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Harold Ickes' Data Project Snubs Howard Dean
A longtime aide to Sen. Hillary Clinton has launched a massive data mining project in a bid to get the Democrat vote out in 2006 and 2008 - a direct snub to Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, whose job it is to run his party's turnout machine. Harold Ickes, who strategized Mrs. Clinton's first Senate campaign, as well as others involved in the project, tell the Washington Post that their activities are in part a vote of no confidence in Dean. "The Republicans have developed a cadre of people who appreciate databases and know how to use them, and we are way behind the march," Ickes complained, before slamming Dean's operation. "It's unclear what the DNC is doing. [Are their lists] going to be kept up to date?"
Story Continues Below Ickes contended that out-of-date voter information is "worse than having no database at all." His project, dubbed the "Data Warehouse," is being bankrolled by Democratic fat cat George Soros, who poured millions of dollars into Ickes' "Media Fund" in 2004 in an unsuccessful bid to unseat President Bush. The goal of the Data Warehouse is to identify potential Democratic voters who could be targeted as Election Day approaches in any get-out-the-vote effort. Like Ickes, Mrs. Clinton is said to be concerned that liberal Democrats have failed to build the political infrastructure that Republicans and their conservative allies. have used to such great effect. Meanwhile, feathers have been clearly ruffled over at DNC headquarters. "Building this voter file is part of our job," Dean spokeswoman Karen Finney told the Post. "Our job is to build the infrastructure of the party." In the 2003-2004 election cycle, the DNC began building it's own voter data base and it proved highly effective in raising money. But even then-DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe admits his voter turnout efforts were no match for the Republican machine. "They were smart," he told the Post. "They came into our neighborhoods. They came into Democratic areas with very specific targeted messages to take Democratic voters away from us." McAuliffe also complained that the GOP turnout operation was "much more sophisticated in their message delivery."
Editor's note:
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