Party animal

A Barbie in men's pajamas perches on the wainscoting, and there's a needlepoint pillow bearing the golf credo: "The 19th hole is the best place to improve your lies." And there's Freeman, who seems to have wandered out of a Rat Pack flick with Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra: "What can I get you? Vodka on the rocks? We've got light beer, but this isn't a bar."

Start spreadin' the news: Freeman is the life of the Party. In a milieu where a Republican moneyman might seem a fish out of water, Freeman, the California finance chairman of the Bush campaign, with an estimated net worth of more than $100 million, is something of a man about town. . Even ultra-liberal Democrats describe him as a "nice guy" and a "charmer."

"Brad is the prototype of the new fundraiser," says former Ronald Reagan White House staffer Bob Tuttle, who dropped by for dinner on the terrace. "It takes somebody who knows a lot of people. And Brad knows everyone." Everyone. "You have a first lady and a first friend," said Los Angeles billionaire developer Eli Broad. And Freeman, he said, is a "first friend."

Or at least one of them. Among the president's good friends, "Brad has a special place," said Robert White, Wilson's onetime chief of staff who stayed in Freeman's guesthouse for three months while he ran the Schwarzenegger campaign. "The reason I think the president likes him so much is he's similar to him as a guy."Like Bush's, Freeman's sense of humor can border on slapstick. When a neighbor threw a black-tie fundraiser featuring then-President Clinton, Freeman distributed "Bush-Cheney" signs. During the Iowa straw poll, Freeman donned fake buckteeth and put his arm around unsuspecting Republican contender Steve Forbes while Texas oilman Don Evans, another Bush friend (and now Commerce secretary), snapped a picture for Bush.

Even his Master of the Universe moments stray into self-satire. At a recent gala honoring him, Freeman sang "Johnny B. Goode" with the band. As the party wound down, he sped across the estate in a chauffeured golf cart, yelling, "Hail, Caesar!" to the army of workers cleaning up.

He does have a serious side. Freeman is one of the Bush campaign's elite Rangers, fundraisers whose amassing of at least $200,000 in individual contributions have allowed them to surmount the $2,000 individual contribution limit imposed by campaign finance reform.