Backstager: Marvin Davis (#5)

Marvin Davis, 71, Los Angeles, Calif. Donated $331,500 since 1993. Party: Mosly D. He gave $300,000 in soft money to the Democratic Party, and $15,000 to 16 candidates, nearly all Democrats except for GOP ex-presidential hopeful Pete Wilson.

View Davis' itemized contributions according to the MoJo 400 searchable database.

By L.J. Davis

After President Clinton took office, Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers fired off a warning to political bankrollers: "The president is not going to stand by while the GOP raises millions of dollars to try to defeat him while he's trying to reform the system."

Clinton didn't just stand by: He attended an enormous, $25,000-a-head soiree at Marvin Davis' Beverly Hills estate. Among those invited were David Geffen (#13 on the list), Steven Spielberg (#19), and Barbra Streisand (#115). The party netted a cool $2.1 million for the Democrats. "The president is pushing for change," Myers said after the event, "but until then, we are not going to unilaterally disarm."

Davis' interests, however, stray from those of the standard Hollywood liberal. The billionaire Colorado oilman, now working out of Los Angeles, is the man who sold 20th Century Fox to media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 1985 for a tidy $575 million, enabling Murdoch to later create the Fox network. Known more for his money than for his drive, Davis--whose son John is a player in Hollywood as a successful (The Firm) and not-so-successful (Waterworld) film producer--has been fairly quiet since his abortive attempt to buy Northwest Airlines in the late 1980s.

Davis resurfaced with a hostile raid on T. Boone Pickens' Mesa Inc. oil company, the granddaddy of unfriendly takeover firms. Davis (whose estimated worth exceeds $2 billion, according to Forbes magazine) recently obtained a New Jersey casino license, which means current anti-gambling proposals--such as Clinton's proposed 4 percent gambling tax, and a commission to study the negative social impact of gambling--are sure to have his attention. (Other Mother Jones 400 members with gambling interest include #9 John Connelly, #10 Frank Fertitta, #114 Arthur Goldberg, #129 Don Barden, and #373 Steve Wynn.)