Councillor Doug Ford claims the mayor’s former campaign manager, Nick Kouvalis, is refusing to turn over valuable 2010 voter database information.

Kouvalis, who also served for a time as Ford’s chief of staff, is now working for the John Tory campaign. The man who actually ran the database aspect of Rob Ford’s first mayoral campaign says the Fords were given everything right after the election.

“I made two DVDs with all of the data from the campaign — entire voters’ list with contact info, supporters, non-supporters, signs, volunteers, all voter contact records, etc. — and gave them both to Doug Ford,” said Conservative data expert Mitch Wexler.

Councillor Ford did not respond to a text message from the Star asking whether he’d actually lost the voter information.

If it is in fact gone, it would be a serious blow to the mayor’s re-election hopes. Numerous political strategists involved in the 2010 race say what helped set Ford apart was that voter intelligence, much of it collected by Ford himself over his 10 years as a councillor in Etobicoke.

While many people point to the crack scandal as the mayor’s biggest liability in 2014, some involved in the looming election say his bigger issue is what appears to be a lack of structure and organization in his camp. No notable political talent has signed on to Ford’s campaign.

Wexler says the hand-off of the data took place over lunch in early 2011. Amir Remtulla, then the mayor’s chief of staff, took one of the copies. (Remtulla did not respond to a request for comment.)

Richard Ciano, president of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party and Kouvalis’ business partner at Campaign Research, says the first time he heard about the missing lists was in a Sunday call from Doug Ford.

“He said, ‘I want to let you know you’re going to be receiving a letter.’ He just said: ‘I just want you to take a copy of (the database) and send it over to me. And I’m going to demand that you delete it (from your files),” Ciano said. “It’s very odd. Three and a half years later, suddenly: ‘Where’s the data?’ ”

It was shortly after Tory filed his nomination papers Monday that Councillor Ford went public with his concerns.

“We look forward to getting our campaign list off Campaign Research and Nick Kouvalis, because he refuses to give it to us, and that’s going to be an issue,” Councillor Ford said.

“And if John Tory wants to hop in bed with Nick Kouvalis after Nick Kouvalis took him out as a provincial leader, then went after him after our campaign — which we didn’t agree with that when he did that. I think Nick Kouvalis has his own reputation that he has to worry about, and that’s not a very good reputation.”

Responded Ciano: “I think this is an attempt at trying to drag Nick and me through the mud because we wouldn’t work for the Fords this time around.”

He added that while Campaign Research certainly had access to the database during the 2010 race and made copies of parts of it for strategical purposes, that treasure trove of information was “never an asset” of the firm. He and Kouvalis subcontracted those duties out to Wexler’s company.

“(The Fords) were given a copy at the time — as they should have been. Trying to retrieve it now, so many years later, would be very difficult, if even possible,” Ciano said.

The mayor collected the foundation of the data himself during his decade as a councillor. Rob Ford made a name for himself by personally phoning back anyone who called for help. At the end of every day, he would go through his voicemail and write down every number on a sheet of blank paper.

When he had called each one back, he’d put the sheet into a cardboard legal box. By the time he ran for mayor, he’d amassed four boxes filled with information on thousands of people — all of whom he’d personally tried to help at one point.

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When Kouvalis joined Ford’s campaign, he sent those boxes to Campaign Research’s call centre in Windsor to have the numbers inputted into something usable, then turned over the spreadsheets to Wexler.

Through automated phone polling, Wexler built vast voter profiles out of those numbers, adding to it as volunteers and supporters signed on.

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