Entertainment

PARTY POLITICS – FUND-RAISER THE NEW FUN-RAISER FOR SINGLES

‘IT’S nearly presidential primary season!” hardly sounds like a rallying cry for hip young things.

But winning the youth vote is high on the agendas of presidential hopefuls, who’ve been holding fund-raisers at clubs all over town – creating a singles scene tailor-made for those who prefer to mate within their political tribe.

“What’s really nice when you’re in this environment is there are no pro-life nut cases who wish they had an education and more than two teeth,” joked Phillip Sheridan, 34, a Manhattan producer who forked out $500 at a recent Howard Dean fund-raiser at the Roxy.

Those who ponied up $25 that night got to sit on the dance floor beneath the mirrored ball and hear Dean give a speech – while sipping gin-and-tonics and mixing it up with like-minded people.

“It’s very Generation X,” said Matt Wadley, a 38-year-old Manhattan management consultant.

This weekend Dean will be in the Hamptons at a series of house parties bound to attract the same crew, many of whom are getting behind a candidate for the first time.

“You already have a common cause, and you can talk about it,” said Manhattan’s Glen Tyrell, 34, a financial analyst who attended a Dean “meet-up” the week before at a Lower East Side drinking hole.

Unlike President Bush, whose Sheraton hotel fund-raiser last month drew only those fat cats who could afford the $2,000-per-plate dinner, the Democrats are doing their darnedest to woo the relatively penniless young.

The Dean campaign has been using meetup.com – a Web site that links people with common interests, from Radiohead to Harry Potter – to set up events.

Not to be outdone, John Kerry held a fund-raiser last month at Lot 61, where the star attraction seemed to be his stepson Chris Heinz, a 30-year-old JFK Jr. look-alike who once dated Gwyneth Paltrow and is heir to the Heinz ketchup fortune.

“It was like a very preppy, entrepreneurial-type scene – I felt like there were a lot of social up-and-comers there,” said Julia Heckler, 28, a Manhattan fashion director.

Last week at Coda, the Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century (DL21C) – which describes itself as an organization of “young, progressive New Yorkers” – held a party for Al Sharpton, drawing more miniskirts than Dockers.

“If you really want hot sweaty action, you’ve gotta go to the local groups,” says DL21C’s 39-year-old president, Dave Pollak.

While Sharpton cracked jokes from the podium, a diverse crowd of sexy young professionals milled around the room, cocktails in hand.

“This tall guy here is cute – I’m gonna go talk to him,” said Alpha Johnson, 23, a corporate trainer from Westchester, as her friend, 25-year-old Christen Hartzog, scoped the room.

“She’s got a crush on a guy who comes to all these things,” explained Johnson, a DL21C party regular who favors North Carolina’s John Edwards.

But Dean may be the front-runner with young Manhattanites, thanks partly to Web-savvy tactics like sending text messages to people’s phones to update them on his fund-raising score.

“He’s made history by using the Internet,” said 25-year-old ad salesman David Pallant between Buds at the Roxy. “This is dating central!”