Trump’s Data Firm Is Selling A Top Conservative Think Tank Its Trump Voter Playbook
The Heritage Foundation hasn’t always agreed with the president. But it recognizes the cash that his followers can bring.
Three weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, a data company owned by one of his wealthiest supporters began cashing in.
The company, Cambridge Analytica, inked a deal with the nation’s leading conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, for the purpose of hitting up Trump voters for donations.
The marrying of the two institutions was made easier by a shared principle. Cambridge Analytica is run by Rebekah Mercer, who with her father provided major cash infusions for Trump and groups supporting him during the 2016 campaign. Mercer is also a board member of the Heritage Foundation, the nation’s flagship conservative think tank.
But the alliance also reflects a new reality within the broader conservative universe. Trump didn’t just bring an idiosyncratic set of political priorities with him to Washington. He brought a massive amount of first-time voters and supporters as well—individuals that establishment institutions like Heritage would want to mine for dollars.
Heritage had used Cambridge Analytica’s services before. From late 2015 through June 2016, the firm provided “statistical models to identify new donors” and developed digital ads for the group, according to documents Heritage filed with New York regulators.
But on November 28, 2016, it hammered out a new agreement to use the massive amounts of data that the firm had collected on Trump supporters in the run-up to the election, with an explicit eye towards raising money from the president’s base.
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Cambridge Analytica collects data far beyond the political leanings of the individuals in its database. It also gathers large amounts of more mundane information, such as consumer preferences and health concerns. The firm boasts more than 5,000 data points about each of the voters in its database.
But Heritage will gain access to only a few of them. According to its Cambridge Analytica contract, the firm will provide the names, addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers of its fundraising prospects. It will also give a rundown of their priority policy issues, and “flags on predicted political/religious characteristics.”
Heritage may use that information to inform digital, telemarketing, and door-to-door fundraising efforts, according to the agreement. Cambridge Analytica will charge the group $50 per 1,000 individuals contacted through the data it provides.
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NEW: three weeks after the election, Heritage bought up Trump voter data from Mercer firm Cambridge Analytica https://t.co/Q8nnMXDSZo
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) September 29, 2017
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