For my clients, I generate list rental income from their postal or email list. It’s a cash cow … and the list owner always approves of the one-time rental of their list.
But Hillary Clinton has done a unique twist on making list money.
More than $2 million worth of campaign resources has been spent on payments to Hillary Clinton’s new group, Onward Together.
The Democratic National Committee is paying $1.65 million for access to the email list, voter data, and software produced by Hillary for America during the 2016 presidential campaign. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has paid more than $700,000 to rent the same email list.
In 2015, Barack Obama gave his email list, valued at $1,942,640 to the DNC as an in-kind contribution. In 2013 and 2014, Organizing for America (OFA) had similarly made in-kind contributions exceeding $3.4 million for uses of the list during that election cycle.
Obama’s list was at one point considered to be the most valuable list in politics, and raised more than twice as much money for the 2012 Obama campaign as Clinton’s did for hers in 2016.
The DNC announced Clinton had turned over her email list and related data and tools as an in-kind contribution to the party, with no suggestion that payments would later be made for it.
Onward Together is a dark money group dedicated to “advancing the vision that earned nearly 66 million votes in the last election.” Emails that Onward Together sends to its list tend to generally do fundraising for groups it supports, such as:
- Alliance for Youth Action
- Run for Something
- Arena Summit
- iVote Fund
- Latino Victory
- Color of Change
- Emerge America
- Indivisible
- Collective PAC
- Voto Latino
- Swing Left.
The money Hillary raised jointly with the DNC through the Hillary Victory Fund was almost exclusively going to her campaign, with little left over for the state parties.
Questions or comments?
Call me at (310) 212-5727 or email me at [email protected].
