... I'm guessing that Sterling's contribution(s) to Bradley may have been based less on ideology and more on Bradley's background in the NBA.
That's an interesting possibility. But I wouldn't rule out that he gave Bradley the money based on Bradley's political beliefs and the basketball connection is simply a coincidence.
I can't help noticing that Sterling gave $1000 to Patrick Leahy in the 1992 election cycle. I don't see a basketball connection there, and in the quick skim I've done of Leahy's committee assignments (Leahy was vice-chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the time of the Iran-Contra hearings, and from 1987 to 1995 he was chair of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee) I don't see anything which would put Leahy in a position to especially affect Sterling's business interests, so it's quite likely the donation to Leahy is based on actual agreement with Leahy's stands. Leahy was and is one of the more liberal / progressive Democrats.
I wish we could see which Democrats Sterling contributed to earlier in the 1980s. OpenSecrets began compiling donor records in the 1980s and their records appear to go back only to 1988; the oldest Sterling donation the LittleSis search done via OpenSecrets was from 1989. But the realgm search (done in 2011 via NewsMeat.com) seems to go back a little farther (since it claims a total of $6000 in donations).
Unfortunately the NewsMeat site is refusing to come up for me so I'm unable to check their search results myself. But the difference in totals between OpenSecrets and NewsMeat implies to me that in addition to donating to Bradley in 1989 for the 1990 election and to Leahy and Davis in 1991 for the 1992 election Sterling may have also donated to unnamed Democrat(s) for the 1988 election and quite possibly for previous elections as well. If we knew who these candidates were we might have a better idea of what criteria Sterling used to select candidates to give money to.
That still wouldn't answer what I find to be a more intriguing question, though: why did Sterling abruptly stop making political donations after the 1992 election and instead focus on non-political charity work?
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