Silicon Valley billionaire Reid Hoffman has teamed up with several former Obama administration officials to create an independent — and likely for-profit — database that would store all of the progressive community’s voter data, according to three sources familiar with the initiative.
The project’s backers intend to spend $35 million in the first year alone, with Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, as the primary investor.
“As we build this effort, we will be reaching out to all the key players soon to get this done,“ a person familiar with the on-going discussions told POLITICO, stressing that the project is still in its early stages. “Across the board, everyone involved agrees that the Republicans have a tremendous advantage when it comes to data infrastructure going into 2020, and that there needs to be a real shift in our thinking and action in order to set candidates up to be successful for people around the country.”
Hoffman’s venture complicates plans for a separate data trust project being pushed by the Democratic National Committee, plans for which POLITICO first revealed last week. That effort is facing resistance from the Democratic state parties, which have prime ownership rights to the party’s voter file and are hesitant about licensing it to an outside entity.
The DNC’s top leaders have been telling people that Hoffman’s project represents an “existential threat” to the party, according to two sources with knowledge of the discussions.
With tens of millions of dollars at their disposal, the people behind Hoffman-backed project could eventually create their own voter file, making the Democratic Party’s file less valuable. That process, however, would likely take several years and would be nearly impossible to complete by the 2020 election.
As a result, DNC officials say the committee is open to collaborating with Hoffman, or perhaps joining forces with him.
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More for the “The parties are weaker than ever file.” https://t.co/OqshidqedY
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) December 10, 2018
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