There’s something endlessly smelly about the Whitman housekeeper affair, a lingering odor that evokes the hypocrisy most of us engage in when we deal with illegal immigration.

The Gloria Allred news conference featuring shunned housekeeper Nicky Diaz was politically timed theater on the morning after the first governor’s debate.

But Meg Whitman doesn’t escape unscathed, for reasons that have little to do with law and more to do with how she treats people.

The basics of what happened in June 2009 are largely undisputed. Diaz went to Whitman and admitted she was in this country illegally. Whitman and her husband promptly fired her after nine years as a housekeeper.

Diaz says the Republican candidate told her she could not help her — and added in their final talk, “You don’t know me. I don’t know you.”

I think that statement, if true, damages Whitman the most. For one brief moment, we might have seen the “bad Meg” described in the Craigslist trial.

For the record, Whitman says Diaz has been manipulated by Allred and that everything the Los Angeles lawyer says is false.

So it’s worth sifting through the statements of both sides for context. The first question is whether Whitman and her husband, Stanford surgeon Griff Harsh, had an obligation to uncover Diaz’s illegal status.

Paperwork

The Whitman campaign has released copies of Diaz’s social security card, driver’s license and employment agency paperwork that says she can accept work legally.

“We did what we needed to do as an employer,” said Whitman, adding that there was a 1099 tax form on file for Diaz at the employment agency. “We couldn’t have been more careful.”

On the campaign trail, however, Whitman has said employers should be held responsible for hiring illegal immigrants.

Did she or her husband try very hard to find out whether Diaz was legal? I doubt it. If she got good service, Whitman was unlikely to ask too many questions.

Truthfully, she had more documentation than most of us demand. When the lattice for my bougainvillea collapsed on top of me a few months ago, my wife suggested I hire a couple of guys outside Orchard Supply.

To my chagrin as a handyman, they knew how to fix things far more quickly than I. Did I ask whether they had papers? No.

That’s what leads me to think there is something fundamentally phony about the tearful Allred drama Wednesday morning.

Weak case

If Allred has to hold a news conference to air her claims, the case is weak. When she represented Jodie Fisher, who brought a sexual harassment claim against former HP chief Mark Hurd, a monetary deal was done before Fisher released a statement to the press.

As much as your heart might go out to Nicky Diaz, she was working illegally. She lied on her employment form. She deserved to be fired. Assuming Allred made financial demands before going public — and that is what I assume — Whitman deserves credit for not buckling.

I have the nasty feeling, however, that the phone conversation Diaz described might indeed have taken place. As she told the story, Whitman said: “From now on, you don’t know me. I don’t know you. I have never seen you. You have never seen me. Understand me?”

If accurate, those were the words not just of an employer who felt betrayed but of a politician willing to ruthlessly cut ties with someone she described Wednesday as a member of her household.

It’s always possible Diaz might have misremembered what was said. But since elections are judgments about character as much as they are dissections of issues, what worries me about Whitman is that I tend to believe her housekeeper recalled it correctly.

Contact Scott Herhold at sherhold@mercurynews.com or 408-275-0917.