by Karen Ocamb

Scan the faces of A-list gay party-goers at the latest Hollywood political fundraiser and you may alight upon the stubble-framed broad smile of prep-school handsome Ted Johnson, managing editor of the entertainment trade publication Variety and popular blogger at Wilshire & Washington.

Comfortably fitting in among the actors, agents and studio heads chatting with campaign staffers looking for their money, Johnson’s smile belies his keen powers of observation, grasping at a glance the nuances behind a powerbroker’s handshake.

After years of covering the business of show business for the Los Angeles Times and TV Guide, Johnson landed at Variety, where he came up with the idea for a blog that focused on the “enduring relationship between entertainment and politics.”

Wilshire & Washington (wilshireandwashington.com) is now a “must-read” among politicos and politically minded celebrities. Indeed, Johnson, who also writes a monthly column on politico.com, regularly appears as a guest expert on cable news and entertainment shows.

Johnson told IN Los Angeles magazine that he started the blog out of self-interest.

“I am fascinated by politics, and my experience has been in covering entertainment,” Johnson told IN. “There is this great area of overlap that has, until now, not been covered on a regular basis. You have the fundraising, which never seemed to end last year, and celebrities campaigning for candidates or taking on their own causes. And Hollywood has always had an affinity for politically oriented content, even if the track record for such fare is mixed at the box office and on TV.”

There is also a palace guard that dictates access, which Johnson has managed to finesse. At an event for Barack Obama at the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal City last December, for instance, he was seated literally front and center and was the only reporter who got to ask Obama a question on the rope line.

Johnson asked Obama if Oprah Winfrey would continue to campaign for him beyond South Carolina.

“We’ll find out,” Obama replied.

This was not US Weekly. Rather, it was an insightful predictor of possible trouble for the star, which he reported in politico.com. The story was picked up by the New York Observer, which quoted Johnson in an Aug. 7, 2007, story as saying that Winfrey’s support “could create a backlash if she treats his campaign like her book club.”

Last April, numerous political blogs—including Wilshire & Washington and politico.com—questioned whether the 20 percent drop in Winfrey’s approval ratings was linked to her support for Obama.

“Hollywood’s biggest means of participation this election has been via the fundraiser,” Johnson told IN, adding that he has had “very good success on getting access or at least getting an idea of what goes on at events” but only “mixed results in sit-downs with candidates.”

Johnson has become proficient in following the money, such as the $5 million Obama raised recently at the Music Center.

“But there’s no question that Obama’s Internet fundraising is shaking up the system,” Johnson said. “It’s diffused the influence of Hollywood money, and perhaps other industries as well. My sense is that no one person is going to emerge as a ‘kingmaker,’ to use an archaic term, because there is now a new way of raising huge amounts of money fast.

“What we’re also seeing is a shift in the entertainment business to a new set of high-profile donors and fundraisers,” Johnson continued. “Since the 1990s, the Clintons’ biggest supporters out here have kind of commanded the most attention—people like Ron Burkle and Steve Bing and Marc Nathanson. With Obama winning the nomination, there’s been a shift to a new set of players who are relatively new to the process. You do have David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg raising money for Obama, but his campaign’s Southern California finance team is led by Nicole Avant and Charlie Rivkin, who are newer to the scene.”

Johnson thinks Hollywood will push for a White House connection.

“There was a brief time after 9/11 in which Karl Rove gathered entertainment industry leaders together to ask for their help and support in promoting the American cause, but nothing much came of it,” Johnson said. “So I think that if Obama wins, there will be a lot of excitement and certainly a big contingent heading to the inauguration. But I have my doubts that the new president would be hanging out with entertainment figures in the same way that Bill Clinton did. There will be a lot of pressure on Obama to fix things quickly, and it will be a very poor sign, in terms of his image, if he’s found to be e-mailing Scarlett Johansson or getting R&R on David Geffen’s yacht. Plus there is personality—and Obama strikes me as more reserved than Clinton.

“Obama also has been critical of the entertainment business when it comes to content, whether through video games or violent movies,” Johnson said. “He’s already calling for parents to turn off the TV sets and the game consoles, and he’ll probably highlight that pitch more on the trail. It’s an appeal to the center that is very much standard practice among candidates when they reach the general election, because who is going to argue with that? That could make him a bit more reticent about the industry in general.”

Johnson will cover the Democratic Convention in Denver at the end of August, as will Greg Hernandez, who will cover the Hollywood aspect for the Media News Group and blog at Out in Hollywood.

“With ratings for political coverage reaching record numbers on television, the conventions are certainly on our radar and on that of our viewer,” Brad Bessey, co-executive producer for Entertainment Tonight, where Ted Johnson has appeared, told IN. “We will be looking for defining moments.”

For Johnson, it is “our mandate to blend these worlds [of politics and entertainment] together in a way that is interesting and that, hopefully, people will care about.”