Site Presented By
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Howard Dean took an early lead in entertainment-industry fundraising, but Wes Clark is making a run among the moguls and stars who backed Bill Clinton.
Dec 2, 2003 | In these early days of the presidential primary season, it's all very nice to meet the people. Here's Joe Lieberman talking with folks at Lindy's Diner in Keene, N.H. There's John Edwards getting an earful from a voter outside a coffee shop in Waukee, Iowa.
But much as the candidates will say how they love getting to know every mom and every pop in every no-account town in New Hampshire -- and much as Howard Dean will brag about visiting every single one of Iowa's 99 counties -- what you really want if you're running for president is something a little more glamorous, a lot more lucrative, and about a million miles away from the closest cornfield or cow.
You want a private get-acquainted lunch at Dreamworks with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg. You want Rob Reiner to like you and write you a check and introduce you to his friends. You want Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez and a bunch of other L.A. swells to pay $2,000 apiece to hear the Eagles -- yes, the Eagles -- play "Hotel California" in a tent and then have dinner with you afterward.
What you really want is to be Bill Clinton.
The California primary is three months off, but the race for the hearts and minds and money of Hollywood is well underway. Howard Dean has raised more than a half a million dollars from actors, directors, musicians and others in the entertainment industry already, and latecomer Wes Clark is making up for lost time fast. Clark announced his candidacy on Sept. 17; by the close of the Federal Election Commission reporting period on Sept. 30, he had raised $105,000 from the entertainment industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and he has raised hundreds of thousands more since.
Six-figure numbers may not seem like much in the moneyed worlds of Hollywood and Washington. Since 1990, the entertainment industry has pumped more than $100 million into federal elections on behalf of Democrats -- about the same amount that the oil and gas industry has given to Republicans over the same period of time. Hollywood hasn't given anything like that kind of money to any Democrat yet this year. But it's early in the 2004 presidential race -- too early for the millions upon millions of dollars of Hollywood "soft money" that will find their way into the system regardless of how the Supreme Court rules on McCain-Feingold -- and nine Democratic candidates are dividing the cash that's already in. Once a clear front-runner emerges, and once all those relatively paltry $2,000 contributions give way to blockbuster fundraisers and a flood of "soft money," politically active entertainers say that Hollywood will be a major force in helping Democrats try to defeat George W. Bush.
"At the end of the day, the industry will coalesce like we always do," says Reiner, who played Archie Bunker's son-in-law on "All in the Family" and who directed films including "When Harry Met Sally," "Misery" and "The American President" before signing on as the co-chair of Howard Dean's California campaign. "It's more fractured now than it was during the Clinton era because Clinton was like a rock star. People here like stars. They thought Wesley Clark could be a movie star. They thought initially that John Edwards would be the movie star. But at the end of the day, we will coalesce."
If Reiner's comments sound like a not so thinly veiled stab at Wes Clark -- writing him off as a has-been before he ever was, lumping him together with a never-quite-caught-fire candidate like John Edwards -- well, if they sound like that, they probably are. With John Kerry's campaign stumbling, the Hollywood primary has suddenly become a Dean-vs.-Clark matchup, with Rep. Dick Gephardt making a surprisingly strong show of fundraising as the unexciting understudy. And for all the talk about coalescing and coming together and needing -- really needing -- to beat Bush, the partisans backing the former Vermont governor and the retired Army general aren't at all reticent to engage in a little intramural bashing.
Robin Williams, Helen Hunt, Rene Russo, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Paul Newman and a host of other Hollywood types have given money to Dean. And while Clark is picking up endorsements and contributions quickly, Reiner ascribes a certain "flavor of the week" quality to his Hollywood support. Some of the people who "jumped on the Clark bandwagon," he says, have done so "without doing their due diligence first." He points in particular to Norman Lear, the legendary television producer who founded People for the American Way. Lear initially backed Dean -- he gave $2,000 to his campaign in April -- then jumped ship when Clark officially entered the race in September.
Lear is a fierce defender of First Amendment rights, and in Clark he appeared to have found a useful ally -- a soldier whose sharp critiques of the Iraq War have undercut any notion that you can't be a patriot and a protester at the same time. But Reiner said that Lear ought to feel -- and is feeling -- some concern after Clark said last month that he would support a constitutional amendment banning the burning of the American flag.
"I know Norman is upset about that, and he's going to talk to Clark about it," Reiner said. "It's like if [pro-choice advocate] Kate Michelman supported a candidate and then found out he was pro-life. This is Norman's big issue, First Amendment rights and freedom of speech and all that."
Attempts to reach Lear were unsuccessful. A source close to him said that he was "disappointed" by Clark's endorsement of the flag-burning amendment but will not withdraw his support over the issue. "He thinks Clark has the best shot at beating Bush," the source said, "and he has his eyes on that."
A lot of Clark's Hollywood supporters apparently feel the same way.
Ask Hard Rock Cafe impresario Peter Morton what appeals to him about Wes Clark, and he'll say "Everything." Then he'll tell you -- even though you didn't ask -- why Howard Dean can't win. "I just think that Dean will take down the Democratic Party like Dukakis did," Morton told Salon last week. "I don't think the American public is ready to elect a Northeastern liberal. Dean's a good man. I respect him. But at the end of the day, I don't think he can win."
Morton met Clark not long before he announced his candidacy. He and Jordan Kerner, who produced "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "Inspector Gadget," helped introduce Clark around Hollywood, putting him face to face with politically active celebrities like Lear and Steven Tisch, executive producer of the movie "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels." Last month, Morton helped Clark raise about $350,000 by hosting a benefit concert featuring the Eagles in a tent set up outside one of his restaurants.
Clark left the fundraiser a little early, reportedly to attend a much smaller dinner with Madonna. It's not known yet whether the Material Mom will endorse Clark, but plenty of other celebrities are now on board with him. Ted Danson and his wife, activist actress Mary Steenburgen, have signed on, as has music producer Irving Azoff. And although Laurie and Larry David and Barbra Streisand have each written checks to several Democratic candidates, they're all said to be leaning toward Clark.
"In the last six weeks, Clark has pulled together a phenomenal amount of support," said a political advisor to several Hollywood names who are still deciding where to lend their support. "When he has met with people here, he has come across as politically very honest and straightforward. He didn't come across like a politician. He was very comfortable in his skin and very smart. There are so many politicians who think we want them to tell us what we want to hear, and Clark wasn't obsequious like that."
