ASHINGTON - Democratic fund-raiser Terry McAuliffe has one regret about the gala tribute he is heading tonight for his close friend Bill Clinton.
''I wish we had gotten RFK stadium,'' he said of the old football stadium here named for Robert F. Kennedy.
The tribute to President Clinton at the smaller MCI sports arena sold out a week ago, forcing about 2,500 to be turned away from the concert and barbecue expected to draw 12,000 people and raise $26 million for Democratic candidates. It is being billed as the largest political fund-raiser ever held.
That figure, if it holds, would eclipse the previous record for a political fund-raiser, set last month when Republicans held a $21.3 million salute to their presumptive presidential nominee, Texas Governor George W. Bush.
At the tribute, Clinton will be joined by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and his wife, Tipper, all of whom will speak. Singers and musicians Stevie Wonder, Lenny Kravitz, LeAnn Rimes, and Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish will perform, along with comedian Robin Williams.
While most guests will pay $50 to see the concert, people who raised or paid at least $500,000 and those who raised or paid at least $250,000 get to have dinner with Clinton the night before. There are about two dozen people in each of those categories. In addition to a private reception, they get the best seats in the house, near the presidential head table. The half-million-dollar contributors include Internet entrepreneur Vinod Gupta and S. Daniel Abraham, chairman of Slim-Fast Foods Co.
Jenny Backus, press secretary for the Democratic National Committee, described the event as part revival meeting, part pep rally.
McAuliffe said the event is not only to raise money but to ''get people excited and jazzed up for the general election.''
Though higher-paying donors will get perks, the $50 ticket-holders will not. Backus and McAuliffe said the event's theme of barbecue and blue jeans was a sharp contrast to the Republican's more formal party for Bush that drew 1,500 people last month to the D.C. Armory. ''We don't want to sit down at a black-tie dinner and eat goat cheese,'' Backus said.
The Republican National Committee's spokesman, Bill McCarthy, saw this contrast: ''Where Republicans were looking forward and embracing the future in our candidate, George W. Bush, Democrats are looking backward and trying to hold onto the past in saluting Bill Clinton's tainted presidency.''
While no one can deny Clinton's interest in seeing Gore succeed him, McAuliffe said the fund-raiser was also a tribute to a president who has been his party's biggest draw, logging thousands of miles on behalf of the Democratic Party and its candidates, and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for both over the last eight years.
Charles O. Jones, an emeritus political science professor at the University of Wisconsin, said fund-raising tributes were not unique to Clinton and the Democrats.
Former President Ronald Reagan was ''perfectly willing, as is Clinton, to have himself used to raise money for political and certainly for party purposes,'' he said. ''No Republican ever raised as much money and more willingly contributed himself in that way than Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton is the same way.''
