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Subject: Businesses Swept Up in Whirlwind of Clinton Craze<By Michele L.
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 92 09:22:42 EST
Message-ID: <33.1992Nov8.092243@AmeriCast.com>

Businesses Swept Up in Whirlwind of Clinton Craze<By Michele L.
Norris=Washington Post Staff Writer=

If the Washington area held its breath before Tuesday, waiting to
see which political crowd would control its destiny for the next
four years, it began hyperventilating the next morning - in a
frenzy to revise re'sume's, reserve inaugural hotel rooms, buy
ball gowns and put real estate on the market.

Madison Hotel Manager Paul Jacques arrived at work Wednesday to
find a stack of overnight phone and fax messages from Clinton
supporters who were eager to book rooms for inaugural week in
January.  Kathryn Troutman, owner of The Resume Place on K
Street, resolved to hire more employees and move to a larger
space after her workload suddenly doubled with job seekers -
Republicans and Democrats - updating their re'sume's.

Just One Affair, a Chevy Chase boutique that rents women's formal
wear, has been deluged with calls from women who want to reserve
their fancy inaugural garb now. "We thought it wouldn't get real-
ly, really busy at least until after Thanksgiving," manager Joan
McGettigan said. "The callers are so afraid that there won't be
enough gowns in the city. There are a lot of people who have not
gone to something like this in a long time."

The days after a presidential election are always frantic in this
town, but this year's commotion has a higher pitch, according to
several hotel managers, real estate agents, limousine operators,
travel industry officials and employment agency officials. They
attribute the intensity to the fact that Democrats are savoring
the prospect of power after 12 years of Republican rule in the
White House.

"The excitement has reached a fever pitch because you have so
much pent-up energy among the Democrats," said Kathleen Keenan,
director of public relations at the Sheraton Carlton at 16th and
K streets NW, where a cadre of Clinton's top political donors
have booked more than half of the hotel's 197 rooms.

Hotels throughout the area have been flooded with room requests
for inaugural week from political operatives and just plain folks
who want to be close by when Clinton is sworn in as the 42nd
president.

At the Ramada Renaissance Hotel-Techworld, one of Wednesday's
first inaugural bookings was made by a large group of Japanese
tourists. The National Bar Association, the Association of Native
American Indians and the Georgetown Alumni Association also
booked big blocks of rooms.

Some hotels were almost as busy taking cancellations.

Republican Party officials had reserved large blocks of rooms at
the Omni Shoreham and the Omni Georgetown several months ago, and
the Republican Party's Team 100, a large fund-raising organiza-
tion, booked 50 rooms at the Jefferson Hotel in late summer. "Ob-
viously, they are not going to want to come to town for this
inaugural," said Elmer Coppoolse, managing director for the
Jefferson.

Some hotels hedged their bets before the election, double-booking
blocks of rooms for both parties - including two-thirds of the
Mayflower Hotel's 659 rooms. Now, "the phones have been ringing
crazily . . .  as we . . . figure out which people won't be need-
ing their rooms," said Mayflower general manager Anthony
Stewart-Moore.

Local catering companies also bustled as people planned transi-
tion parties. "We were going through a rather slow period going
up to the election, and now we've been getting all kinds of calls
for hellos and goodbyes and all this transition stuff," said Jen-
nifer Noble, an event planner with Ridgewell's Catering Co.

Noble said she and several cooks at Ridgewell's spent most of
Wednesday morning studying cookbooks on Arkansas cuisine, includ-
ing one "It's like a rainfall that comes once every four years."<

- Kathryn Troutman> called "Thirty Years in the Mansion," written
by Liza Ashley, Clinton's cook in the Arkansas governor's man-
sion.

Greg Golubin, owner of the Manhattan International Limousine Ser-
vice, said he made 16 inaugural bookings - and another six from
foreign news agencies - in two days last week. "There's a lot of
people who are very excited over this changing of the guard,"
Golubin said.  "All this is very, very good for Washington's
business community."

Inaugural festivities funnel millions of dollars into
Washington's business community with a burst of tourism, partying
and general fanfare. "It's like a rainfall that comes once every
four years," said Troutman, who has printed re'sume's through
three presidencies.

Though some businesses will not begin reaping transition profits
until January, others expect to feel the jolt immediately.  Real
estate agent Pam Kristoff spent last week working on strategies
for marketing Capitol Hill properties to congressional newcomers
and members of Clinton's transition staff. She assembled a book-
let of facts on Capitol Hill schools and businesses and mailed
listings to new members of Congress.  Executives at several area
headhunting firms said business has picked up almost to the point
of chaos.

"I'll bet there's going to be 70,000 to 80,000 re'sume's by the
time this is over," said Eric Vautour, who worked in Reagan's
second administration and is now executive director at Russell
Reynolds Associates, an executive search firm. "There's just no
way to stay on top of it. You have 12 years of pent-up demand by
Democrats salivating. They've had jobs circled in the organiza-
tion chart for years."

Vautour said that many of his former colleagues have called on
him for help in the past year, and that he can't always give them
good news. For Republicans who can now count their days, pros-
pects are more scant than for political exiles left jobless when
Presidents Reagan and Carter left office.

"This is probably the first time we'll be seeing a class of pol-
itical appointees finding real difficulties matching their
salaries in the private sector," Vautour said.

"Until three years ago, you could always find a job in an associ-
ation for left-handed wrench makers, but these people are going
to have something different, something real."Staff writer Charles
W. Hall contributed to this report.<02:34 11-08C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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