Harold M. Ickes is as close to Democratic Party royalty as they get. The son of FDR's Interior Secretary, he was a Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton, and now serves as an adviser to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in her own White House bid.
You would think that Ickes wouldn't be too crazy about doing business with the Obama campaign, right?
Wrong.
As the New York Times reports, Ickes is president of Catalist, formerly known as "Data Warehouse" which has one of the most frightening mission statements I've ever seen:
Catalist is transforming the way progressive organizations communicate and campaign by creating a comprehensive, well-maintained national database of all voting-age individuals in the United States, along with the tools and expertise needed to make this database broadly accessible, at an affordable price.
(more after the jump)
The Times article reports that Catalist has data on 230 MILLION Americans, for sale to the highest bidder (no Republicans need apply, though). The company has taken on an astonishing amount of investment from a wide range of traditionally liberal organizations and wealthy donors.
So what? Here's what's interesting: Ickes used to be heavily involved with America Coming Together and the Media Fund, two Democratic 527 groups which were fined by the FEC for conducting political activities without registering or disclosing their funding publicly.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.
Since Catalist is private, they don't have to tell us (or the FEC) who their investors are, what they're doing with the money, or anything at all, really. The Times found some people who care about that:
This is where I'm supposed to be shocked. On the other hand, this is a for-profit company, right? According to election laws, it had better be. If they don't charge "market rates" for the data, they could be making illegal corporate contributions."It is something to be concerned about," said Steve Weissman, associate policy director at the Campaign Finance Institute, a nonprofit in Washington. "Wealthy people and unions are having a greater influence on the political process than the average small donor or the person who doesn't donate. It skews the political process toward those who have money."
Oh, and there are a ton of conflicts of interest involved. Not only among the investors, but among the clients. Catalist has sold data to both Clinton and Obama's campaigns, and charged Obama less despite Ickes being a Clinton backer (and strategist). Is the Obama campaign worried they're getting sold a cheap imitation of the real thing?
"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.
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