Party machines, lobbyists and special interests: Part four

Introduction

Throughout his political career, Bill Bradley has defined himself by what he is not.

Bradley has contrasted his style with that of Washington politics-as-usual, portraying himself as a political free-thinker. The former New Jersey senator says he is not beholden to anyone when it comes to making policy. Still, the Center for Public Integrity found that Bradley maintains a significant network of advisers with whom he shares ideas and plots policies.

After leaving the Senate in 1996, Bradley traded his status as a disgruntled Washington insider for access to Silicon Valley and Manhattan — two wealthy societies from which Bradley culled a network of influential fund-raisers and advisers. Stanford Asian Studies Professor Dan Okimoto, Bradley’s college roommate and one of his closest friends, described Bradley as a first-rate networker after leaving the Senate.

“He has a huge network [in California] and he built on it. He was here for a year meeting different people for lunch and dinner, arranging visits at companies. He spent a year out here making commitments at least three days a week,” Okimoto said.

‘Idealist and cerebral loner’

Bradley has cultivated an image as what one columnist calls an “idealist and cerebral loner” — someone whose decisions are unencumbered by party or special-interest concerns. His claims have prompted questions from the press about his advisers. If Bradley has answered these questions at all, he has done so with disdain, telling the editors at The Washington Post, “Oh, God, I don’t want to go down this road,” when they asked who was advising him on Russian policy.

Bradley has earned a reputation within the news media as being the least accessible of all major presidential candidates. A Wall Street Journal questionnaire was sent to each of the major candidates and Bradley ignored eight of the 20 questions — including questions asking him to identify his foremost economic policy adviser, the most important book he read this past year, and the name of his top foreign policy adviser. He finally did release the name of his favorite pie: pecan.

The Center has, nevertheless, identified the people who help formulate the ideas and strategies espoused by the Bradley campaign. Although Bradley argues that he has no kitchen cabinet, a few groups of people stick out as having been influential in shaping Bradley’s policy positions — some stemming back 20 to 30 years.

The Princeton crowd:

For Bradley, Princeton was about winning basketball games and making lifelong friends. These friends grew into their own careers, but have always maintained one connection — Bradley’s political ambitions. The Princeton crowd includes professors, lawyers, fund-raisers, biotech venture capitalists and major league baseball owners.

Dan Okimoto: It would be tough to pin longtime friend and college roommate Dan Okimoto into one area of advising, because he has played a number of roles for Bradley over the years. Okimoto is a professor at the Institute of International Studies at Stanford University and has interacted quite often over the years with Bradley, primarily on issues of foreign policy, international economy and general trends in America.

Okimoto was instrumental in getting Bradley a teaching job at Stanford after Bradley left the Senate. Bradley “had offers everywhere, it just worked out that he was interested in coming to Stanford. My colleagues were very excited at the possibility of bringing him.” It wasn’t just Stanford that attracted Bill Bradley — Silicon Valley had an appeal all its own. Dan Okimoto, Ted Schlein, John Roos and other fund-raisers and friends were instrumental in building Bradley’s network.

Okimoto is an expert on Asian studies and began the Asia Pacific Institute at Stanford. His Asian expertise has been utilized not only by Bradley, but by another Princeton classmate, Larry Lucchino. Lucchino is the chief executive officer of the San Diego Padres; he brought on Okimoto as a consultant and put him on the Padres’ board of directors. In January 1997, Okimoto brokered a deal that gave the Padres the negotiating rights to Japanese pitcher Hideki Irabu, who eventually landed with the New York Yankees. Fifteeen teams lobbied for the rights to pitcher Irabu, but Lucchino sent Okimoto to Japan to lobby for the Padres. Okimoto’s trips resulted in a partnership between the Padres and the Japanese Marines ball club. The clubs will exchange scouting information, have annual meetings and even trade minor league players. “Around here we call him our ‘sensei,’” or master teacher, Lucchino said of adviser Okimoto. “He’s been an invaluable guide to us.”

Lawrence Lucchino: Larry Lucchino has been a fund-raiser for Bradley since his first Senate run in 1978. Lucchino, along with Princeton classmate Richard Wright, held Bradley’s first fund-raiser, which raised $1,300. Lucchino has always been on Bradley’s team — at times, more literally than metaphorically: Lucchino played on Bradley’s basketball team at Princeton. Lucchino has been an attorney for the prominent Williams & Connolly law firm in Washington, D.C. Williams & Connolly has represented governmental leaders, celebrities and major corporations, including George Stephanopoulos, President Clinton, The New York Times and the Ford Motor Co. Lucchino’s mentor at the firm, Edward Bennett Williams, bought the Baltimore Orioles in 1979 and put Lucchino on the board of directors. Lucchino served as general counsel and took over as president in 1988 when Williams became ill. Throughout these business experiences he has remained a partner at the firm, but his interest in baseball led him to San Diego, where he currently serves as CEO of the San Diego Padres. Lucchino has made a goal of raising more than $1 million from southern California. Padres team owner John J. Moore Jr. also has promised to be involved in raising this $1 million from the “Republican-tilting” crowd.

Theodore V. Wells Jr.: In January 2000, Ted Wells left the law firm of Lowenstein, Sandler, Kohl, Fisher and Boylan, Bill Bradley’s No. 12 career patron, and joined the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, & Garrison. Wells is a hard-hitting litigator and earned a name for himself in defending James Regan, who was managing partner of Princeton/Newport Partners, which in 1988 and 1989 became the first securities firm to be charged with racketeering. Regan was indicted and convicted of insider trading under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Four other partners and a trader from Drexel Burnham Lambert were also found guilty in the case. All six convictions were later overturned on appeal. Wells also has had many other high-profile clients. He represented Exxon Corp. in 1990 when the government launched three separate criminal probes into the company’s involvement in an oil spill between Staten Island and New Jersey. Exxon pleaded guilty to reduced charges and paid $15 million in fines. Wells also defended Salim “Sandy” Lewis, a Wall Street trader who pleaded guilty to manipulating the share price of Fireman’s Fund Corp. in concert with Ivan Boesky, the notorious arbitrageur, who also pleaded guilty to charges of insider trading. More recently, Wells defended former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, receiving acquittals on all 30 counts. Espy was charged by the independent counsel’s office with accepting more than $35,000 in gratuities from companies his department regulated. Wells has worked for Bradley on two of Bradley’s Senate campaigns and also worked for Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J. Wells was general counsel to the New Jersey Democratic Party and the New Jersey NAACP. He graduated from Princeton University as an undergraduate and received both business and law degrees from Harvard University. Bradley has also drawn upon Wells’ experiences and perspectives on race in America, but Wells, who is black, serves the campaign primarily as its treasurer.

Richard Wright: National campaign finance director. Wright is an old-time ally of Bradley from their days on the basketball team together at Princeton. Wright has known Bradley longer than any other paid staff member. His own political activities began with fund raising for Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential bid, Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign, and Bill Bradley’s 1978 and 1984 Senate campaigns. The first fund-raiser for Bradley was held with fellow classmate Larry Lucchino in 1978. Wright also worked for New Jersey Gov. James Florio as associate state treasurer under Bradley’s national campaign chairman Doug Berman between 1990 and 1993, and then served as chief of staff between 1993 and 1994. Wright commented that fund raising for Bradley isn’t “really raising money on issues. . . . We’re raising money on leadership.” He added: “Bill is great leader. He observes very well and weighs facts carefully to make measured decisions. He is willing to listen and change his mind.”

John Diekman: Unpaid fund-raiser. Diekman graduated from Princeton with a degree in chemistry and went to Stanford for his doctorate. He has never left California and has scheduled lunches and meetings for Bradley with the super-wealthy and under-40 crowd there. Diekman and his wife, Susan, are Bradley’s top Silicon Valley fund-raisers. When Diekman isn’t fund raising, he is the managing director of Bay City Capital, a venture capital firm, whose expertise is in biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Diekman also has two decades of experience in drug research and discovery as CEO of Affymetrix (30% owned by Glaxo-Wellcome), Affymax, Monoclonal Antibodies, Salutar and Zoecon. He also serves on the board of trustees of the Scripps Research Institute and is chairman of the board for Molecular Applications Group, a drug-discovery and agricultural-research firm offering data collection and analysis technology. Most recently he joined the board of directors of another pharmaceutical and biotechnology service firm, LJL BioSystems Inc.

The Future’s Group:

In 1991, Bradley organized a group of six-plus scholars who met three times annually to discuss the implications of global and domestic changes. They called themselves the Future’s Group. According to one member of the group, they would talk about “big picture ideas” and “what lies ahead for America.” Dan Okimoto told the Center that the Future’s Group was the “functional equivalent to a kitchen cabinet, but it included more people.” Princeton classmate and fund-raiser John “Jay” Jordan, fund-raiser Louis Susman, race scholar and longtime adviser Cornel West, and Asian expert and friend Dan Okimoto were some of the regulars at the meetings. The group also included such academics as philosopher Richard Rorty, sociologist Ann Swidler, Civil War historian James McPherson, and economist Mike Spence. According to Swidler, the group “had a set of open, wide-ranging discussions about American history, the American political system, and what kinds of new ideas might appeal to Americans.” These meetings sound too esoteric for most politicians, but seem right up Bradley’s alley.

The style of the Future’s Group conversations is very similar to that of the non-specific, wide-ranging discussions that Bradley has conducted throughout his campaign with a large group of experts on related issues. Such is the case with Bradley’s group of racial-issue advisers, foreign policy advisers, health-care advisers and his communications team.

Advisers on racial issues:

The term “advisers” is used loosely with the group of people from whom Bradley has collected ideas on the racial divide in America. Bradley has read a good deal of literature on the subject, and has spoken to many experts, authors and activists over the years — not necessarily in the context of policy or the campaign. This is a partial picture of the type of perspective Bradley has sought in formulating his approach to racial issues in America.

Cornel West: Harvard University Professor Cornel West is Bradley’s top adviser on race. They met in 1990 when Bradley invited West to participate in the Future’s Group he was forming. West has remained a main source for ideas and feedback on the racial climate in America. West teaches in the Afro-American studies program and the Philosophy of Religion department. West is a self-proclaimed “intellectual freedom-fighter.” Bradley once wrote of West: “Few Americans speak about race with Cornel West’s clarity, humanity, and intellectual rigor. His presence on the scene . . . should give hope to all of us who believe that America’s racial diversity is our strength.” Bradley invited West to be a part of Bradley’s Future’s Group over the past decade. His current teaching interests include problems facing the African American urban underclass in America and maintaining a dialogue between African Americans and Jews.

Other advisers:

William Julius Wilson*: Professor Wilson was a MacArthur Fellow from 1987 to 1992 and is the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University in economic and social science. Although his office told the Center that Wilson does not advise Bradley per se, it did acknowledge that the two have spoken on race-related issues. Wilson advised President Clinton on race policy and believes in “affirmative opportunity.” He insists that quotas or targets do not help minorities but instead create resentment and, eventually, a backlash. He argues for public programs for all disadvantaged minorities to help them obtain the skills and qualifications they need to compete on an equal playing field.

*William Julius Wilson is a member of the Center for Public Integrity’s Advisory Board.

John Edgar Wideman: Wideman is a novelist. His books all deal with the themes of race and American culture. His work searches the subjects of prison life, growing up as an African American in Pittsburgh and racial injustices in America.

Roger Wilkins: Wilkins is an attorney, a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, and, currently, the Clarence J. Robinson Professor of History and American Culture at George Mason University. Wilkins is also concerned about a disengaged public and promotes discourse on cultural, moral and racial issues. Wilkins is a civil rights leader and a former Justice Department official. As an editorial writer, Wilkins shared in the Pulitzer Prize given to The Washington Post for its coverage of Watergate.

Theodore Wells and Jacques DeGraff both work on Bradley’s campaign as treasurer and deputy campaign manager, respectively, and are old-time advisers on race issues and community outreach. Both men are well-connected to African American communities and have facilitated Bradley’s time and involvement in those communities. DeGraff enabled Bradley to be the first presidential candidate to speak at the Rev. Al Sharpton’s Manhattan headquarters, which is called the Hosts of Justice.

Foreign policy:

While in Boston in the fall of 1999, Bradley was asked by the Boston Globe editorial board which of his contacts had influenced his foreign policy. He refused to call these individuals “foreign policy advisers,” saying that he was too close to too many people for any to be considered close advisers. He did say that he had been in touch with George Shultz (who is advising and endorsing Bush) and Henry Kissinger (who is publicly advising McCain), secretaries of state under Republican presidents Reagan and Nixon, respectively. The Center contacted Kissinger, who denied advising the Bradley campaign and said he hadn’t talked to Bradley for many months. Dan Okimoto told the Center that Bradley had also spoken with retired Gen. Colin Powell. Although Bradley might have spoken to these individuals for their unique perspectives and personal experiences, they are all Republicans and ancillary to Bradley’s foreign policy team. The real team is made up of think-tank presidents, international economic organizations and professors. The team met a few times in late summer of 1999 and most recently in January.

John Despres: John Despres met Bradley through his wife, Gina Despres, who began working on the senator’s personal staff 21 years ago. Gina Despres, although having no formal or paid role with the campaign, advanced Bradley’s position on tax and economics at an American Enterprise Institute conference held at the National Press Club on January 21. John Despres is a former assistant secretary for export enforcement in the U.S. Department of Commerce. He defined his involvement with the Bradley campaign as advising on the “broad expanse of international, security, foreign, economic, defense policy issues.” Despres told the Center he has also advised Bradley on trade policy with China and with Eastern Europe. Despres helped coordinate Bradley’s 1985 trip to the former Soviet Union. He told the Center there have been a few “intense and focused meetings on international and security policy.” In 1997 he left the Commerce Department and went into private consulting.

Stephen F. Cohen: Cohen teaches Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University. He told the Center that he and Bradley had been friends for more than 30 years, and that he knew Bradley’s wife, Ernestine, before she married him. Cohen met Bradley when Bradley was playing for the Knicks, and they began eating and talking together regularly. In 1989, they took a trip to Moscow together. Cohen defines his role with Bradley as expressing to Bradley his “strongly held views.” He said his involvement has increased since the campaign began, but that he and Bradley have always discussed Russia and U.S. foreign policy. Some of Cohen’s “strongly held views” are expressed in his latest book, Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917, to be published in April 2000.

Those views were evident in Bradley’s foreign policy talk at Tufts in the fall of 1999. Cohen argued that Western economists and political scientists ignored the history and psychology of Russia in urging the speedy transition of Russia’s command economy to a market economy, and that the result of this hasty action has been disastrous for Russia. Cohen also publicly came out against Clinton administration policy in Kosovo, calling Clinton’s actions incompetent, feckless, and arrogant. Bradley echoed these sentiments as he criticized the current administration’s foreign policy on Russia and argued that there were many conflicts in the world where U.S. involvement was not necessary.

Other advisers:

James Schlesinger: Member, board of trustees, Center for Strategic & International Studies. Schlesinger is also a former secretary of defense, secretary of energy and Central Intelligence Agency director who served in the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations. He was in the public eye again in 1999, speaking in opposition to the administration’s policy in Kosovo and the comprehensive test ban treaty.

Jessica Einhorn: Former World Bank managing director. Einhorn worked as managing director of resource mobilization and finance at the bank for two decades. She currently is a visiting fellow at the International Monetary Fund.

Jessica Tuchman Mathews: President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Mathews told the Center that she has been advising Bradley for some months and said, without elaboration, that she has known the senator for some time. Mathews’ background is journalism, having written for The Washington Post and The New York Times, and for policy journals on international economy, trade and foreign policy.

C. Fred Bergsten: Director of the Institute for International Economics. Bergsten and Bradley attended rival high schools in Missouri, and played against each other on the basketball court. They left their rivalry behind when Time magazine named them as two of the 100 outstanding young American leaders of 1974. Bergsten has been advising Bradley on foreign and American economic policy since Bradley ran for the Senate in 1978. Bergsten participated in international conferences organized by Bradley and former Republican Rep. Jack Kemp in the 1980s on trade issues, the Third World debt crisis, international economic issues and the dollar’s exchange rate. Bergsten is an international trade expert and promotes global trade. Most recently he has written that because of politicians’ refusal to discuss trade policy in Congress or in the White House, global trade has not been an issue and therefore, U.S. trade has been declining rather than opening up.

In 1991, the Center for Public Integrity produced Buying the American Mind, a report on Japan’s quest for U.S. ideas on arts, economic and education policy. The Center found that Bergsten’s group received substantial funding from Japanese interests and that the group’s policies supported Japan’s interests.

John Galvin: Dean of the Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. Galvin was also supreme allied commander-in-chief of NATO between 1987 and 1992. Galvin served as a U.S. ambassador in Bosnia in 1994 and is on the board of the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Army’s own think tank.

Health care policy:

In late 1999, health care policy became a major issue for both major Democratic candidates. Gore and Bradley each presented health care plans they called comprehensive. The primary minds behind Bradley’s plan compared the two plans and reported that Bradley’s was more comprehensive and would cover more Americans. While written independently of the campaign, the report was released through the campaign because the authors were advising Bradley. The health care insurance coverage report was written by David Cutler of Harvard, Neal Masia at ChannelPoint Inc., a leading Internet commerce technology provider for insurance and health benefits companies, and Alan Garber at Stanford.

David Cutler: David Cutler has been called the point person for health care and also advises Bradley on economics. Cutler told the Center that he began his relationship with Bradley in mid-1999 when they recognized they had similar ideas on health care. Cutler has “talked to the campaign a fair amount” since then. Although Cutler stated that he “has not had deep involvement in the health care policy,” a few other health care advisers and policy folks have called him the main force behind Bradley’s policy — as much as Bradley will acknowledge anyone else’s help. Cutler was one of the senior economists on the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration and worked on the administration’s economic plan.

Alan Garber: Alan Garber is a Stanford health care economist. He told the Center he “was involved in the details of the health care plan,” but that Bradley got input from many people. Garber attended Harvard with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, founders of Microsoft Corp. He did his doctoral coursework in economics in one year before he entered medical school at Stanford.

Neal Masia. Masia is the director of strategic planning at ChannelPoint, Inc., a leading Internet commerce technology provider for insurance and health benefits companies. Prior to working at ChannelPoint, Masia was a senior economist at the Advisory Board Company, a Washington-based for-profit research firm with more than 1,500 participating hospitals.

Other advisers:

Dr. Clyde Oden: Clyde Oden is chief executive officer of Wattshealth System, a nonprofit community service foundation in Los Angeles. Oden created this nonprofit after the Watts riots in 1965.

Max Fine: Fine is managing the Medical Cost Management Systems Inc., a subsidiary of American Family, a health insurance company. He is a former benefits coordinator for United Auto Workers union, former chief of research publications for the Social Security Administration, and director of the Committee for National Health Insurance, a health care lobbying organization founded by Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers.

Tom Higgins: Tom Higgins is the vice president of corporate communications for Edison International, a company based in technological research and commercial development and application of this research. It is also the nation’s second-largest privately owned electricity utility firm. Higgins worked in the Carter administration as human services director.

Tyler Norris: Tyler Norris is a key leader of the Coalition for Healthier Cities and Communities, a national nonprofit formed in 1996.

Robert Osterhaus: Osterhaus was one of eight state Iowa state legislators who endorsed Bradley in September 1999.

Uwe Reinhardt: Reinhardt is a health economist at Princeton and an expert on health care. Reinhardt advised President Clinton on his health-care plan and has researched health care systems in Germany, Canada and the U.S. Reinhardt told the Center he was involved in developing policy addressing the needs of the uninsured. He sent an essay he had written to the Bradley campaign, which brought him in to discuss health care policy. Reinhardt and Bradley had a Princeton connection and met 15 years ago.

John Rodat: Rodat is president of Signalhealth, a Del Mar, Calif., health care consulting firm.

Jeff Salloway: Salloway is a professor at the University of New Hampshire, teaching health management and policy.

John J. Sullivan: Sullivan is an attorney in Indianapolis.

Fundraisers:

There is a cadre of fund-raisers on each coast — in New York and in Silicon Valley. Bradley pumped both regions after he left the Senate in 1996. He spent time on both coasts, teaching at Stanford; at Montclair University in Montclair, N.J.; and at the University of Notre Dame. He spent time getting connected to young and politically inexperienced venture capitalists, lawyers and entertainment moguls. He also consulted at such Wall Street investment firms as J.P. Morgan, and received bundled contributions (individual contributions from many employees) from some of the most prominent firms on Wall Street, such as J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

The Silicon Valley Fund-raisers: Dr. John Diekman: Fund-raiser. (see section in “Princeton Crowd”) John and Susan Diekman are the top Silicon Valley fund-raisers for Bradley. Diekman sets up lunches and meetings for Bradley with the very wealthy and under-40 in California. Diekman used the Princeton Class of ’65 connection in an April 1999 fund-raiser and raised $1.1 million from their classmates.

Michael Eisner: Fund-raiser. Michael Eisner is the Walt Disney Co. chairman. Eisner has known about Bradley since Eisner was at prep school at Lawrenceville and Bradley, whom he idolized, was a star at Princeton. Eisner raised $1 million for Bradley’s 1990 Senate run and has been instrumental in many subsequent fund-raisers as well as arranging many meetings with entertainment stars and moguls. Eisner participated in a $1 million fund-raiser held in Los Angeles in June 1999.

Lawrence Lucchino: Fund-raiser. (see section in “Princeton Crowd”) Lucchino is the chief executive officer of the San Diego Padres baseball team. He has made a goal of raising more than $1 million from Southern California for Bradley. The Padres’ team owner, John J. Moore Jr., has also promised to help raise this $1 million from the “Republican-tilting” crowd.

Howard Schultz: Fund-raiser. Starbucks owner Howard Schultz got a call from Bradley, then teaching at Stanford, asking to meet for lunch. That meal extended for a few hours and Schultz has been a committed Bradley fan since. Schultz is also raising money for the first time in his life. “I’ve been a lifelong Democrat, but I’ve never put myself out front like this before,” he said, according to The Washington Post.

John Roos: Fund-raiser. John Roos is a partner at the Palo Alto law firm Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati. Roos and Bradley have been friends for 20 years. In 1998, while Bradley was teaching at Stanford and consulting at Wall Street firms, Roos helped Bradley make the rounds, introducing him to such high-tech leaders as Christos Cotsakos, president and CEO of E-Trade, and Andrew Grove, chairman of Intel Corp. Roos set up a fund-raising meeting for Bradley right after he created his exploratory committee. The group set a target of $25 million. Roos also spearheaded an April 1999 fund-raiser for Bradley in the Bay area that raised more than $1.2 million.

Ted Schlein: Fund-raiser. Schlein is an old family friend of Bradley and is involved in the campiagn through fund raising and helping to design the campaign’s Internet strategy. Schlein is general partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. Schlein’s stepfather, H. Lee Sarokin, a retired federal judge who had been nominated in 1979 for that post by Bradley, was Bradley’s attorney when Bradley played for the Knicks. He became well-known as the judge who in 1985 released former boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter after 19 years in jail, saying he had been wrongly imprisoned on a triple-murder conviction that was flawed by racial prejudice and withheld evidence. Sarokin was also Bradley’s finance chairman in his first Senate race in 1978. The families had Thanksgiving dinners together. Now, a few years later, Ted and his sister Kathy are introducing Bradley to the super-rich and under-40 crowd in California. Schlein assembled a team of tech leaders to look at Bradley’s Internet potential, with plans to solicit donations and capitalize on his celebrity by selling T-shirts, hats and bumper stickers on the Web. At last count, the Bradley camp said it had raised some $750,000 in Web donations.

Herbert Allen: Fund-raiser. Allen is best described as a media mogul, an investment banker, and an old friend of Bradley. Allen chaired a spring 1999 Madison Square Garden fund-raiser that brought in $2.2 million — double what fund-raisers had anticipated. He founded Allen & Co., an investment-banking business serving the entertainment industry, in 1982, and began hosting an annual retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, for the crme of the entertainment and high-tech industries. Bradley has been a regular invitee to these events, most recently at the 1999 retreat, where he spoke on the agenda with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investment guru Warren Buffett. These retreats have been a launching pad for Bradley to meet the super-rich and powerful. Film director Sydney Pollack met Bradley at one of Allen’s events a decade ago, and in 1999 Pollack raised more than $800,000 for Bradley’s presidential campaign. Allen also introduced Bradley to USA Networks President Barry Diller, who hosted a fund-raiser for Bradley in Los Angeles in June 1999 that raised more than $1 million.

Phil Jackson: Fund-raiser. L.A. Lakers Coach Jackson has always been involved with Bradley’s fund raising, but he’s been a more visible supporter since he began coaching the Lakers. “It’s just that now he’s at the pinnacle of his career,” as Campaign Fundraising Director Betty Sapoch said in The Washington Post about Jackson’s skill at eliciting contributions. Jackson once thought about heading up Bradley’s campaign in Iowa, but decided to become the Lakers coach instead. Jackson and other National Basketball Association associates have helped fund raise, speak at events and contribute to Bradley’s campaigns — John Havlicek, Willis Reed and Oscar Robertson have all pitched in.