Updated: Gloria Allred, the attorney at the center of this week's spectacle over Meg Whitman's illegal immigrant housekeeper, spent time working for Jerry Brown's gubernatorial campaign in the mid-1970s, according to a decades-old article in an American Bar Association magazine.
Allred has downplayed her ties to Brown. But to the Whitman campaign – which released a photograph of Allred and Brown at a C-SPAN panel in 1994 – the celebrity attorney is long-time supporter of the former governor and a partisan Democrat.
The ABA article, written in 1985, describes the beginnings of Allred's practice:
Allred and Maroko set up quarters in February 1976 on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles … Allred, 43, had spent the previous four years working on California governor Jerry Brown's campaign and as a National Organization for Women volunteer.
The Brown campaign said the immigration controversy "has nothing to do with us," and accused Whitman of trying to divert attention from her own problems. At her press conference this week, Allred said she had been critical of Brown in her book, "Fight Back and Win," and she mocked assertions that her $150 donation influenced her or the housekeeper.
"Yeah I'm a very big spender," Allred said. "In 2006, apparently I gave him $150."
Allred also donated $1,000 to Brown's Senate campaign in 1982, but has not been an active donor since. When she has given, however, she has donated to Democratic candidates.
Her most recent campaign donation was in 2008, when she gave the legal maximum of $2,300 to Barack Obama's presidential campaign in 2008. Before that, between 1998 and 2007, she gave thousands to various Democratic candidates and causes, including California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.
That doesn't make her a heavyweight donor – not even close – but it gives a sense of where she stands with the Democrats. Here's her full federal giving history:
| Recipient | Amount | Date |
| Barbara Boxer | $1,000 | 10/26/98 |
| John Kerry | $2,000 | 3/17/2004 |
| Diane Watson | $500 | 6/4/2001 |
| Hillary Clinton | $1,000 | 11/27/2007 |
| Dennis Kucinich | $250 | 2/27/2002 |
| California Victory 04 | $333 | 10/17/2004 |
| California Victory 2000 | $250 | 2/27/2002 |
| Dianne Feinstein | $1,000 | 6/25/2000 |
| Barack Obama | $2,300 | 9/19/2008 |
| Barbara Boxer | $333 | 10/17/2004 |
Many of those contributions appear to be the result of fundraisers she attended.
Allred's daughter, attorney Lisa Bloom, also doesn't appear to be active in state campaign finance – though at one point last summer, she did send a letter to Brown in his capacity as attorney general, asking him to investigate bad doctors who overprescribe medication.
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