The Arizona Democratic Party refused requests from two Democratic Party candidates for the party’s voter file — both candidates, Amanda Aguirre and Manny Arreguin are running against incumbent Raul Grijalva for U.S. Congress.
Hat tip to Huffington Post writer Alex Brant-Zawadski , who followed up on a story that first ran on conservative blog Western Free Press.
Each political party maintains their own voter data base, and is typically available to candidates who use the information to reach registered voters during a campaign and to increase voter turn-out.
Monday, I called the state party’s executive director Luis Heredia to get more information. I spoke briefly with Frank Camacho, chief of communications, and was told he’d have Heredia get back to me. I never heard back from Heredia, so I called again yesterday and left a message on his voice mail. Still no word.
Heredia never called the Huff-Po writer back either, but Camacho said this:
… that the decision was made by a vote of the state Executive Committee. I was told the executive director, Luis Heredia, would call me back to explain. Heredia never called me back. The next day, the gracious Mr. Camacho apologized profusely for the lack of a response, then relayed what he was told to relay about the incident.
It seems that because Raul Grijalva is an incumbent with the endorsement of the White House, the Executive Committee somehow felt it necessary to empower Heredia with the ability to deny access to VAN or Voter File. “The party has invested in that file and it contains proprietary information,” said Camacho. “So when the executive director was given authorization by the Executive Board, he exercised that authority and decided to deny [Arreguin] access.” It should be noted that Heredia is a former aide to Congressman Grijalva.
On Monday, I talked with Arreguin, the Tucson doctor who is one of the two Dems running against Grijalva, and Tuesday morning I talked with Aguirre, the other candidate from Yuma who served as an state Senator from 2006 to 2010 and a state Representative from 2003 to 2006. Yesterday, I left word with Grijalva’s media contact Adam Sarvana asking for comment, but he directed me to the Huff-Po piece and Camacho’s comment.
Arreguin said his campaign talked with the state Secretary of State’s office to obtain the voter file and filled out what they thought was the necessary paperwork. “We were waiting to hear back, but when we hadn’t heard anything we found out in an e-mail that the state (Democratic) party denied access to the (voter database) because (Grijalva) is an incumbent and he had received a presidential endorsement.”
Arreguin said he didn’t know the state party would be involved in the request. He called Heredia to get more information and also sent an e-mail asking if the state party’s office would reconsider the decision. But he never heard back from anyone.
“When we sign up and register with a political party, one reason why we do that is to keep abreast of the candidates – ‘Perhaps they will call me when it’s election time comes along and I might be able to volunteer, donate money and participate.’ That’s the expectation,” he said.
Isn’t this just politics?
“I certainly wasn’t born yesterday, but it’s just amazing the levels you have to penetrate to be a participant in this democratic process,” Arreguin said.
This morning Aguirre said she went to the state party’s office in Phoenix at the of March long before Grijalva received the presidential endorsement and spoke with Heredia to request the database information. Heredia told her that she wouldn’t be given the information because Grijalva is an incumbent and that the decision was made by the state’s executive committee.
“I was very disappointed, of course. I’ve been a Democrat all my life and elected as a Democrat before. I work bipartisan, but nonetheless, this is my party, so i was very disappointed and sad,” Aguirre said.
Aguirre said she went to a national company to get the voter information, which costs more than going through the state party office. However, when we talked with her she couldn’t recall the name of the company or how much it cost her campaign.
“Well, I think certainly there are people in the party that have that relationship with Raul Grijalva … Yes, he’s an incumbent, but I think in this country, we should have any candidate step up to run in an election without being attacked by their own party,” she said.
According to the state Democratic Party’s website, the executive committee includes chair Bill Roe, first vice chairwoman Harriet Young, treasurer Rick McGuire, senior vice chairman Jim Woodbrey, national committeewoman Carolyn Warner, national committeewoman Judy Kennedy, vice chairwoman Laura Hogan, vice chairwoman Jo Kelleher, vice chairwoman Sherry B. Williams, vice chairman Chris Campas, vice chairman Manuel Cruz, vice chairman Gerald Richard, and secretary Sharon Thomas.
This article appears in May 10-16, 2012.
It’s so funny how they try to play off like this is acceptable behavior.
Even Democrats are denied the chance to run against “his excellency, the toad of tucson” by their OWN party.. time to maybe find another party, dont you think? Or DONT YOU THINK?
So according to the Arizona Democratic party; if there is an incumbent with a “Presidential” endorsement no one is allowed to run for that seat? By witholding the information, that’s the message that’s being sent to the publc. As a side note, any politician to call for a boycott of their state does not deserve to be representing that state.
toad of tucson. funny. fanned
This is one democrat who would NEVER vote for Grijalva. If he gets the nomination I will leave the vote blank! This is disgusting!
Clearly the Arizona Democratic party does not believe that all Democrats are created equal. Democrats should be outraged and let the party know.
I am once again disappointed in the Democratic Party of Arizona. I am for Grijalva but to prevent a primary is backroom politics at its worst. I sure wish we had a third party not controlled by corporations and the rich. One that would actually represent us and not make backroom deals with the devils. We can only wish.
Lots of confusing stuff here. A few points of clarification, if I may: the parties do not, as is claimed above, maintain their own voter databases. The Arizona Democratic Party uses a commercial, web-based service called NGP VAN (or just “The VAN”), which provides publicly available voter data to campaigns through a highly configurable interface, making it easy to design lists for canvassing and other outreach efforts. But the information availed to campaigns via this system is not maintained by the parties, nor is it, as stated above, “proprietary” in any sense of the word. It’s just public voter data obtained through county recorders’ offices, packaged and formatted by a commercial system designed to facilitate campaigns. (In other words: the VAN system itself is proprietary, but the data it handles is not.)
Anyone can learn more about the VAN here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGP_VAN
Also, the Arizona Secretary of State is not the custodian of voter data. (e.g. who’s registered where, their party affiliations, how often they vote, etc.) That’s the responsibility of County Recorders, and the data is public record. They’ll happily provide it, usually for a small fee, upon receiving the appropriate type of written request.
I hadn’t heard anything about the Arizona Democratic Party’s Executive Committee denying Arreguin access to the VAN prior to reading this post, but if such a decision was made, this should be reflected in the committee’s meeting minutes—something I’d certainly ask, if I were a journalist covering this story, to take a look at. The ADP’s meetings are public, so I’d also ask Aguirre and Arreguin whether they attended, or even asked to. I’d also be inclined to ask the Arreguin campaign just what “paperwork,” exactly, they provided the Secretary of State’s office in hopes of obtaining “voter files,” whatever they may have meant by that.
To be sure, however: neither the ADP, nor any of its affiliates, are exclusive gatekeepers of voter data. While they may, at their own discretion and expense, subscribe to a fancy service that formats and manipulates this data for their purposes, anyone can obtain any of the data from the appropriate County Recorder.
Luke;
A lot of your questions are answered in my HuffPost piece (hark! The sound of my own horn tooting!). You can link to it above. Or huff.to/ABZonADP
Clearly you haven’t read it, or you’d have a better idea of what’s happening. And you wouldn’t have made so many erroneous comments.
For one thing – glossing over the mild condescension in your comments – the Arreguin campaign submitted all the necessary documentation, affidavit, check etc, which the ADP requires in order to grant access to the Voter File – another way to refer to VAN. Which is to say, the ADP has a process for granting access to VAN – BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THEY DO FOR CANDIDATES – and the Arreguin campaign followed that process to the letter.
Their contact, the Elections Director for the ADP, told them all was well and he was just waiting to get verification.
They also denied access to Aguirre. Do you think HER campaign screwed up somehow? No. The Executive Committee told her the same thing they had someone else tell Arreguin. No Running – not around pools, not against incumbents.
Not proprietary, huh? Well, take that up with Camacho, because those were his exact words to me. No one ever said the voter information itself was proprietary. The Voter File CONTAINS proprietary information – that could be the code used to process the data, information on past contacts, etc. etc.
Yes, the data is freely available, but it is expensive and time-consuming for any campaign, especially a small one, to input and process all such data into a usable format.
“IF such a decision was made”? Really? Really? I don’t know how they do it out in Texas, but where I come from, we show a little more respect – especially when we don’t know what’s going on. And you pretty much explicitly state that you don’t.
Unless Frank Camacho lied to me, then the executive committee specifically voted to give Heredia the authority to deny access to the Voter File, for both Arreguin and Aguirre. I can’t confirm that from Heredia because he won’t return my call as I was told he would. One would hope the head of a state party would have a bit more integrity than that.
Michael Skinner – keep in mind, there is no information at this point that suggests Grijalva was in any way involved in this process or decision. For all we know the ADP did this independently, based on their own interests, resources and priorities. If so, that’s unfortunate for them, because I doubt Grijalva’s office is wild about this sort of publicity.
Just an FYI. It’s a little early to be lambasting the Congressman for something in which we don’t actually know if he’s involved.
this article gave me gas
Alex,
Thanks replying to my comment. As to your remark “one would hope the head of a state party would have a bit more integrity than that,” keep in mind that Mr. Heredia is not the head of of Arizona’s (or anyone else’s) state party. He’s simply its lead operational staffer, and he serves at the pleasure of the party’s officers.
The “head” of the Arizona Democratic Party is Chairman Bill Roe. You can learn more about the ADP’s leadership here:
http://azdem.org/about/meet_the_party_lead…
Luke;
Thanks for clarifying. I was playing it a bit fast and loose with the language there. Should have just left it with Executive Director.
Bill Roe, huh? Well THERE’S a great person to piss off. Oh well. Glad I’m not working in AZ politics anymore. Heard plenty about him while I was working on the Glassman campaign.
And I could/ought to have used slightly less bitchy language. What can I say, I bristle when people inadvertently (and usually unintentionally) say things they don’t realize are offensive to professional (or at least serious) journalists. If we EVER write something that’s not true, that cannot be cited, that has no references, we open ourselves to not just libel lawsuits, but being totally discredited as legitimate news sources.
In my follow-up, I’ll take on board your comments and try to be as specific and unambiguous as possible in my explanations.
It’s cool. We’re all about civility around here. 🙂
Right. Because when I think ‘civility’, I think ‘the comments section on an alt-newsweekly website.”
Olmos and walrus and anger, Oh my!
I would love to put my arms around Grijalva and hug him but unfortunately I’m not Mr.Fantastic……..
How very undemocratic of Grijalva allies controlling the state Democratic party. This is why I became an Independent and have never voted for Grijalva!
WHO do you thing collected most of this data??? A whole lot of people for Grijalva, that’s who. If you’re people walked precinct’s and knocked on doors how would you feel about just handing it off to the new kids on the block.
Tom Alt – Great logic. A lot of OTHER people collected that data too. Unless the entire Tucson Democratic volunteer base in exclusively for Grijalva. They’ve been collecting that data for a WHILE now, and by people for a LOT of different politicians. Or initiatives, ballot measures, petition drives etc.
I know for a fact, having been on the Glassman campaign, that some of that data was collected by people for Glassman.
Some was collected by people for Giffords. Way to discount their efforts.
Some was even collected by people for Obama.
I’m sure you don’t suffer from the sort of self-importance your comment implied. But seriously – your argument is unsound at best.