NYT, pg1: Questions raised over Harold Ickes's databank venture

[DeepModem Mom]

(NOTE: Read the entire excerpt, or the entire article -- it's about more than Harold Ickes making money.)

Clinton Aide’s Databank Venture Breaks Ground in Politicking
By LESLIE WAYNE
Published: April 12, 2008


(Andrew Councill/NYT)
Harold M. Ickes, a senior adviser to the Clinton campaign, is the president of Catalist, a for-profit voter databank company. No matter who the Democratic nominee is, Mr. Ickes stands to profit.

When Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton needed help rounding up superdelegates, she turned to Harold M. Ickes, the ultimate Democratic fixer, who is now working round-the-clock for her, drawing on his vast energy and decades of political connections. But, at the same time, Mr. Ickes is also wearing another hat. He is president of Catalist, a for-profit databank that has sold its voter files to the Obama and the Clinton presidential campaigns for their get-out-the-vote efforts. With his equity stake in the firm, Mr. Ickes stands to benefit financially no matter which candidate becomes the Democratic nominee.

In creating Catalist, Mr. Ickes, who was deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House, has formed a rare entity on the political scene, a for-profit limited-liability corporation that allows wealthy Democratic donors to help progressive organizations and candidates by investing in the company. And if Catalist, which has data on 230 million Americans, is successful as a business, these donors-turned-investors stand to reap financial returns from using their money to help elect Democrats. But some campaign finance watchdogs say they wonder whether Catalist was established not so much to make money but to find a creative way to allow big-money liberal donors to influence the election without disclosing the degree of their involvement or being subjected to other rules that would govern spending by an explicitly political organization.

Catalist has raised over $11 million in venture capital, including more than $1 million from the billionaire financier George Soros, according to his aides. It also counts on such large unions as the Service Employees International Union and the A.F.L.-C.I.O., to buy its products and create revenues. And it plans to be the go-to source for voter data for a broad swath of groups often aligned with Democrats — like the Sierra Club, Emily’s List and Clean Water Action — as they embark on ambitious get-out-the vote efforts this fall. These liberal clients will buy lists of likely voters based on information that Catalist has gleaned from voter registration files and commercial data providers. For instance, Catalist computers will take voter registration information along with data from appliance warranties, hunting and fishing licenses, charitable memberships and other data points to draw models of potentially sympathetic voters that these clients can approach.

Catalist grew out of the embers of two groups that Mr. Ickes headed in the 2004 election, Americans Coming Together and the Media Fund, which, in part, conducted strong get-out-the-vote efforts. But when the Democrats failed to take the White House in 2004, wealthy donors believed that one reason they had failed was that Democrats lacked the sophisticated voter databanks of the Republican Party, its celebrated “voter vault” that can pinpoint likely supporters. Out of that analysis came a decision to set up a Democratic voter databank outside the formal party apparatus and structured as a business, with investors and customers drawn from the same pool of those who had worked closely together in 2004....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/us/politics/12vote.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=all

[madfloridian]

1. The money men....the ones who threatened Pelosi, the DCCC, and Dean's DNC

True faces of the money men behind the curtain are showing now...threats to Dean and Pelosi.

"adviser Harold Ickes would develop state-of-the-art technology to help Clinton reach prospective voters; EMILY's List and Clinton's allies in organized labor would launch an unprecedented effort to turn out supporters, especially women voters; former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe would raise untold sums from wealthy donors and the business community; and communications honcho Howard Wolfson would direct an unrelenting war room. Ever since 1992 the Clintons had used the DNC as an outpost for raising money from big donors, and funding candidates had taken precedence over nurturing progressive organizers. That model would continue into '08. Dean could remain at the DNC as a figurehead but only if he stayed in line."


Also from your link:

"In setting up Catalist, Mr. Ickes is also setting up a rival databank to one that the Democratic National Committee has spent millions developing to help candidates and party committees in 2008. While there have been reports that Mr. Ickes, who had been critical of the management of the national committee under Howard Dean, began Catalist as a vote of no confidence in the committee’s effort, Ms. Quinn, the Catalist chief executive, insists that is not the case."

It was direct competition....Hillary is using it.

[madfloridian]

2. Also Obama is using and helping build the DNC database.

Here is a statement about how Obama is using the DNC files. And Hillary is not.

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/080313nj1.htm

"At the Democratic National Committee, officials see the big red-state turnout numbers as a validation of Chairman Howard Dean's "50-state strategy." Rather than focusing on a handful of swing states, Dean and a chorus of like-minded allies have argued, Democrats should invest substantial time and money in trying to restore their competitiveness, even in Republican territory. As part of that initiative, Dean has provided every state party with funds to hire organizers and upgrade computerized voter files.

Dave Boundy, the DNC's political director, says that while Clinton has used voter files from a private vendor, Obama has mostly purchased the files from state parties. Under the agreement with those parties, Boundy added, Obama will update the files to show which voters responded to his outreach efforts. That should help state parties and the eventual nominee target their own turnout campaigns this fall."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From your OP...alarming.

"Equally sticky is that there are conflicts within Catalist’s own client lists. The Clinton campaign, for instance, has paid Catalist $125,000 for its data, while the Obama campaign has paid $50,000, even though Mr. Ickes works for Mrs. Clinton and has been raising concerns about Mr. Obama’s electability as he courts superdelegates on her behalf.

“We just hope that Harold’s data is better than his delegate math,” Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said of the payments to Catalist."

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Thanks for this info, madfloridian! nt