Democrats have been grumbling that much Obama 2012 data is not available to them. | REUTERS Obama 2012 data to DNC

After nearly a year of discussion over the fate of reams of Obama campaign data, officials have decided to transfer some voter information to the Democratic National Committee, but to retain its email list and rent it out to Organizing for Action, party committees and other groups, a source familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

A senior Democratic operative said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, who has retained a level of control over the remnants of that apparatus, began notifying the various party committees on Wednesday and say that Messina and others have “decided to transfer all data to the DNC. We will not put them in a separate corporation.” There had been discussion about housing the data in a new, separate entity, a prospect that has apparently been abandoned.


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The operative added, “The DNC will then work directly with the [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] and state parties to make sure they have all access they need to Obama 2012 data.”

The decision comes after months of grumbling from some Democrats and others that the broad array of Obama campaign data wasn’t being made completely available as early as possible. Those concerns were heightened by the fast-approaching 2014 midterms, featuring a string of difficult contests at the state and local levels.

There is one significant exception to what’s being transferred to the DNC: an email list of small-dollar donors, volunteers and activists cultivated over the last election cycle by the Obama campaign. If that list was moved to the DNC, the operative said, then OFA and other non-political committees wouldn’t be able to access it because of federal regulations governing interactions between groups with different types of tax-exempt status, the operative said.

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That email list is seen by some as the most valuable stream of data, and questions about future access to it had caused consternation throughout the year among some operatives who privately accused the president’s team of hoarding information.

The email list – “the big list of 20 million people,” according to the operative – had been leased to OFA, which has become the Obama-affiliated, tax-exempt group continuing to push for grassroots support for the president’s policy positions. The Obama campaign can now “loan or rent” the list to OFA, the party committees or any 2016 presidential campaigns, the operative familiar with the matter said.

As with any agreement, how it will work is in the details. And it wasn’t immediately clear exactly what stipulations might be placed on access to the email list of small-dollar donors and volunteers.

For instance, federal filings show the DSCC paid $75,000 to the Obama campaign for access to its email list. But it wasn’t clear whether the email list was turned over to them, or if the campaign sent an email on their behalf.

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Messina, who has a contract with the DNC, has been the central figure in deciding the future of the Obama data trove. He refused to comment for this story.

The senior Democratic operative said Messina, former deputy campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Alyssa Mastromonaco were all involved in the process — which played out over several months, and involved a number of lawyers — of deciding what to do with the data.

The rest of the Obama campaign data that is going to the DNC includes voter IDs, which are hard identifications from field or from paid voter contacts; voter “scores”; and turnout models. The campaign’s modeling has been praised as vastly superior to that of the Mitt Romney campaign.

Some of that data is similar to the type of data that the DNC already has in its possession. As it stands now, the DNC has the voter file, as well as various appendices that make it more valuable. The quality of the Obama campaign’s data could be superior in some cases, but the two entities have been working together throughout.

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In the shorter term, meaning the 2014 elections, the voter data will be potentially useful in Senate and House contests. Some sources familiar with committee discussions with the Obama campaign said they had been able to get access to information they needed throughout the past year to advise their thinking on some races.

Longtime labor strategist Steve Rosenthal, speaking generally about the value of different streams of data, suggested that some of the data – specifically the IDs from a specific campaign – has a shelf life.

“I am beginning to buy more and more into this theory that [the data] has pretty limited use, that each campaign needs to build not just its own modeling but its own data,” he said. “I just wonder how transferable this stuff really is.”

The world of Democratic data didn’t originate with the Obama campaign, but it honed and perfected a number of techniques. Two data analytics firms have sprung up from former Obama campaign aides, part of the data arms race with Republicans.

Rosenthal said the Democrats’ methods of contacting voters, honed by the Obama campaign, are what give them an edge.

“There’s a body of knowledge on the Democratic side,” he said, “that I think is way more valuable than the actual data.”'

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