Heather Thomas arrived at a Santa Monica restaurant and ordered a cheeseburger and a margarita. “The finest tequila,” she whispered to the waiter. It was days after the disastrous debate between President Biden and President Donald Trump. Thomas wondered what Democrats might face in the fall as many liberals stare down the gauntlet. Could the popular 81-year-old from Scranton win? Would the party rally? What would Hollywood do?

“They don't like the sound of that old man's voice,” she said. Biden's husky voice And the way his words fade away. “But he Roosevelt Or at least Johnson“Trump is an authoritarian. Who wants to live in that dark situation? Republicans have caused seven of the last eight recessions. We don't want to go bankrupt.”

One sip of the margarita, one bite of the burger, and a hint of disgust in the air.

As dusk lapped at the shoreline and the bass sounds of jazz rang out, Thomas, 66, a pin-up star in the 1980s and star of the TV series “Star Wars,” “Scapegoat” She spoke about the upcoming election and reflected on her decades as a political activist and fundraiser. She and her husband, Skip Brittenham, are no strangers to big cases; they're among the entertainment industry's most prominent lawyers, having represented Harrison Ford, Eddie Murphy and Ridley Scott. They co-hosted Vice President Kamala Harris' 2023 reelection event. Reportedly About $500,000. Thomas attended the June gala that helped George Clooney and Julia Roberts raise more than $30 million for President Biden.

Thomas donated more than $400,000 to candidates, political action committees and other organizations between 2019 and June of this year, the report said. Federal Election Commission. Her biggest recipients include Fair Fight, the voting rights group founded by former Georgia Rep. Stacey Abrams ($45,033), the anti-Republican group Really American PAC ($33,240), and Democratic U.S. senators John Fetterman of Pennsylvania ($12,536) and Mark Kelly of Arizona ($10,722).

But much of Thomas' work is done at the grassroots level, out of the limelight. In 2003, she and Dan Carroll, who would become an energy adviser to the Obama administration, Jessica Tully An artist who has been deeply involved in politics Regime Change CafeThe LA Cafe was a salon that ran primarily from Thomas's Santa Monica home, connecting politicians and activists over finances and strategy. The group later changed its name to LA Cafe. Thomas' guests included Gloria Steinem. Maria Teresa Kumar, founding chair of Voto Latino; Arianna Huffington, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Governor Gavin Newsom, and members of the Sierra Club and the Center for American Progress.

“I'm tired of eating lobster when nothing's happening,” Thomas said, noting that political money is often lavished on candidates and celebrities rather than the issues at stake. “We treat our big donors very well. We treat our fundraisers very well.” But she added that the money and support doesn't always reach people on the ground. “There were people working with inner-city kids who would vote for us if we talked to them. There was a league of punk rock voters, a league of angry voters. I wanted to fund all the soldiers on the ground.”

Thomas has the political instincts of an old-fashioned borough president and the sharp tongue of a socialite who knows the intricacies of housekeeper secrets and offshore bank accounts. She said Biden is Clooney and many of Hollywood's elite After the June debate with Trump, she called for him to step down. She now supports Kamala Harris, saying, “I've liked her for a long time,” and that Hollywood's biggest fear is Christian Nationalism And Trump's authoritarian rhetoric.

“People in the entertainment industry don't want to see their ability to make art threatened,” says Thomas, the daughter of a special education teacher and an aerospace scientist, who has more than 113,000 followers on X. “No matter how twisted and messed up it is, that's what art is about. We want to keep making our work. This town knows full well we're going to get damned in hell for being a blue state. If we put Bible believers in charge, they're going to mess with us. If I wore a Duggar family dress, I'd look awful.”

Take a sip, eat a bite, roll your eyes.

“Reagan was the link between evangelicals and neoconservatives.”

She paused as waiters passed by and cooks worked quickly in the kitchen.

“Now the right wing is really trying to take away our freedoms.”

Thomas read Project 2025, “Who's going to frack a national park?” she asked incredulously. She's a longtime activist for women's and environmental issues, and is the founder of the Rape Foundation and the Defense Department. Amazon Conservation Team To protect indigenous rights and biodiversity in tropical rainforests.

She became interested in politics at an early age and has since developed an unwavering liberal view of the world.

“I was 5 years old and I couldn't do what the boys were doing. It was unladylike. I learned very quickly that life wasn't fair,” says Thomas, who attended Santa Monica High School and the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater, Film and Television. “The first demonstration I ever went to was a Cesar Chavez demonstration, a United Farm Workers demonstration against the lettuce industry. I was in high school. I had a great sociology teacher. She gave me a lot of books. She was from Mexico, and she said, 'You have to know the real story.'”

“Heather has a very clear understanding of what it means to be a civic person,” says Tully, who served as national field director for Rock the Boat in 1996 and hosted pop stars like Madonna and Sheryl Crow to register young voters. Thomas sees politics as more than “candidates popping up in an election year,” Tully says. “It's about deep listening. Heather's thinking was centered on the environment… and she [later] He brought up to me the issue of the right wing taking away people's right to vote.”

Thomas was unforgettable in the 1980s, the era of mullets, leg warmers and “The Fall Guy,” in which she played stuntwoman Jody Banks opposite Lee Majors' bounty hunter. Her pin-up posters rivaled those of Farrah Fawcett and adorned saloons, dorms, locker rooms, janitor's closets and garages where boys started bands and worked on cars. She went to rehab for cocaine addiction and married Cocaine Anonymous founder Alan Rosenthal. They divorced, and Thomas, who had all but given up acting for fear of a stalker, BrittenhamShe raised her daughter and two stepdaughters while writing her screenplay and novel, Trophies.

Heather Thomas and Lee Majors starred in the ABC TV show “The Fall Guy,” which premiered in 1981 and ran for five seasons.

(ABC via Getty Images)

Published in 2008, the year the LA Daily News ran a headline asking “What Happened to Heather Thomas?”, the novel is a masterful portrayal of trophy wives, the powerful, often-maligned, bejewelled figures who guide their husbands and direct their fortunes to charity and politics. Dorothy Parker “You know, in this country, close to 80 percent of the endowments are controlled by the spouses of wealthy men,” Thomas once said in an interview.

The opening paragraph of the novel's first chapter points out the political dangers of being too flashy: “The crystals in the bar were wrong…probably from a Tiffany set. And she didn't need to wear glasses to recognize Bucciarati's ice bucket. So the whole affair was overdone, which is the biggest mistake you can make at a political event. Donors like to think that every penny of their money is going to an on-the-ground media campaign for the average worker or anyone else with their sleeves rolled up. We were told that the Pope and Queen Elizabeth would come to burn dollar bills in this bar.”

Thomas focuses on the rise of electable talent, like her book's protagonist, Marion Zane. Adrian Fontes, Arizona is a key battleground state. “He's a rising star in the Democratic Party. He's a really incredible guy,” she said. “His family has been in this area for about 1500 years. He's a Marine, he's a lawyer, he's a great guy. I found him on the phone. People find me. My house is a flat lawn. If you have a flat lawn, people find you. A lot of houses are on hills.”

She doesn't say “flat loan” ironically; it's a Hollywood marker that suggests accessibility on a shifting scale determined not just by geography but by zeitgeist, fame, and the fickleness of luck. That openness has made for enduring relationships; her enthusiasm for Fontes, to whom she donated money, is similar to her feelings about Barbara Boxer, who was little known in the entertainment industry when she was running for U.S. Senate in the 1990s.

Thomas and Brittenham “introduced us to a lot of people who were able to do events and raise money,” said the boxer, whose progressive causes drew Thomas to them. “Heather invited us into her home. We had exercise classes on her lawn. She said, 'Come on everyone, bring a towel.' We also had exercise gurus and breakfasts. I'm so grateful. She opened her doors to grassroots people and friends.”

These personal touches are further enhanced by Thomas's knowledge of the most obscure political issues (she studies policy documents). A 2004 W magazine article said of Thomas' environmental activism: “She can spend 20 minutes detailing the plight of endangered moose near her adopted home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; she recently organized a grassroots 'truth-telling' session at Dick Cheney's favorite restaurant.” The article continued, “And please, let's not get into the topic of gas mileage. 'I'm sure anyone with a Hummer has low gas mileage.'” [penis]”

The country has become more divided every year, and Thomas, who fly fishes, keeps pet chickens (her rooster is named Jay) and describes herself as a “secretly patriotic farmer” at X, finds the hostility unsettling. “We're all Americans,” she says. “Everybody's like, 'Oh, it's time to get your guns,' but if they lived next door to me, they'd help me out when there was a flood, and I'd help them out.”

She sipped her margarita. A saxophone played '50s jazz ballads, tourists milled around outside, and anyone of a certain age could picture fin-tipped Cadillacs and the Irwin Shaw short story “Girls in Summer Dresses.”

“I miss my Republican friends, many of whom are gone,” she says. “I used to make fun of Alan Hirschfield. He was my neighbor in Jackson Hole and my boss at 20th Century Fox. I loved him. I went fishing with Senator Al Simpson. He tried to take away my rights in a heartbeat, but we could talk about it and be civil.” The Internet, she says, has done away with civility. “People get their dopamine from surfing the Net. It's only going to get uglier and weirder and more confusing.”

Thomas is the co-founder of the website To avoid being purgedShe also works on outreach programs to help college students vote. “TikTok is all the rage,” she says. She recently branched out into acting, appearing in the new movie “The Fall Guy” starring Ryan Gosling, but spends most of her time behind the scenes.

“I could be a napkin girl,” she said. “I wouldn't have to be in the public eye.”

The LA Café will meet again in the fall for one final fundraiser. Before then, or maybe later, she'll return to Jackson Hole to watch the rapids and flow of the river and fish for rainbow trout. “It's like searching for buried treasure — listening to the wind, seeing what the moon looked like last night,” she says. She finds such things in politics and nature, and she says it's mostly about storytelling, how the story rises and rolls toward you, and what you do with it when you get there.

(Times data reporter Gabriel Lamar Lemme contributed to this report.)