Heather Thomas arrived at a Santa Monica restaurant and ordered a cheeseburger and a margarita — “top shelf tequila,” she whispered to the waiter. It was days after President Biden’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump, and Thomas, like many liberals gazing a reckoning, puzzled what Democrats would face within the fall. May the favourite 81-year-old son of Scranton win? Would the Celebration rally? What would Hollywood do?
“They don’t like that old man voice,” she stated of Biden’s rasp and the best way his phrases appeared to vanish. “But he’s one of the most effective presidents we’ve had since Roosevelt or at least since Johnson. Trump’s an authoritarian. Why would anyone want to live in that bleakness? Republicans have brought on seven of the last eight recessions. I don’t want to go broke.”
A sip of margarita, a chew of burger. A glimmer of disgust.
Jazz performed low as nightfall settled over the coast and Thomas, 67, who within the Eighties was a pin-up sensation and a star within the TV sequence “The Fall Guy,” spoke of the upcoming election and recounted her a long time as a political activist and fundraiser. She and her husband Skip Brittenham, one of many leisure trade’s most distinguished legal professionals, who has represented Harrison Ford, Eddie Murphy and Ridley Scott, are accustomed to large ticket affairs. They co-hosted a 2023 reelection occasion for Vice President Kamala Harris that reportedly raised practically $500,000. Thomas attended the June gala the place George Clooney and Julia Roberts helped carry in additional than $30 million for President Biden.
Between 2019 and June of this yr, Thomas donated greater than $400,000 to candidates, political motion committees and different organizations, in accordance with the Federal Election Fee. Amongst her greatest recipients have been Honest Battle ($45,033), a voting rights group based by former Georgia state consultant Stacey Abrams; Actually American PAC ($33,240), an anti-Republican group; and U.S. Democrat senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania ($12,536) and Mark Kelly of Arizona ($10,722).
However a lot of Thomas’ work is grassroots pushed and out of the limelight. In 2003, she and Dan Carol, who would grow to be an power advisor for President Obama’s administration, and Jessica Tully, an artist lengthy steeped in politics, began the Regime Change Cafe, a salon principally run out of Thomas’ Santa Monica house that linked politicians and activists with cash and methods. The group later modified its title to the L.A. Cafe. Thomas’ company have included Gloria Steinem; María Teresa Kumar, founding president of Voto Latino; Arianna Huffington; Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Gov. Gavin Newsom and members from the Sierra Membership and the Middle for American Progress.
“I got tired of eating lobster while nothing was happening,” stated Thomas, noting political cash is usually lavished on candidates and personalities as a substitute of points. “They treat the big donors wonderfully. They treat the bundlers wonderfully.” However, she added, the cash and assist don’t all the time attain the individuals on the bottom like “someone working with inner-city kids who will vote if you talk to them. There was a league of punk rock voters, a league of pissed-off voters. I wanted to fund all the boots on the ground.”
Heather Thomas at a fundraiser for the Rape Basis in April 2005.
(Los Angeles Instances)
Thomas has the political instincts of an old-school ward chief and the sharp tongue of a socialite who is aware of the secrets and techniques of housekeepers and the intricacies of offshore financial institution accounts. She stayed loyal to President Biden at the same time as Clooney and far of the Hollywood elite referred to as for him to step down after his debate in June towards Trump. She now helps Kamala Harris — “I’ve liked her for a long time” — and says Hollywood’s greatest worry is the rise of Christian nationalism and Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric.
“People in the entertainment industry don’t want to see their ability to make art threatened,” stated Thomas, the daughter of a particular training instructor and an aerospace scientist, who has greater than 113,000 followers on X. “As twisted and messed up as it is, it’s the business of art. We want to be able to keep making our stuff. This town is well aware that we’ll get punished to hell for being a blue state. If you put the Bible people in charge, they’ll f— us up. I’d look like crap in a Duggar dress.”
A sip, a chew, an eye fixed roll.
“Reagan’s the one who put the evangelicals and the neocons together.”
She paused as a waiter handed and cooks moved in swift silhouettes within the kitchen.
“This time the right-wing is really going to take out freedom.”
Thomas has learn Challenge 2025, the 900-plus web page manifesto conservatives hope Trump will perform if he’s reelected president. “Who does fracking in national parks?” she requested with a flash of incredulity. She has lengthy labored on ladies’s and environmental points, serving on advisory boards of the Rape Basis and the Amazon Conservation Crew to guard indigenous rights and biodiversity within the rainforest.
Her political awakening got here at an early age and has formed an unflinching liberal worldview ever since.
“I was 5 years old, and I couldn’t do what the boys did. That’s not ladylike. I learned life is not fair right away,” stated Thomas, who went to Santa Monica Excessive Faculty and UCLA’s Faculty of Theater, Movie and Tv. “My first march was a Cesar Chavez march. The United Farm Workers against the lettuce industry. I was in high school. I had a wonderful sociology teacher. He gave me a bunch of books. He was from Mexico. He goes, ‘You gotta know the real story.’ ”
“Heather is very clear-eyed on what civic life means,” stated Tully, who in 1996 was nationwide area director for Rock the Vote, which drew in pop stars like Madonna and Sheryl Crow to register younger voters. She stated Thomas sees politics is greater than a candidate “flying in in an election year. It’s about deep listening. Heather’s frame was around the environment … and she [later] brought the issue to me that the right-wing is taking away people’s right to vote.”
Thomas was indelible within the Eighties, the age of mullets, leg heaters and “The Fall Guy” through which she performed stuntwoman Jody Banks reverse a bounty hunter created by Lee Majors. Her pinup posters rivaled these of Farrah Fawcett, adorning taverns, dorms, locker rooms, the closets of janitors and the garages of boys who began bands and labored on automobiles. She went to rehab for cocaine habit and married Allan Rosenthal, a founding father of Cocaine Nameless. They divorced and Thomas, who had largely stop appearing over fears of stalkers, married Brittenham, with whom she raised a daughter and two stepdaughters whereas writing scripts and the novel “Trophies.”
Heather Thomas and Lee Majors starred within the ABC TV present “The Fall Guy,” which debuted in 1981 and ran for 5 seasons.
(ABC by way of Getty Photographs)
Revealed in 2008, the yr the L.A. Day by day Information ran the headline, “Whatever Happened to Heather Thomas?”, the novel is a intelligent portrait of the trophy spouse, that always maligned but highly effective bejeweled presence that navigates husbands and directs fortunes to charities and politics. In a quip paying homage to Dorothy Parker, Thomas as soon as informed an interviewer, “You know, close to 80% of donated money in this country is controlled by second wives of wealthy men.”
The opening paragraph within the novel’s first chapter notes the political perils of an excessive amount of glitz: “The bar crystal was wrong … probably from the Tiffany set. And she didn’t need to wear her glasses to recognize the Buccellati ice bucket, which meant that the whole shebang was way too much — the biggest mistake you could make at a political event. Donors like to think every penny of their money is going into boots-on-the-ground media campaigns for the average working Joe and other rolled-up-sleeves stuff. This bar said the pope and Queen Elizabeth were coming over to burn dollar bills.”
Thomas, like her e-book’s protagonist Marion Zane, retains watch on rising electable expertise, together with Adrian Fontes, the Secretary of State for Arizona, a important swing state. “He’s a rising Democratic star. A complete badass,” she stated. “His family goes back something like 1,500 years in the area. A marine. A lawyer. Brillant. I discovered him on a call. People find me. I have a flat lawn. If you have a flat lawn they’ll find you. A lot of homes are on a hill.”
She mentions “flat lawn” with out irony — it’s a Hollywood marker connoting accessibility not solely geographic however on a shifting scale decided by zeitgeist, fame and the whims of luck. That openness has led to long-lasting relationships. Her enthusiasm for Fontes, whom she has donated cash to, is much like how she felt about Barbara Boxer, who when she was working for the U.S. Senate within the Nineties, was not well-known by the leisure trade.
Thomas and Brittenham “introduced me to a lot of people who could put on events and raise money,” stated Boxer, whose progressive beliefs appealed to Thomas. “Heather opened her home to us. We did an exercise class on her lawn. She said, ‘Everybody come and bring a towel.’ There were exercise gurus and breakfast. I was so appreciative. She opened the door to grassroots people and her friends.”
That sort of private contact is complemented by Thomas’ data — she research coverage papers — of even probably the most obscure political points. A 2004 story in W journal famous Thomas’ environmental activism: She will be able to “spend 20 minutes expounding on the plight of the endangered elk near her second home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she recently organized a grassroots ‘truth-telling’ session at one of Dick Cheney’s favorite restaurants.” The piece added, “And don’t get her started on the subject of fuel efficiency: ‘I’m convinced that everyone with a Hummer has a small [penis].’ ”
The nation’s divisiveness has deepened through the years, and Thomas, who fly fishes, retains pet chickens (her rooster’s title is Jay) and describes herself on X as a “closet farmer patriot,” is uneasy concerning the enmity. “We’re all Americans,” she stated. “All these people saying, ‘Oh it’s time to grab the guns.’ But you know what, they’d help me out in a flood if they lived next door and I’d help them out.”
She sipped her margarita. A saxophone performed a ’50s jazz ballad; vacationers roamed exterior and an individual of a sure age may conjure tail-fin Cadillacs and Irwin Shaw’s brief story, “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses.”
“I miss my Republican friends. A lot of them died,” she stated. “I used to tease (Hollywood executive) Alan Hirschfield. He was my neighbor up at Jackson Hole and my boss at 20th Century Fox. I loved him. I fished with Senator Al Simpson. He would have taken away my rights in a heartbeat, but we could talk about it and we could still be civil.” The web, she stated, did away with civility. “People get dopamine from surfing. It’s just going to get uglier and weirder and more confusing.”
Thomas co-founded the web site Don’t Get Purged, a voting rights effort that tracks state registration guidelines to boost consciousness amongst minority voters. She’s additionally engaged on an outreach program to assist faculty college students to vote. “TikTok is on fire,” she stated. A lot of her time, regardless of a latest foray into appearing — she appeared within the new “Fall Guy” film starring Ryan Gosling — is spent behind the scenes.
“I can be the napkin lady,” she stated. “I don’t need to be seen.”
The L.A. Cafe plans to satisfy once more in autumn for final minute fundraising. Earlier than then or maybe later, she’ll be again at Jackson Gap, watching the whitewater and the run of rivers and fishing for rainbow trout, which, she stated, “is like looking for buried treasure. You listen to the wind, see what the moon did the night before.” She notices issues like that, in politics and nature, and he or she stated it’s principally about storytelling, how a story lifts and rolls in direction of you, and what you do when it will get there.
(Instances knowledge reporter Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee contributed to this story)
