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“You pay a lot of money to get voter data,” says David Pechefsky, a progressive running in a primary in New York’s 1st Congressional District.
In New Hampshire’s First Congressional district, Democratic candidates are being asked to pay the state party a fee of $37,500 to access the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s voter data, according to four of the eight Democratic candidates.
All across the country, Congressional candidates launching progressive campaigns with a focus on funding from small donors are being socked with huge fees charged by state parties to access voter data.
“It’s clearly an artificial barrier to entry put in place by the state party to discourage competition,” says Terence O’Rourke, a Democrat Congressional Candidate in New Hampshire’s 1st District and city attorney for Rochester, New Hampshire, in an interview. The state’s Democratic primary, set for September 11, is an open race to fill the seat now held by U.S. Representative Carol Shea-Porter, who is not seeking re-election.
There hasn’t been a competitive Democratic primary in New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District since Shea-Porter first ran for the seat in 2006. Shea-Porter paid the New Hampshire Democratic Party $25,000 in 2006 for voter lists, but not until after she won the primary, Federal Election Commission records show. She spent nothing on these lists in 2008, $10,000 in the 2010 election, $9,000 in 2012, and nothing again in 2014 or 2016.
The implication seems to be that newcomers and candidates who face competitive races need to shell out substantial sums for these lists.
“Why does the party exist for if it isn’t to encourage people to run and help them run effective campaigns?” asks Lincoln Soldati, another Democratic candidate in the race. “By charging an extraordinary amount of money for the list, [the party is able to] effectively manipulate the system and I think that’s an outrage.”
“Why does the party exist for if it isn’t to encourage people to run and help them run effective campaigns?”
New Hampshire Democratic Party spokesperson Wyatt Ronan, in an email, defended the practice.
“Would we like to give it away?” Ronan said. “Absolutely, but between twenty years of compiled data, the cost of upkeep and updating it, the add-on services we provide, and extra security, we can’t afford to.”
But state senator Andy Sanborn, a Republican Congressional candidate in the same election, confirms that the New Hampshire Republican Party does not charge their candidates for access to its voter data.
Rather than pay the high state party fee, Democratic state Representative Mindi Messmer purchased voter lists from the New Hampshire Secretary of State for $3,255, though the lists don’t include emails and phone numbers like they do in the party’s file. She will pay a few thousand dollars to a data service for phone numbers and emails to create her own voter database.
“If the Democratic Party is serious about connecting with disenfranchised voters, they must give voters the choice of who best represents them. Then we can actually win elections,” Messmer says in an interview. “It is not in the best interest to eliminate grassroots candidates by pricing them out of a fair shot.
After the primary, Messmer plans to provide her data to other progressive candidates for free.
“Charging $37,500 to access New Hampshire Democratic Party's voter data is antithetical to democracy. We want to have the best candidate we can to take on the Republican Party in the general election,” said Levi Sanders, the son of Bernie Sanders who began his congressional campaign this past February, in an email.
He added that discouraging people from running for elected office through barriers such as high voter data fees helps Republicans, who do not charge their candidates in New Hampshire to access their state party’s voter data.
Many state parties do not charge candidates to access their voter data or only charge nominal fees for access, according to several candidates and state party leaders we spoke with. Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, and New Jersey do not charge candidates any fee to access the State Democratic Party’s voter data.
“We decided to offer the basic VAN [Voter Activation Network] features for free to all candidates to level the playing field,” says Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party. “If we’re really serious about building the party, that’s what we have to do.”
State parties, Kleeb says, have been forced to create funding streams. “You would probably see these fees drastically go down if state parties actually had operating budgets, but we’ve all had to duct tape and band-aid things because the funding streams have been so constrained, even under President Obama.”
According to congressional candidates we spoke with, in Michigan, the state Democratic Party charges $1,500 for voter data. The cost is $3,000 in Texas and Pennsylvania, $3,500 in Florida, and around $5000 in Georgia, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.
“You pay a lot of money to get voter data,” says David Pechefsky, a progressive running in a primary in New York’s 1st Congressional District. “We paid $6,500 to the state Democratic Party. I definitely felt like it was a shakedown.”
“I definitely felt like it was a shakedown.”
Other state parties charge fees that campaigns fueled by small donations can’t afford, like Iowa, where the fee is $15,000. ”I refused to pay it because that’s too much money,” says Courtney Rowe, a candidate in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District.
In Nevada, the Democratic Party charges $17,500 for its voter data through the June 12 primary election, according to Nevada 4th Congressional District candidate Amy Vilela.
“While many conventional candidates (who are well-connected within the party and who take in huge sums of corporate PAC money) may be able to afford this, it is extraordinarily cost prohibitive to grassroots campaigns—especially those that refuse to accept corporate contributions,” Vilela writes in an email. She is running to replace Representative Ruben Kihuen, who opted against running for re-election after a former staffer came forward with sexual harassment allegations against him in December 2017.
Vilela doesn’t buy the state Democratic Party’s argument that these fees are necessary to recoup costs. “If the goal is fundraising, significantly lowering the fee would allow more candidates to buy in, making up for any deficits while also expanding Democratic voters’ choice in primary elections,” she says.
In Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District, Democratic candidate Jack Love says the amount sought by the party for lists is “far more than we could have ever considered.” Love, who is mounting a primary challenge against the incumbent Representative, Democrat Jacky Rosen, says the party is “not interested in helping us one bit.”
Some progressive candidates challenging Democrat incumbents say their state parties have outright denied them access to the party’s voter. In Washington State, candidate Sarah Smith, who is challenging Democratic incumbent Adam Smith in Washington’s 9th Congressional District, says her requests for voter data from the state party yielded a denial letter.
“They forced us to use the most expensive provider on the market as an attempt to price us out of the race,” Smith says. “It’s an underhanded tactic and just shows what bad sports my party is when it comes to challenging incumbents.”
The Washington State Democratic Party did not respond to a request for comment.
Michael Sainato is a journalist based in Gainesville, Florida. His work has appeared in the Intercept, the Guardian, the Hill, Business Insider, and Huffington Post.
Walker Bragman is an independent journalist from New York. His work has appeared in Paste Magazine, the Intercept, Huffington Post, Salon, and The Hill.