OS ANGELES - Forget fun on the convention floor. After hours, the Democrats plan to put the ''party'' back in Democratic Party.
With no tension over the nomination, the real pressure is to snag invites to the A-list parties. The hosts are under pressure, too. They're competing to get Hollywood's top television and movie stars to turn out for this public gala or that private gathering.
It promises to be the ultimate nexus of entertainment and politics: Martin Sheen, who plays the president on TV, possibly mingling with Bill Clinton, who is the president. Hugh Hefner, who is a playboy, renting out his mansion for a fund-raiser filled with politicians whose careers depend on not getting caught playing around. Cher singing for her supper on what is otherwise known as the rubber chicken circuit.
''It's going to be a spectacle,'' said Hal Dash, president of Cerrell Associates, a Los Angeles-based campaign consulting firm. ''There will be bigger, better parties than ever before. No disrespect to Philadelphia, but nothing is going to match LA for glitz and glamour.''
The Republicans did have celebrity fans in Philadelphia, but their wattage hardly compared. After all, the West Coast entertainment industry has historically sided with the Democrats, raising millions of dollars for candidates and now planning to raise the roof during convention week.
While demonstrators will be stuck on the streets, every big-name restaurant and club around town seems to be booked. Valet parking companies are swamped with business requests. Caterers will be preparing canapes by the thousands. From trendy Spago to the hip Conga Room, from the normally staid J. Paul Getty Museum to the back lot of Paramount Pictures, convention-goers will gather wherever there is a table or a tent for rent. Mansions are being borrowed.
The city estimates that the week is worth $135 million or more in revenue, gatherings over breakfast, lunch, and dinner included. Local officials say that the chance to burnish the city's image after the recession, the riots, the earthquake, and other disasters is invaluable.
''This gives us a chance to realy show the city off,'' said Michael Collins, executive vice president of the LA Convention & Visitors Bureau. ''It says the center of the universe is LA, ground zero for the [Democratic] party's ambitions for the future.''
To the consternation of some party officials, the Hispanic Unity Caucus is holding its party to promote voter registration at the Playboy Mansion, although the notorious grotto will hold no bikini-clad models. The fund-raiser, which starts at 10 p.m., is expected to sell out, said Playboy Enterprises Inc. spokesman Bill Farley.
''It's business attire,'' he said. ''If there are any Playmates, they will only be used as greeters and hostesses. They will be dressed properly.''
Although the Democratic National Convention doesn't officially open until Aug. 14, the partying starts next Saturday night with some of the hottest tickets in town. And those are only for the confirmed events.
Rumors are rife of private soirees hosted by hyphenates such as actress-singer Jennifer Lopez and actor-director-political activist Rob Reiner. The Terminator himself, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger and his Democratic wife, Maria Shriver, are said to be hosting a dinner after Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg address the convention.
Corporations such as Sony and Chrysler are throwing parties, too, at Union Station and the Petersen Automotive Museum, respectively. Not surprisingly, state officials are also in on the act. Governor Gray Davis is having a ''California Welcome Party'' for 5,000 of his closest friends, as well as the 5,000 or so delegates, on the Paramount back lot. Like many of the events, the cost of Davis's more intimate, invitation-only lunch for Democratic governors later in the week will be covered by sponsors.
''There's a party every night, a whole week of politics and parties,'' said Ronald Nelson, senior sales manager at the House of Blues, where Herbie Hancock and Mary Wilson will take to the stage to entertain as many as 1,400 visiting Democrats at a time. ''The only thing I can say is that we have most of the A parties.''
That, of course, is not an uncommon boast in Los Angeles, even when Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic presidential candidate, is not starring in town. But in a development that may not bode well for his campaign, the ticket that everyone covets is to the pre-convention party for the Clintons.
According to Variety, an entertainment industry trade journal, scheduled performers at the farewell include Cher, Melissa Etheridge, Natalie Cole, Stevie Wonder, Michael Bolton, and others. The proceeds will go to Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign, with the first couple expected to drop in at several other exclusive fund-raisers before skipping town as the convention gets under way.
Gore will also get to bask in the celebrity limelight, on the convention floor and at an Aug. 17 Shrine Auditorium concert featuring Barbra Streisand. The top ticket price: reportedly $50,000 a couple - money that one political observer called ''pocket change'' in a town known for its big-spending ways. The price of other events ranges from zero to $100,000 that invitees are required to raise in donations.
''There's going to be a lot of ticket trading going on, people calling and saying, `If you get me into your party, I'll get you into mine,''' said Sean Burton, a Warner Bros. executive who is with a group for young progressive professionals called Democratic Leadership of the 21st Century. ''In the next couple weeks, people will really start to focus on it.''
The Los Angeles Times plans to mix fact and fiction at its bash for journalists hitting town to cover the convention. Billed as ''Media Insiders: Real and Celluloid,'' the party will throw together reporters and as-yet unidentified actors who play reporters.
For one week, at least, the politicians and the delegates who select the presidential nominee may at times outshine the stars themselves.
LA Convention 2000, the private-sector host committee, is expected to spend $4 million just for delegation parties on the eve of the convention. On Sunday night alone, there will be 25 or more of them for 56 delegations, including one at the Museum of Contemporary Art for delegates from Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
As Convention 2000 spokesman Ben Austin put it, ''It's going to be the State of the Union meets the Academy Awards Sunday night.''
