The political firm that obtained private data on millions of Facebook users helped Republicans in Colorado win a crucial majority in the state Senate, taking $444,000 in “dark money” payments over two years.

Cambridge Analytica used personal data from the social-media platform and voter records to create “psychographic” profiles that allowed Republican operatives to target specific voters based on personality and political issues, according to interviews and tax filings obtained by The Denver Post.

The effort in Colorado served as a precursor to the London-based firm’s work in 2016 to help elect President Donald Trump and is connected to data mining operations now under investigation in two countries.

Cambridge Analytica — backed by Robert Mercer, a wealthy Republican donor, and tied to Trump’s political adviser, Steve Bannon — even touted its work with the Senate Majority Fund in 2014 on the company’s website, suggesting the data played a key role in how Republicans won a one-vote majority in the chamber for the first time in a decade.

“These victories ultimately gave the GOP control over the Colorado state Senate,” the company’s website stated in 2015.

Senate Republican leader Bill Cadman hired the company and its parent firm, SCL Group, to help it win five battleground districts, mostly in the Denver-metro area, and the data helped inform at least six mailers to voters in 2014.

The top strategist for the Senate Majority Fund, the campaign arm for the chamber’s Republicans, confirmed it hired Cambridge Analytica but downplayed the importance of that involvement. Cadman, who later served as Senate president and left office in 2017, did not return a call seeking comment.

“Their pitch was better than their performance,” said Andy George, a Republican consultant who led the Senate Majority Fund campaign. He called the Cambridge Analytica website language “an exaggeration.”

George said he was not aware the company improperly obtained Facebook users’ data — including information from profiles, personality surveys, “likes” and friend networks — to compile tailored messages to voters.

“I was aware they were selling a comprehensive voter profile but not necessarily where they get the information,” said George, a prominent strategist who now leads a super PAC that is supporting Republican Walker Stapleton for governor. “If we thought they were doing something sketchy, we would not be involved.”

Senate Majority Fund, an independent expenditure committee registered in Colorado, used the data to craft at least six mailers in 2014, but Cambridge Analytica and SCL were paid through a dark-money nonprofit organization called Concerned Citizens for Colorado that doesn’t disclose its donors and offers few details about its spending.

Concerned Citizens paid $344,000 to Cambridge Analytica and SCL, according to tax filings. The spending represented about 30 percent of the total spent by the nonprofit that year. The same organization later paid Cambridge Analytica another $100,000 in 2015 for polling and consulting work, tax records show.

Jesse Mallory, who worked for the Concerned Citizens organization and later became Cadman’s chief of staff, declined to comment.

State Sen. Andy Kerr, D-Lakewood, won one of the seats targeted by Republicans in 2014, and he expressed dismay at the discovery of the firms behind the campaign.

“Here it is, four years later, and we’re finding out who these groups and what they are capable of,” Kerr said. “It’s a sad state of affairs.”

How Cambridge Analytica came to Colorado

Cambridge Analytica made Colorado one of the first dozen or so states in its operation with the help of a salesman on the ground. Tom Lucero, a Republican consultant based in Loveland and former University of Colorado regent, worked for the company on its U.S. sales team.

He pitched the data to just about every major Republican campaign in Colorado in 2014, including those of Sen. Cory Gardner and gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez, but most had existing contracts with other firms. Lucero declined to elaborate on his role.

The use of voter profiles to customize election messages is not new — most major campaigns do the same — but Cambridge Analytica suggested its data gave it superior results.

In the pitch, the company told political operatives that its data could identify voters with neurotic personality traits, for instance, who may respond well to messages that scare them, such as politicians who want to impose tougher gun regulations.

Ryan Call, who chaired the state Republican Party during the 2014 election, said he took an hour-long meeting with representatives from Cambridge Analytica at the Aloft hotel near Denver International Airport.

Call said he recalled them talking “about acquiring various databases” such as magazine subscription lists and car registrations to “get a sense of what a voter might be inclined toward in terms of interests.”

“It was intriguing, to be sure,” he said. “It was different than a lot of the modeling that had been and frankly continues to be traditionally done in political space to identify likely voters.”

But Call said that an asking price of something “in the neighborhood of six figures” was too much.

“The state Republican Party elected not to hire that company, and whatever decisions (the) Senate Majority Fund may have made independently of that, I can’t speak to that at all,” Call said.

By 2015, Cambridge Analytica’s original team split and some of the founders created a new company, known as 26.2 and now Genus AI. The Senate Majority Fund hired 26.2 to help target three swing Senate seats in 2016, and retain the majority, but how much it paid for those services is not clear.

George said the new company played a lesser role in 2016, and he added that he is not likely to hire them in 2018 because of the questions now swirling around Cambridge Analytica.