Martha Lies Low Amid Stock Scandal

By Stephen M. Silverman

06/17/2002 at 01:00 AM EDT

It was an unusually quiet weekend for Martha Stewart, reports The New York Times, after the usually busy, busy, busy domestic doyenne made headlines late last week for coming under the scrutiny of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Times reports that a $1,000-a-plate fund-raising dinner to benefit the Democratic Senatorial Campaign that was scheduled to be held in Manhattan on Monday night -- at which Stewart was to have served as host -- has been postponed. Some $200,000 was expected to be raised at the event, where guests were to have included New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senate majority leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota. The sponsors of the event are the political action committees of AOL Time Warner (PEOPLE's parent company) and the Magazine Publishers of America. As The Times notes, Stewart, 60, is being investigated for selling thousands of shares of ImClone Systems last Dec. 27, the day before the stock's value plummeted on the news that the Food and Drug Administration declined to approve its new cancer drug, Erbitux. Organizers of the fund-raising event told The Times that Monday's dinner was not shelved because of the controversy surrounding its host. "It was postponed due to a scheduling conflict," the committee's executive director, James Jordan, told the paper.