CLINTON FUND-RAISING TRIP IRKS GROUPS.

Byline: The New York Times

Just two weeks after he called on Congress to overhaul the campaign finance laws by summer, President Clinton flew Tuesday to New York City, one of the political fund-raising capitals of the nation, to raise more than $1 million for Democratic candidates for the Senate.

Clinton's long-scheduled appearance at a small fund-raising dinner at the Upper East Side town house of J. Shelby Bryan, a telecommunications executive, drew criticism from groups fighting to reduce the influence of money in politics and left the White House working hard to explain how the president's nonstop money raising squared with his calls for reform.

With Tuesday night's 100 guests making donations of $10,000 or $25,000, the dinner raised some of the same kind of unregulated ``soft money'' contributions that Clinton has asked Republicans to join with him in forswearing.

In addition, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee - the recipient of the money - has not imposed the same voluntary limits on fund raising enacted by the Democratic National Committee in the wake of the controversy over its 1996 fund raising.

Mike McCurry, the White House press secretary, however, defended Clinton's appearance and said that under any overhaul of the campaign finance laws, political parties would still be raising money.

``Campaign finance reform does not require taxpayers to pick up the bill for campaigns,'' he said, ``and the advocates of reform ought to make that clear to the public so we can build support for the campaign finance reform legislation that's pending.''

Clinton's evening fund raising on behalf of Senate Democrats - his second fund-raiser since New Year's - precedes by a day a gathering of the Republicans' big givers, Team 100, in Palm Beach, Fla.

While the fund-raiser anchored Clinton's two-day swing through New York City and Boston, he began his day with appearances intended to promote his push for the private sector and churches to create jobs for welfare recipients forced off the rolls under legislation the president signed last summer.

The Democratic fund-raiser Tuesday night was the first of two back-to-back events this week demonstrating that Republicans and Democrats alike are making no moves to dispense with their relentless quest for dollars.

At an exclusive Palm Beach resort, the Republicans' Team 100 contributors, who pay $100,000 to join the group, are meeting and socializing this week with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and other Republican lawmakers. ``This whole week is like campaign reform hypocrisy week,'' said Ann McBride, president of Common Cause, a group that favors campaign finance reform.

Lott and many Republicans have shown little interest in a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., that would ban contributions from foreign nationals and also ban so-called soft-money contributions that are unlimited and unregulated by federal law.

Clinton, by contrast, repeatedly has called for its passage, including an appeal in his State of the Union message for Congress to act ``by the day we celebrate the birth of our democracy - July 4.'' But groups fighting to change the campaign finance system said he was hardly leading by example.

``There's a fundamental disconnect which leads me, and probably leads most people, to doubt his sincerity about his pledges to clean up the system,'' said Ellen Miller, executive director of Public Campaign, a nonpartisan group formed last month to push for an overhaul of the campaign finance system. ``You don't have to unilaterally disarm. But he doesn't have to be intimately involved in these kinds of fund-raising events at this point in the fund-raising cycle, if ever.''

The White House has been buffeted for months by disclosures about its 1996 fund-raising practices in which donors who gave $50,000 or $100,000 were wooed with private dinners and coffees with Clinton.