Hillary Clinton Raises a Cool Million Here
Bill helps himself to pulled pork and beans
By Carissa Katz
Former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton stayed mostly out of the public eye during their fund-raising weekend here, but on Sunday, after a breakfast at Susan and Alan Patricof’s house in East Hampton, Mr. Clinton stopped by Babette’s restaurant on Newtown Lane, top left, while Mrs. Clinton popped into a nearby clothing store. Russell Simmons, left, was one of the celebrity pancake flippers at the breakfast that morning.
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(08/09/2007) Last August, when Senator Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton made their annual fund-raising stop on the South Fork, Mrs. Clinton was running for re-election to the Senate and still dodging questions about her presidential aspirations.
Returning with her husband last weekend as the front-runner and leading fund-raiser in the Democratic race for the White House, she and her supporters took in upward of $1 million for her presidential campaign.
The amount is “extraordinary,” said Judith Hope, the former New York State Democratic chairwoman. Ms. Hope, a longtime friend of Mrs. Clinton’s, is heading up the New York Ambassadors for Hillary, “primarily New York women who get together in small groups and convert the unconverted.” There are more than 700 ambassadors and another 300 women on the waiting list, Ms. Hope said. “It’s a way to get New York women fully invested in her campaign.”
The Clintons’ weekend here was to begin with an early-evening party on Friday at Irene and Bernard Schwartz’s house in Southampton, followed by a barbecue at Morris and Jaci Reid’s house on Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton, but Mrs. Clinton was held up in Washington, D.C., on a Senate vote, so only Mr. Clinton was in attendance at those events.
All the parties were closed to the media, but there were published reports nonetheless in The New York Sun, The New York Daily News, and on FoxNews.com. And in the blogosphere there were plenty of reported Clinton sightings and commentary about the weekend’s parties.
One blog, backyardchef.blogspot. com, supposedly written by the chef hired to oversee the Friday night barbecue, included a photograph of the to-go plate prepared for Mr. Clinton. On it: pulled pork, corn, a cheeseburger, barbecued chicken, and beans.
On Saturday, Mr. Clinton headlined a late-afternoon fund-raiser for his wife at the Southampton house of Dottie Herman, the chief executive officer of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. “I had a very different audience,” Ms. Herman said. “They were not necessarily political people.”
“That was the other phenomenon, all the new people,” Ms. Hope said yesterday. “At every event there were brand-new faces and new donors.”
The party at Ms. Herman’s house had the highest ticket price of the weekend’s affairs — $2,000 per person or $3,000 per couple — because, Ms. Herman said Tuesday, she wanted it to be smaller and more intimate. Unlike Friday’s parties, Mrs. Clinton, who was in Chicago during the day Saturday, was not meant to attend. Instead, it was a chance for her husband to sing her praises and for his fans to open their wallets for her. “I wanted them to really know him,” Ms. Herman said.
It was a casual affair, with pecan pies and a jazz band playing, and was made unexpectedly more rustic by a two-hour power outage. “Ours will always be remembered as the totally ‘green’ party,” Ms. Herman said.
Between 75 and 100 guests attended, including many “that normally wouldn’t be Hillary supporters,” she said, admitting that she had also given money to former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
The event raised about $200,000 for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.
Mr. Clinton took questions from the crowd, talked about his wife’s presidential qualifications, and “took pictures with everybody,” Ms. Herman said. “He was good, he was charming. . . . People love him,” she said. “He’s a good ambassador for her.”
That evening, the former president and Mrs. Clinton met up in East Hampton for a star-studded cocktail party and dinner at Ronald O. Perelman’s estate, the Creeks.
Senator Charles Schumer spoke during the cocktail hour and Mr. Clinton introduced his wife for some brief comments. At the dinner, which was served buffet style, Senator Clinton spoke about energy policy, health care, the nation’s infrastructure, and the war in Iraq, according to Barbara Layton, who attended. “She said yes, we need to withdraw [from Iraq], but we need to be very careful about how we do it,” Ms. Layton said.
Ms. Layton, who owns Babette’s restaurant in East Hampton, is a big supporter of Mr. Clinton, a major Democratic fund-raiser, and was a senior adviser to Gen. Wesley Clark during his bid for president in 2004. She is supporting Mrs. Clinton this time “because I know that she will bring the best minds with her and the leadership that’s required. I’m confident she’ll get the nomination and I’m confident she will win.”
During the party at the Creeks “the energy was just so high,” Ms. Layton said. “There was great excitement in the air because there’s hope right now. During the Clinton years, you were able to dream. Anything was possible and I think that’s part of the excitement now.”
Ms. Layton, a member of the Hillary Clinton for President finance committee, said she has “encouraged the campaign to do more low-dollar events.” The lowest price for a ticket on the South Fork this weekend was $250 for a general reception before the V.I.P. party at the Reids’ house.
“People in the street need to be moved and inspired. I think it’s really, really important,” Ms. Layton said. “It’s a people’s election coming up right now. We’re at such a major crossroads right now. It’s probably the most important election of our lives.”
On Sunday morning, the Clintons were the guests of honor at a pancake breakfast catered by Turtle Crossing at Alan and Susan Patricof’s house on David’s Lane in East Hampton. Russell Simmons, the hip-hop mogul and founder of Def Jam records, and the comedian Chevy Chase took a turn flipping pancakes at the griddle, according to Blake Zeff, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton for President.
The breakfast was geared toward families. Tickets cost $1,000 per family.
Because it was a family event, Senator Clinton spoke about “children and how the issues affected children,” said Christopher Kelley, who attended while his son, Pierce, volunteered as a server. “She talked about a range of things, from health care to jobs to mortgages to Iraq to the current administration’s indifference to a lot of those concerns,” Mr. Kelley said.
After leaving the Patricofs, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton made their way to Newtown Lane in East Hampton. Mr. Clinton paid his customary visit to Ms. Layton’s restaurant, while Mrs. Clinton went a few doors down to the women’s clothing store Roberta Freymann.
According to Ms. Hope, Mrs. Clinton had admired someone’s outfit at the breakfast and, when told it was from Roberta Freymann, decided to drop in. The visit was so short, however, that salespeople said she did not have a chance to buy anything.
Mr. Clinton spent about 15 minutes at Babette’s. “Everybody in the restaurant knew” he would be coming, Ms. Layton said. “People were standing up on chairs, clapping.” It was a rare, if unscheduled, public appearance, and the restaurant patrons and staff were thrilled, Ms. Layton said. “I think he gets that reaction everywhere in the world.”
In 1998 Ms. Layton had a petition at Babette’s calling for an end to Kenneth Starr’s investigation of the president’s sexual misconduct and testimony about it, which the petition referred to as a “witch hunt.” She collected more than 10,000 signatures. Mr. Patricof saw the petition and personally delivered pages of signatures to the president. “No one was really speaking out for him,” Ms. Layton said Tuesday.
Apparently Mr. Clinton has never forgotten her support. He has stopped by her restaurant every August during his visits here. After he “worked the room” on Sunday, he went into the kitchen to say hello to the cooks, who were just then plating up some sweet-potato fries. He grabbed a few, Ms. Layton said, and then accepted an order for the road.
From there, the couple and their entourage headed to Sag Harbor for a private party at the house of Alma Brown, the widow of Ron Brown, the secretary of commerce during the Clinton administration’s first term. The event was not a fund-raiser.
“The Clintons have a lot of friends here and it was like a homecoming for them,” Ms. Hope said.
On Sunday afternoon, before leaving the East End, the Clintons visited the Big E Farm in Riverhead for a final event.
“It was a very successful weekend,” Mr. Zeff said. “Obviously we’re very proud of the support the senator has in her home state and throughout the country.”