Sell Those Tickets, Meet the Band

Sell Those Tickets, Meet the Band

Groupie Alert: Here's a respectable way to get aboard the tour bus with hip-hop funksters Black Eyed Peas or punk hitmakers Green Day . Organizers of Rock the Vote's 15th-anniversary celebration say they'll bestow a total rock star experience on the top fundraisers for the June 8 bash in Washington.

"Whoever sells the most tickets gets to go on tour with Black Eyed Peas for a year!" event co-chair Terry McAuliffe exclaimed to an overflow crowd of 250 young activists Tuesday night at the Cloud nightclub in Dupont Circle. "And whoever sells the second most tickets gets to go on tour with Green Day for a year!"

It was classic McAuliffe hyperbole.

The winners actually will travel with the bands -- both ardent Rock the Vote supporters -- on several tour dates but not for a year. But the third biggest fundraiser will get a year's worth of Virginia wine -- and four tickets to a Washington Nationals game.

"Anybody can get involved," Justin Paschal , RTV's development director, told us. "We're totally bipartisan and nonprofit." (While one chair of the gala is the famed Democrat, the other is Jack Kemp , the '96 GOP vice presidential candidate.)

The Cloud reception, billed as an organizing event, felt like a bash from the Clinton era: loud music, lots of boozy networking, Democrats galore and even a celebrity. We saw "Legends of the Fall" star Julia Ormond dash by with her husband, Jon Rubin , a Rock the Vote founder and board member who helps connect D.C. and L.A. types. (She was in town for the Vital Voices gala at the Kennedy Center.)

So did bon vivant McAuliffe flirt with her? "Oh, no," he said innocently. "Her husband introduced me. I'm very deferential," adding: "She did kiss me when she left."

Do You Really Mean It, Kay?

· Whistling, cheering and applause burst out at the Kennedy Center Tuesday night when Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) said from the stage, "I expect to see a woman president in my lifetime." Evidently some in the audience took it as an endorsement of the woman standing next to her: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), widely touted as a contender for the White House in 2008.

Clinton just smiled coyly. "It was a brilliant moment," said one Dem who attended the gala for Vital Voices, a global organization that promotes women's empowerment.

Co-host and actress Sally Field later suggested to us that both should run -- as a team. "Hillary and Kay, that's a very interesting ticket," she told The Post's Pablo Izmirlian.

Chris Paulitz , a spokesman for Hutchison, assured us yesterday: "As a good Republican, the senator knows that she will see a Re publican woman president in her lifetime." Hutchison is still considering a run for governor of Texas next year. "You'll learn what she's running for this summer," Paulitz said. "She could run for anything."

More Glitterati Sparkles

· The A-list, updated: For the city's celebrity spotters, here's our final (we promise) addendum on the luminaries who will grace the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Hilton Washington Saturday night: