Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry tapped Hollywood for money this week, raising several million dollars and continuing the traditional alliance between celebrities and Democratic candidates.
The guest list for a Beverly Hills event Tuesday, which raised $3.2 million for Mr. Kerry and another $1 million for the Democratic National Committee, reportedly included Barbra Streisand, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Costner, Meg Ryan, Steven Spielberg and Warren Beatty. Singer James Taylor performed a short concert.
Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center and associate dean of the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication, said celebrity endorsements serve more than just a fund-raising purpose.
“It always matters in terms of attention, and that’s an important aspect of any endorsement,” he said. “It gets you to write an article. And campaigns they live on their ability to earn free media, because you can’t just buy all the attention you want.”
He also said a celebrity can reach an audience the candidate cannot and give him credibility he couldn’t earn on his own.
“For big fans of ’Friends,’ if Jennifer Aniston likes him, maybe he’s not the demon the Bush campaign is portraying him as,” Mr. Kaplan said.
But Republicans say they can use the endorsements as well.
Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, which strives to elect conservatives to public office, said the Hollywood support will show voters that Mr. Kerry has always lived in privileged circles.
“This is a guy who’s lived in mansions his whole life,” Mr. Moore said. “The fact that his circle of friends and supporters is all rich trial lawyers and Hollywood jet-setters only reinforces that message that this is a man who doesn’t understand what it is to be a working man,” he said.
During the Democratic primary in Iowa this year, Mr. Moore’s group ran a television ad against Howard Dean, in which a couple says Mr. Dean should take his “body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs.”
“The reason that ad hurt Dean was that it reinforced a message that was lingering in the back of a lot of voters’ minds, which is that he was too left-wing to be taken seriously,” Mr. Moore said, adding that Mr. Kerry is susceptible to the same message.
Mr. Kaplan said Republicans’ ability to make that case will probably moot whatever advantage a Democrat gains from an endorsement.
“I think, like everything else in American politics, it’s split right down the middle,” he said.
One thing that’s not split is the amount of help Hollywood gives the parties.
From 1995 through 2002, when so-called “soft money” contributions to national political party committees became illegal, Democrats raised $48.6 million in soft money from the entertainment and media industry, according to Common Cause, a campaign-finance watchdog group. Republicans, meanwhile, raised $17 million over the same period from that industry.
As for this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Mr. Kerry had raised $539,025 from the TV-music-movie industry prior to Tuesday’s event, marking it as the sixth-highest industry total for him. By contrast, that industry did not rank among the top 20 of Mr. Bush’s donors.
A poll taken in January by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found individual endorsements rarely make much of a difference. The survey also found that entertainers rank low among the individuals who do make a difference.
Asked what an endorsement by former President Bill Clinton would mean, 19 percent said they would be more likely to vote for the candidate, while 19 percent said they would be less likely. “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno’s endorsement, though, would only encourage 3 percent to vote for a candidate, while it would be considered negative for 10 percent of those surveyed.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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