In 1968, at the prompting of her former boyfriend, Harold M. Ickes, Thomases supported Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy's unsuccessful bid to become the Democratic Party's candidate for president.
She met Bill Clinton in 1970, and joined him in 1974 in Fayetteville, Arkansas, to work on his campaign to challenge incumbent Republican congressman John Paul Hammerschmidt.
It was here that she met Hillary Rodham, who had just moved to Arkansas after having graduated from Yale Law School the previous year.
In 1978, she ran former basketball star Bill Bradley's successful campaign to unseat New Jersey Senator Clifford P. Case.
[4] Once Bill Clinton was elected, Thomases did not take an official role at the White House, but she continued to advise the First Lady in an unofficial capacity.
Thomases was questioned by Senators D'Amato and Faircloth and majority counsel, Michael Chertoff, about telephone calls that she had exchanged with Hillary Clinton, Hillary's chief of staff Maggie Williams and White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum the morning after the suicide of Vince Foster.
Thomases testified that the calls were of a personal nature and that she had not discussed the impending search of Foster's office with Hillary Clinton.