Many of those crowded into Huffington's living room were clearly ready to be swept up into something big. Among those gathered were friends and relatives with Greek accents every bit as thick as Huffington's (she is the daughter of a Greek newspaper publisher), environmentalists, drug policy reformers, civil rights activists, antiwar veterans and Hollywood money-tree shakers. Holding a copy of Joseph Palermo's book on Bobby Kennedy's political evolution, "In His Own Right," which contains a chapter on Kennedy's 1968 California primary campaign, Huffington invoked that legendary race, which still has a sacred meaning for the state's baby boomers. "Bobby was also attacked as a party splitter by the LBJ wing," she observed. "But he won the primary by linking progressive groups like the farmworkers with Hollywood money."

Hollywood was well represented at the Sunday gathering, with Barbra Streisand's political consigliere, Marge Tabankin; Norman Lear aide Lara Bergthold; documentary filmmaker R.J. Cutler ("The War Room"), who is now producing a political reality TV show for Fox that will allow viewers to pick their favorite presidential fresh face; and producer Julie Bergman ("The Fabulous Baker Boys," "Washington Square"), among others. Warren Beatty has also been offering Huffington advice.

But even Huffington cannot count on wresting Hollywood away from Davis. Indeed, some of the entertainment industry friends she gathered in her home Sunday expressed concerns about her deflecting energy from the effort to beat the recall, which one characterized as "little different than a Third World coup engineered by Republicans." The national Democratic Party is promising a big campaign to support Davis, with a dream team of political stars, including both Clintons, dispatched to make the case that the recall is just a replay of impeachment and the Florida debacle -- the sore-loser ploy of Republicans who play nasty when they can't win elections fair and square.

And some friends at the Sunday gathering worried about Huffington herself, and whether her stature as a political commentator would be diminished if she ran a losing race in which she will surely be ridiculed by the media as well as by her political opponents. One Republican strategist told Salon last week: "We've talked about Huffington more as a joke than anything else. With Arnold and Arianna, nobody would understand what either of them is saying."

Nor is it certain Huffington can move beyond her glittery base. Two veteran Latino activists, Joe Benitez and Joe Sanchez, attended the meeting, and both of them told Huffington she had no chance of winning unless she built a following in the state's Latino and black communities. Van Jones, an African-American activist from San Francisco who has led a "Books Not Bars" campaign to shift state funds from prisons to schools, kicked off the draft Huffington movement with a new Web site and has signed on to run her grass-roots campaign. Environmentalist Julia Butterfly Hill, the young woman who protected an ancient California redwood from loggers by refusing to move from its limbs, also attended Sunday's meeting. She told Huffington that she was inspired by her "creativity and humor," reminding the group that "we need to put the party back in party politics" as well as widen the political dialogue beyond "how many bombs should we drop and how many people should we throw in prison."

Huffington told the gathering that she has also won key Green Party support, with Peter Camejo, the party's recall candidate, agreeing to drop out and back her after she announces. "He told me that now is the time for the Green Party to be part of a winning campaign to change the political structure." Camejo won 5 percent of the vote running against Davis last year, and with some analysts predicting the next governor could be elected with a mere 20 percent of the vote, that's a significant base for Huffington.

Asked about her standing with gays, Huffington quipped, "My husband is [gay]," to a burst of laughter from the group. Adding to the carnival aspects of what the national media, always eager to lampoon California, is already billing as the political freak show of the year, was the announcement by Huffington's ex, Michael, that he too was seriously considering throwing his hat in the ring. A former Republican congressman turned Hollywood producer, Michael Huffington spent a record $30 million of his oil fortune in a losing 1994 Senate race against Feinstein, before divorcing Arianna and announcing he was gay. Huffington, who lives just a few blocks from Arianna in Brentwood, claimed that his decision to take out filing papers on Friday had nothing to do with his ex-wife's plans. But their 12-year-old daughter reacted negatively, said Arianna with a laugh on Sunday: "She told him, 'Don't run, Daddy, you have no base.'"

Huffington said she was not concerned about her ex's possible challenge, which Republican strategist Dan Schnur is already gleefully billing as "Michael and Arianna -- the hit new reality show of the fall." At the least, said Huffington, it will assure those progressive voters who remain skeptical about her political evolution that she has genuinely changed her views since her married days: "It will make clear the two Huffingtons are not on the same side of anything."

Zimmerman estimates that Huffington's race, a two-month burst to the Oct. 7 finish line, will cost about $10 million to compete effectively in the state's vast media market. Much of this, he predicts, can be raised on the Internet, in the manner pioneered by groups like MoveOn.org, with whom he has worked. Zimmerman told the Sunday gathering that one progressive group he worked with made a whopping $220,000 in three hours after putting its commercial on the Web. "But this campaign will be won primarily with passion, not money," he said. "If Arianna succeeds, you'll see a transformation of California's politics on the order of what Hiram Johnson accomplished when he was elected governor in 1910, driving the Southern Pacific railroad lobby from the halls of the Capitol and turning California into a beacon of progressivism for years."

Huffington told the group she will announce her final decision sometime next week, before the Aug. 9 filing date. "I want to wait just a few days to see if any political reasons emerge for me not to run" (read: a last-minute entry by Feinstein). But she has clearly girded herself for the rigors of a campaign. "I've always been a risk-taker, except with investments," she told the Sunday gathering. "I'm very comfortable with uncertainty."

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