2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Bernie Explains DNC Data Breach and Hillary Says "We Should Just Move on..." [View all]ViseGrip
(3,133 posts)Comments here, "every democratic candidate uses VAN", well is just not true. You would wonder why the few who don't, make that decision.
In a mayoral race, my candidate paid for access to VAN. Throughout the campaign, we could never access it. We called the state party over, and over. They said they could not understand why, and it must be our computers! The program would come up, but we could not fineness our data! We ended up relying on the County election data, which was okay, as it was a local race. However, my candidate was progressive and experienced the same type of shenanigans on the campaign trail. He had to miss one debate, as he is a lawyer. We gave that date as a block out, he had to be in court. So, they scheduled it on that day. Then they came out all over the media, to say he did not have the courage to debate. He already did three, and in the end did 15 of the 17, just like the other candidate! But you never heard of a missed debate by the opposing candidate. (media in concert)
Then we learned afterwards, this democratic opposing candidate, used another vendor for his data. So they don't all use VAN, however we felt with the party operating in the same manner against our democratic candidate, this was on purpose, almost as if he knew the program was not going to work for us. There is much more to this, and there still may be a criminal claim filed for other reasons against this candidate, who is now in office. Interestingly, while being the Party's guy, when asked why he did not use NGP/VAN, he would only say, "that was my decision". Yet he's in bed with the party. Strange decision. The program was useless to us, and they would not refund the money either, knowing we could not access it. There is much more too this, nationwide I believe, now.