McAuliffe seeks Clinton believers

Listen up! Terry McAuliffe wants a hand count.

“Who’s with Hillary?” he asks a small gathering of ultra-power brokers assembled for a dinner party at media mogul Haim Saban’s palatial Beverly Hills estate Sunday evening. “Come on!” he says.

“Pulp Fiction” producer Lawrence Bender, brave soul, is the only one to keep his hand down: “I’m with Obama.”

“Ah,” says McAuliffe, chairman of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) presidential campaign. He’s on a roll, funny and charming and deadly serious.

“This isn’t the John Kerry campaign,” he quips. “You are either with us or you’re against us.”

Call it a hard sell and humor mixed with a heavy dose of better-watch-out. McAuliffe is in town this week, promoting his book, “What a Party!” His message is clear: Get off the fence, you Hollywood doubters.

Supporting multiple candidates? “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

He has come back to preach the old-time religion, with the sort of zeal that made him rich on Wall Street, a friend of the Clintons and one of the Democratic party’s top strategists. (Hillary Rodham Clinton calls him the man whose energy could “light up a city.”)

“This guy has the most charming chutzpah of anyone I know,” said Clinton-supporter Saban, who hosted an outdoor reception for 200 people and then a dinner party for 20 in McAuliffe’s honor.

McAuliffe explains it this way in his book: “You’ve got to keep people laughing, even when you’re also hoping to make them think -- and inspire them to action.”

Indeed, the Hollywood crowd finds him captivating. They’ve known him for years, first in the Clinton administration as a tireless liaison with the entertainment industry and then at the Democratic National Committee, where he helped cultivate donors.

“He’s a walking, talking energy machine,” said Hollywood political consultant Noah Mamet.

But this is a tough crowd, which also happens to be enamored with the candidacies of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and a list of others at the moment. Will they buy his “Hillary only” message?

Probably not, at least not for a while, says Mamet.

“It’s a really good field,” said Mamet, who mingled at the outdoor reception. “Why not give to multiple candidates?”

Ridiculous, says McAuliffe, clearly in his element at the Saban event.

Among those attending were former Paramount head Sherry Lansing, her director-husband William Friedkin, producer Bud Yorkin, Chad Griffin (political consultant to Rob Reiner and Stephen Bing), former Clinton administration aide John Emerson and state Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima).

“Bill Clinton might forgive you if you give to other candidates,” McAuliffe teases guest Nicole Avant, the daughter of the mega-political Clarence Avant, music industry guru. “But not Hillary. No way. She’s tough.”

Avant smiles coyly. She won’t say whom she supports.

“How are you ever going to get the Paris ambassadorship?” McAuliffe continues. “Get on board.”

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tina.daunt@latimes.com