ABCNEWS/NYT: The Giving Mood

L O S   A N G E L E S, Aug. 14 -- The party that closed a city block outside the restaurant Spago in Beverly Hills Sunday night was not a fund-raiser, Democratic officials contended today. Nor was the reception for big-money donors at the Giorgio Armani boutique, they asserted. Nor was the late-night dessert reception with President Clinton for the party’s most generous givers.

In Democratic fund-raising parlance, these were “donor servicing” or “donor maintenance” events. The distinction party leaders draw is that no money actually changed hands at these affairs; the checks have long since been cashed. But the events were intended to “energize” donors, encouraging them to make further donations and keep the money flowing.

Democratic Party officials have not staged the type of fund-raising gala here that the Republicans did in Philadelphia with a $10 million event headlined by Gov. George W. Bush.

Yet the Democratic Party has been as aggressive as the Republicans in using its convention to court its biggest donors, trying to put them in the mood to write new checks for the fall campaign. Supporters who contributed at least $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee were issued an 18-page “Convention 2000 Passport.” It lists four days and nights of invitation-only meals, receptions and intimate events with party leaders, including the president, Vice President Al Gore and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Still, party leaders here, aware of the criticism of overzealous fund raising that they received in 1996, are trying to play down the party’sfund raising at this convention.

Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National ConventionCommittee, said the convention was nothing like the Republican gathering two weeks ago.

“This is in stark contrast to what went on in Philadelphia, where theyturned the entire Republican convention into a fund-raiser,” McAuliffe said. “One night they bragged they raised $15 million. I mean,thank goodness the Liberty Bell was bolted down or they would have soldthat, too.”