey. The “real” gig, the glamour gig, was said to be in Mandeville Canyon at the Ken Roberts estate.

There, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton and their host, Stan Lee, the comic book magnate, were hobnobbing with a thousand or so good friends. It was a “gala.” It had live music and celebrities. Still, one veteran lobbyist explained, “These things with a thousand people are fine when you start out, but the real parties are at private homes with just a few people and face time.” Also, he noted, real parties tend to be fun and cool and alive with the unexpected. This party had an entertainment lineup straight outta the easy-listenin’ archives: Michael Bolton. Paul Anka. Cher.

There was, however, this other party-within-the-party. “Very limited seating,” the RSVP cards said. A $25,000 contribution to Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign bought two VIP tickets. Whether a $25,000 plate of fish with a roomful of rich strangers and two tuckered-out politicians constituted a “real” party, however, was anybody’s guess.

It is said that there was a time when the political parties truly partied. This, apparently, was before that giant sucking sound turned out to be the whoosh of big money Hoovering the last speck of joy out of democracy. This week, for every merry reunion of pols and/or pundits, there’s a fistful of closed-door dates that promise to be every bit as grinding and manipulative as what the home audience will see on TV.

“It’s fund-raising, fund-raising, fund-raising,” L.A. lobbyist Joe Cerrell chuckled knowingly the other day, paging through the week’s 20-page-plus party schedule. As it was in Philadelphia, he and others note, the festivities here have been hijacked more nakedly than ever by the jones for moola, cash, dinero, long green.

If money is the mother’s milk of “the process,” as the insiders like to call it, then Greater Los Angeles this week is the nation’s 4,083-square-mile political milking machine.

*

“It’s awful. Awful. And getting worse,” says Brentwood Democrat Stanley Sheinbaum, who figures he’s received three dozen invitations with little cards attached asking, on average, for $250 to $5,000. “The little folk are never heard from, and so the various candidates don’t feel responsive to them.”

There are maybe 100 convention parties a day around Los Angeles this week. Four out of five are closed. The Democratic National Convention Committee calendar, which tracks these events, is stamped “confidential.” This may be because conventions tend to feel like family reunions--and therefore private--to the political stalwarts who attend them. Or it may be because it’s one thing to hear sermons on C-SPAN about soft money and special favors, and something else entirely to view the extraction machinery at work.

Here is just a fraction of what’s happening today in the party of working people and welfare mothers:

As you read this, a $100,000-a-sponsorship Governor’s Cup golf tournament will be teeing off at the Riviera Country Club and a $100,000-a-couple brunch for the Clinton Library is convening at Barbra Streisand’s Malibu compound. Bank of America is feeding the Congressional Black Caucus at the top of a downtown high-rise. DaimlerChrysler and the United Auto Workers are preparing to salute the mayor of Detroit.

Dr. Steven Teitelbaum, a Westside plastic surgeon and staunch Democrat, is planning to throw open his office for a $1,000-a-person fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton. (“Terrific face,” one invitee mused of the guest of honor. “And it hasn’t been done. I could tell.”) Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), if the schedule holds, is planning to join Entertainment Finance Associates for cocktails at tony Bar Fly. Armani will host a “shopping opportunity” for selected Democrats at its Rodeo Drive store.

The producers of “West Wing” will be entertaining “folks from the White House” who helped with the TV show. As the sun sets, the Conga Room, which is planning to open a second location soon in Las Vegas, will be underwriting a party for the Nevada delegates. The law firm of Manatt Phelps & Phillips will co-host a private dinner for U.S. ambassadors--Charles Manatt himself among them--at Pasadena’s Ritz-Carlton. AT&T; is slated to take Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) to the House of Blues. This will be on the heels of the AT&T; salute to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) at the Peninsula Beverly Hills. Meanwhile, Sen. Dianne Feinstein will be the special guest at the home of Franklin Mint owner Stewart Resnick for a private banquet honoring--who else?--those who give generously in politics.

This is just one day’s sampler of parties and the politicians who work them. It doesn’t include the Streisand concert Thursday night at the Shrine ($1,000 per ticket, $50,000 to hang out with Al Gore afterward as an official co-chair). Or the $250-a-head invitation the other night to “Kick Off the Convention with Congressman Xavier Becerra” and President Clinton, who clearly felt Becerra’s pain at having to run simultaneously for reelection and for mayor of Los Angeles.

Or the $250-to-$5,000-a-head mixer two days ago at the Pacific Palisades home of entertainment executive Ted Harbert featuring U.S. Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the leading House Democrat. Or the dinner at billionaire donor Ron Burkle’s mansion, the guest list of which is controlled by Gov. Gray Davis, fundmeister extraordinaire.

Or the little gatherings at the other billionaire donors’ houses, from David Geffen to Gary Winnick, just so no large benefactor feels deprived of eye contact. Or the festive “Sherman convention package” offered by Brad Sherman, the San Fernando Valley congressman, who, to appease both party and backers, has offered a deal involving sky-box access, credentials and “VIP hospitality” for “$7,500 personal or $12,500 in corporate funds per person, payable to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.” This is not to be confused with Sherman’s $1,000-a-head reception Tuesday featuring a famous yet-to-be-named Clintonite.

The machine pounds on like this, event after event, off-camera and in private, to the point that some Democrats have groused that the din of rattling cups is stealing the thunder of their presumptive presidential nominee. There are fund-raisers for the state party, for the national party, for the House campaign kitty and for that of the Senate, for Latino voter registration, for the Clintons, for local politicians of every permutation, for causes inside and outside this state.

It is understood in these circles, however, that, as the Valley’s Sherman put it, “the Republicans aren’t on vacation.” By the end of the GOP convention, one of the Republican Party’s own senior officials had dubbed the Philadelphia shakedown “the biggest orgy of hedonism in the history of politics.” There was no way to verify this, because so much of that orgy, like so much of this one, required that “real” participants be on the guest list.