State Democrats have restored VAN access for 7th district Democratic candidate Michael Roth after a dustup yesterday, giving Roth’s campaign the ability to once again utilize the critical voter database ahead of the June 2 primary.
Earlier this week, Roth’s campaign website briefly published long lists of voter information downloaded from VAN, which the state party said was a violation of the terms that all campaigns agree to regarding the proprietary data. As a consequence, the New Jersey Democratic State Committee suspended Roth’s VAN access, with NJDSC Chair LeRoy Jones telling the campaign that the party had “a responsibility to protect and preserve restricted voter data.”
Jones said this afternoon that the campaign’s access has now been reinstated, a decision that came after “an extensive legal review and multiple conversations with members of the campaign and the candidate.”
“The New Jersey Democratic State Committee is charged with helping to get Democrats elected to face down the existential threat emanating from the White House and we take that responsibility very seriously,” Jones said. “But we also believe in the importance of following the rules while working ethically and responsibly to defend our Party’s principles… We are happy to say an appropriate resolution was reached as expediently as possible.”
Jones also pushed back on a statement from the Roth campaign yesterday that pointed the finger at rival 7th district candidate Rebecca Bennett and her “backroom political allies.” “The decision to temporarily suspend the Roth campaign’s VAN access in order to protect private voter data was not made in a backroom or without noting potential impacts,” Jones said.
Hilary Caldwell, Roth’s campaign manager, said that the campaign was glad to have regained its access to the VAN database, which Democratic campaigns around the country use for targeting and canvassing voters.
“We appreciate the state party and Chairman Jones doing the right thing and agreeing to restore our access to vital campaign resources,” Caldwell said. “We all deeply value election integrity and are aligned in our collective mission to turn out Democratic voters. We’re back up and ready to keep up our campaign’s momentum in these final few weeks.”
Roth’s campaign had placed the offending data in its red box, a term campaigns use for the messaging and media they would like super PACs to use on their behalf. An allied super PAC, Coalition for Progress, recently began sending pro-Roth mailers to 7th district voters.
Roth’s three Democratic primary opponents in the 7th district, where Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) is seeking a third term, all have red boxes as well; both Bennett and Tina Shah have benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in independent expenditures so far.