Campaign contributions from disgraced LA attorney raise eyebrows

Jeffrey S. Ranen gave only to Democrats, including several from the party’s progressive wing

Part of an email thread between John Barber and Jeff Ranen, two law firm partners who quit Lewis Brisbois on May 2, 2023 Photo by Screenshot/Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith

By Lauren Markoe June 9, 2023

One of the two lawyers responsible for dozens of bigoted emails released last week has a record of donating to candidates who champion diversity and inclusion.

A review of campaign finance records for California attorneys John Barber and Jeffrey S. Ranen show that Ranen contributed about $10,000 to Democratic candidates since 2010.

The New York Post on Saturday first excerpted some of the incendiary emails, followed on Monday by the Forward, which revealed a subset of antisemitic correspondence. For years, the stories revealed, the lawyers had mocked Jews, Blacks and other groups.

What surprised many was how incongruous the emails seemed in light of the new firm’s promise at its inception to build — as Ranen told the Los Angeles Business Journal — a firm based on “empathy, collaboration and compassion.” By the same token, his support for Democratic candidates who publicly embrace an ethic of inclusion raised some eyebrows.

Ranen gave $1,000 to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2015, $1,000 to former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016, $250 to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2012 and $2,800 to President Joe Biden in 2020. Most recently, in November, he gave $500 to Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia during his runoff campaign.

“Ranen’s FEC donation history, which gives exclusively to Democratic Party candidates and causes, demonstrates the continued prevalence of casual racism, bigotry, and sexism that still pervades American culture even among some people whose public personas suggest otherwise,” political analyst Rachel Bitecofer said in a statement.

“Though it is impossible to know what motivated Mr. Ranen’s donations, his new firm’s ironic mission statement suggests Mr. Ranen may well have seen himself as an ally of equality even while he was actively undermining it with his racist, bigoted, and sexist commentary,” continued Bitecofer, who has advised several prominent Democrats, including Jaime Harrison, the chair of the Democratic National Committee. Harrison, when he ran for Senate in South Carolina in 2020, received a $250 campaign contribution from Ranen.

Records showed only one political contribution from Barber, of $500 to the campaign of Democrat David Evan Jones, who ran for California state attorney general in 2018.

Ranen, with Barber, formed Barber Ranen LLP last month in what was billed the largest legal startup in U.S. history, bolting from Los Angeles mega firm Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard and Smith and taking more than 120 lawyers with them.

The move rocked the legal world, but not as much as Lewis Brisbois’ decision last week to release a tranche of emails written by Ranen and Barber while they still worked there, correspondence loaded with antisemitic, racist, homophobic, anti-Asian and misogynistic comments — many of them crude and graphic. In one instance Ranen remarked about a job candidate: “How about someone who’s not a Jew.” And in another he referred to a “Jewish c*nt.”

‘Revenge delivered ice cold’

Ranen and Barber resigned Monday and issued an apology. “The last 72 hours have been the most difficult of our lives, as we have had to acknowledge and reckon with those emails,” they said in a statement. “They are not, in any way, reflections of the contents of our hearts, or our true values.”

The new firm’s remaining leadership renamed it Daugherty Lordan, after partners Melissa Daugherty and Joseph Lordan.

A Lewis Brisbois spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times that some lawyers who left with Barber and Ranen had asked for their old jobs back, and that some would be rehired. The newspaper wrote that legal observers had deemed Lewis Brisbois’ release of Ranen and Barber’s emails “revenge delivered ice cold.”

Records list additional contributions from Ranen, including $250 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, charged to Elect Democrats to the U.S. Senate, and $650 to ActBlue, the online fundraising platform which, according to its website, distributes campaign dollars to “Democratic candidates up and down the ballot, progressive organizations, and nonprofits.”

Neither the DSCC nor ActBlue immediately responded to a request for comment.

Forward senior political reporter Jacob Kornbluh contributed to this story.

Lauren Markoe is news editor of the Forward. A Bronx native, she reported for The Patriot Ledger, several McClatchy newspapers in the South, and Religion News Service, where she was also managing editor. She also produced live radio shows at WAMU in Washington, D.C., where she lives.

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