Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez launched an attack on his own party’s state organizations Saturday with a long and angry email over the future of the party’s most valuable asset — its voter data file.

Just days before an important Tuesday meeting in D.C. on the future of the data operation, Perez sharply criticized a new proposal from state party leaders and singled out prominent state officials by name.


“For some inexplicable reason, this proposal would tear down just about everything about our current data structure, reversing so much of the progress we made over the past decade,” Perez wrote.

The national chairman, describing his own reaction to the state proposal as “disappointed” and “dumbfounded,” accused the president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, Minnesota’s Ken Martin, of undermining the DNC by not keeping other state party officials “in the loop,” prompting withering criticism of Perez from state party leaders.

It‘s the latest fight in a quickly escalating war over the trove of Democratic voter information — a conflict that broke into the open at a gathering of the state parties and the DNC in Puerto Rico late last month. The party’s data are largely owned by the state parties, but a considerable amount of other data being collected by outside groups like labor unions and super PACs could be leveraged to benefit Democratic candidates and the eventual 2020 nominee.

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The DNC wants to gather all the data points on voters into a new, massive for-profit database but needs to convince state parties on the idea. The state parties have been wary, accusing the DNC of conducting a power grab that could financially benefit a few elite party figures.


In response to the DNC plan, Martin on Friday circulated a counterproposal designed to better integrate data from outside groups within the existing infrastructure. It was this proposal that prompted Perez’s email.

Perez’s email — with the seemingly innocuous subject line “UPDATE on data” — immediately triggered an uproar Saturday among state party leaders, who held conference calls and communicated with a flurry of emails and texts. The DNC chairman was referred to in a call as “a bull in a china shop,” according to one state party official. Another state party official called him “petulant,” via text message.

The backlash threatens to splinter the state parties and the national committee — technically separate entities — just as Democratic contenders are preparing to launch presidential campaigns.

Perez argued in his Saturday email that “Ken’s new entity...amounts to having State Parties effectively going alone on technology and data.” He threatened to cut off access to campaign tech tools like VoteBuilder, an online organizing platform, if state parties go forward with their plan.


“You would have to find a replacement for VoteBuilder — either building or buying — as the DNC has sole rights to the platform,” he wrote.

Martin, the state party chair in Minnesota, pushed back on Perez’s characterization of the state plan but acknowledged his proposal had a bigger role for state parties than the DNC’s plan.

“The reality is the state parties own the voter file. At the end of the day, we hope to move forward with the DNC, but if the DNC continues down this path, we’re just not interested in that,” Martin told POLITICO. “It’s clear that the DNC is not interested in any other proposals or in negotiating.”

Of the email, Martin said that “it’s highly disappointing that Tom would make it so personal.”

Party chairs in the early 2020 presidential primary states also criticized Perez for personalizing the dispute.

“I was very disappointed, and I felt we could have continued to have conversations at a better level than the tone of that email, and I find it very unfortunate,” said Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. “I think that’s how negotiations are, and for [Perez] to be surprised that there would be alternative suggestions is disappointing.”

Trav Robertson, the South Carolina Democratic Party chairman, said Saturday’s email prompted him to “spit out my sweet tea.”

“His email was wholly inappropriate and wholly in the wrong spirit of our conversation,” he said. “For them to say that Ken Martin and Brad Martin [president of the state party executive directors group] have misled us and have not operated in good faith is just not true. In fact, it’s a lie.”

The fight is likely to deepen the intraparty gridlock on how best to prepare a data operation for the eventual 2020 nominee — a goal both sides share but over which they are in deep disagreement on the means.


Ken Martin added that Perez’s email could imperil future negotiations: “I don’t know how you put the genie back in the bottle at this point after Tom’s email.”

DNC officials see a chance to update their tech and pool their data quickly with cash from liberal donors and Silicon Valley tycoons. Republicans have this capability already — although in practice the Koch brothers-backed outside groups and the Republican National Committee have feuded over sharing their data — which has many Democratic leaders worried about being at a competitive disadvantage in 2020.

“It is also time to take critical steps to modernize our data infrastructure. The other side has already done this, so time is of the essence,” Perez wrote to the state parties. With several state parties staunchly opposed, DNC officials have discussed potentially integrating just some states at first, with the hope of eventually persuading all of them to sign on.

The counterproposal offered by Martin and additional state party officials — most state parties received copies on Friday, with a briefing scheduled for Monday — would largely build on the existing infrastructure utilized by the state parties and data vendor TargetSmart. Proponents argue that the goal of integrating all the progressive world’s data is achievable without creating an entirely new organization.

“TargetSmart has provided key data services to the DNC for more than a decade,” Tom Bonier, TargetSmart’s CEO, told POLITICO. “The fact is that there are no shortcuts in this work. Handing over our data to an outside entity could hurt our candidates in 2020 and put our party at a disadvantage for years to come.”

Although most state parties hadn’t publicly weighed in on the new state party-centric proposal by Saturday morning — many hadn’t even read it yet — Perez’s email caused officials to rally behind Martin, the veteran Minnesota chairman.

The executive director of the Alaska Democratic Party, Jay Parmley, emailed a response directly to Perez telling him he was being “petty.”

“To insinuate that that these individuals haven’t been completely transparent and open with the ASDC membership simply because much of the ASDC membership doesn’t trust what the DNC is ‘peddling’ when it comes to a Data Trust is just wrong,” he wrote in an email obtained by POLITICO.


Parmley, who has served in state party leadership in numerous states, confirmed he authored the email.

“I like Tom, but I think this was really poor judgment. It read like a letter from an 8th grader,” Parmley told POLITICO.

Other state party chairs also supported Martin.

“I think Ken’s doing a good job,” said Troy Price, chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party. “It’s disappointing for a fight like this to become so public. Obviously, our [2020 presidential] caucus is coming up here in 14 months, and that data conversation is very important.”

