DNC requiring campaigns seeking voter file to fundraise, record videos: report

Candidates seeking the Democratic Party’s coveted 50-state voter file will have to agree to a series of terms mandated by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), BuzzFeed News reports.

According to a memo reported by the outlet on Saturday, candidates have to pay $175,000 for the file, appear at one or more DNC fundraising events every three months during the duration of their campaign, and record a short video supporting the DNC at each appearance.

Campaigns are also required to sign at least one DNC fundraising email every three months, splitting the donations evenly between the campaign and the DNC, and participate in a partywide fundraising day in August.

{mosads}Candidates who use the file, which contains data on millions of voters and is used by campaigns to track support, will have to continue raising money for the DNC even if they drop out of the race.

Some campaigns told BuzzFeed that the move, which is designed to bolster the DNC ahead of the 2020 election, are overly costly and specific.

The DNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill. The organization declined to comment to BuzzFeed on a proprietary legal document.

The DNC has consistently lagged behind its Republican counterpart in terms of fundraising and emerged as a focus of anti-establishment sentiment in 2016 after supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) accused the primary system of being biased toward Hillary Clinton.

DNC Chairman Tom Perez has worked to restore trust in the national party committee and improve the group’s fundraising infrastructure to rake in more funds to defeat Republicans. 

Sanders famously sued the DNC in 2015 over a voter file dispute. Then-DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz temporarily blocked his campaign from using the party’s voter file after aides were caught accessing proprietary Clinton data via a glitch in the DNC’s voter software.

Two people close to Sanders’s current presidential campaign told BuzzFeed that the Vermont Independent has not yet agreed to the DNC conditions for his 2020 bid. The Sanders campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.