Los Angeles — Hollywood Sidelined as Democrats Win Without A-Listers

Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress this week without putting Hollywood front and center, a reversal from past election cycles when A-list fundraisers drove national headlines, according to Page Six. Campaigns that once welcomed the spotlight that comes with a celebrity host are now asking guests to keep quiet about who showed up.

What happened at Senator Jon Ossoff's Los Angeles fundraisers?

When Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, 39, came to Los Angeles last month to raise money, his campaign set rules for the Beverly Hills and Hancock Park events attendees were asked not to post photos on social media, Page Six reported. When local reporters learned Ossoff was in town, surrogates asked them to consider downplaying the reason for his visit. The outlet summed up the new approach this way: campaigns are happy to take Hollywood money as long as voters back home do not find out about it.

How does this compare with past Hollywood fundraisers?

The contrast with earlier Democratic campaigns is stark. In 2012, George Clooney hosted a $40,000-per-plate fundraiser for then-President Barack Obama that drew coverage from every major news outlet, according to Page Six. During Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential run, Oprah Winfrey was a visible presence on the trail. Those kinds of star-studded, heavily publicized events were, until recently, treated as a reliable part of a national Democratic campaign.

Which candidates visited Hollywood during the midterms?

Ossoff was not alone in making the trip. Texas's James Talarico, New Hampshire's Chris Pappas, Ohio's Sherrod Brown, Alaska's Mary Peltola and Michigan gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson all passed through town, Page Six reported. But the events tied to those visits stayed small and drew little attention, a result the outlet said was by design rather than accident. No A-list celebrity was deployed to any battleground state during the midterms, and no major donor took a public political stance, a departure the outlet called notable compared with recent election cycles.

What role did the 2024 Biden campaign play in the shift?

Hollywood's political standing took a hit well before this week's results. President Joe Biden's 2024 re-election bid, which Page Six described as disastrous, collapsed when Biden dropped out of the race in July of that year, just months before Election Day, amid questions about his mental acuity. Former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg had co-chaired that campaign. The episode left Hollywood's donor class publicly tied to a campaign that imploded, a connection Democratic strategists have not forgotten, according to the outlet.

Will celebrity activism come back for Democrats?

An unnamed Los Angeles-based political consultant told Page Six the quiet approach amounted to "a repudiation of Hollywood." The consultant added that the industry's influence has not disappeared outright: "It's not the death of celebrity activism, but the Democrats learned a lesson over the last several years: Hollywood is not the end-all-be-all."

That lesson appears to be paying off at the ballot box. Democrats retook both the House and Senate this week, according to Page Six, after a campaign season in which the party's candidates took Hollywood cash but kept the industry's famous faces off the stage and out of the headlines. Republicans have spent years portraying Democrats as aligned with out-of-touch coastal elites, a line of attack the party appears to be trying to blunt by keeping celebrity involvement low-key rather than abandoning it entirely.

For voters, the practical change is already visible: candidates who once held large, publicized Hollywood galas are instead running smaller, closed events where the guest list and the fundraising total stay out of local news coverage. Whether that pattern holds through the next presidential cycle, when national campaigns historically lean harder on celebrity fundraising networks, remains an open question the consultant's comments leave unanswered.

Is a quieter Hollywood now the strategy for Democrats?

The consultant who spoke with Page Six went further, suggesting the party's midterm success points to a deliberate shift rather than a one-off adjustment. A low-profile approach to celebrity involvement, the consultant argued, may be the better path forward for Democrats going into future contests, given how Republicans have used coastal-elite imagery against the party in past cycles. The outlet framed the midterm results as evidence for that argument: Democrats won back the House and Senate in a cycle where star power stayed largely offstage, even as the same donor networks continued writing checks behind closed doors in cities like Los Angeles.