Hillary doubles Obama sum in Hollywood fund-raiser

Los Angeles, March 27: Demonstrating her top billing on Hollywood's political money trail, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton collected a whopping 2.6 million dollars at a weekend fund-raiser for her 2008 White House bid, organizers said. The tally from Saturday's star-studded affair doubled the amount brought in by rival Democratic Sen Barack Obama at a similar event last month and organizers yesterday said they believe it to be the single-biggest Hollywood fund-raiser for a presidential candidate. Their claim of a record could not be immediately verified.

About 700 invitees paid 2,300 dollars each to dine with Clinton at the Beverly Hills estate of supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, a longtime supporter of the New York senator and her husband, former US President Bill Clinton, according to political consultant Noah Mamet, who co-chaired the event.

About 250 of those guests coughed up an additional 2,300 dollars per person to attend a pre-dinner VIP reception where the senator from New York posed with donors for photographs, organizers said.

Attendees included singer-actress Barbra Streisand and her husband, actor James Brolin; actor Ted Danson; ''American Idol'' judge Paula Abdul; Motown founder Berry Gordy and a host of media industry executives.

A day earlier, Hollywood power lawyer Skip Brittenham and his wife, actress Heather Thomas, hosted a 2,300 dollars per person fund-raiser for Democrat John Edwards, but there was no immediate word on how much that event collected.

The Edwards event came a day after the former North Carolina senator announced he would soldier on with his campaign despite learning that his wife, Elizabeth, had suffered a recurrence of cancer.

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner in a presidential race expected to be the costliest ever, raised between 0,000 and 900,000 dollars from her last West Coast fund-raising event, also hosted by Burkle, during her Senate re-election campaign.

Obama of Illinois, her chief rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, last month raised 1.3 million dollars from a 2,300 dollars-per-person reception hosted on his behalf by DreamWorks founders Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Hollywood has long played a leading role as a source of cash for Democrats seeking national office. The movie, TV and music industries gave a combined 33.1 million dollars to federal candidates during the 2004 election cycle, mostly to Democrats, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics.

Reuters