Damn, Debbie, at it Again: DNC Employs Same Tactics Against Canova They Tried Against Sanders

As I’ve pointed out on numerous occasions, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and the DNC frequently use their power over party machinery, and specifically the demographic aggregator VoteBuilder, to promote their own aims and candidates. The enormous advantage that voter data and the political apparatus of the national Democratic Party confers to party operatives over any challenge from the grassroots or the left is hard to overstate- look no further than Marco Rossi’s failed mayoral campaign in Olympia last year, for example.

There’s been a pattern of Wasserman-Schultz and the DNC using access to the data as a political tool and leverage. In mid-December, Wasserman-Schultz shut off access to VoteBuilder for the Sanders campaign in reaction to a mild breach of Clinton campaign data.

Wasserman-Schultz did back down, eventually. But the point was clear: the DNC is ready and willing to wield the power it has from access to the program as it sees fit, not as is fair.

No wonder, then, that Wasserman-Schultz’s opponent in her House district, Tim Canova, has been denied access to the software as he attempts to unseat the powerful, if increasingly unpopular, Congresswoman. The denial ostensibly comes from the Florida Democratic Party, but VoteBuilder is controlled by the national party and its surrogates.

Canova’s pissed. He portrayed the decision as “an entrenched establishment throwing up roadblocks against our political revolution,” a line he has taken from Independent Senator Bernie Sanders. Canova, like Sanders, relies on small donors for financing and has an active and enthusiastic youth movement behind him.

But it remains to be seen if that will be enough. One thing Rossi told me when I interviewed him in October was that lack of access to the demographic information service was a huge disadvantage.

From that article:

The advantage that this demographic information can give to prospective candidates is enormous. It allows the campaign to narrow the focus of their targeted get out the vote campaigns. Rossi’s campaign, on the other hand, must knock on each and every door to get out the vote.

The campaign relies on volunteers who believe in the candidate, not the party. While this may sound romantic and while it does produce a passion his opponent’s campaign may lack, it also risks burning out the volunteers and the candidates.

In fact, it already has.

It’s not surprising that the DNC would deny VoteBuilder to a third party candidate. Indeed, it would be foolish of them to allow access to their technology to an opponent. But Canova is running as a Democrat, facing off against Wasserman-Schultz on August 30 for her district’s support to run for her seat.

The DNC’s excuse for the denial of service to a fellow party-member is unconvincing. From the Broward Palm Beach New Times:

A committee spokesperson, Max Steele, confirmed to New Times via email that the Florida Democratic Party does not offer data access “to candidates challenging incumbent members of Florida’s Democratic congressional delegation. This policy has been applied uniformly across the board since 2010. We stand with our incumbent members of Congress and we’re proud of the job they do representing the people of Florida. The Voter File is proprietary software created and owned by the Democratic National Committee that is maintained and operated by the Florida Democratic Party here in state.”

One wonders if that same loyalty would apply to a challenger of a scandal-besieged incumbent, or an assured loss-in-the-general incumbent. It doesn’t seem too likely (although Wasserman-Schultz has done a lot over the last decade to help her incumbent friends on the other side of the aisle against her own party.. but that’s a different story).

No, what we’re seeing here is a blatant power play against an unexpectedly strong challenger to the second most powerful woman in the Democratic Party by the very apparatus she controls.

Nothing new for the DNC.