DFS's first big push in elections for city offices came in February 2009, shortly after Debi Rose was endorsed by the WFP on Feb. 5 in her run for the Council seat vacated by now Rep. Michael McMahon. Her campaign made five separate payments to DFS over the course of the next two and a half weeks totaling $45,000, apparently drawing on the approximately $88,000 she received in matching funds (she raised just over $47,000 in private funds, bringing her total to $135,000) to help foot the bill.

Despite this, Rose, who is now running a September primary campaign against Council Member Ken Mitchell, claimed to be essentially unfamiliar with DFS.

"I don't really know enough to tell you," she said, before getting off the phone to speak with her campaign manager, with a promise to call back shortly.

Rose never did. Instead, an email arrived from her current campaign manager, Vonda McKeithan, explaining that "Data and Field Services is great at what they do--engaging with voters one on one to get our message out. We want to talk to as many people as possible about the issues that matter to our community and they are a big help in doing it."

Though McKeithan referred to the use of the company in the present tense in this email and a subsequent one whichreferred to the company as "field organizing 101," in a later interview she said that Data and Field Services had in fact not done any work for the campaign during the regular election so far, but "they will be helping us in the last couple of weeks of the campaign."

McKeithan said she was uncomfortable answering questions about whether a contract had yet been signed for this work, but noted that Rose had been the one to pick DFS as a vendor for the campaign. Rose's statements about being unfamiliar with Data and Field Services, McKeithan said, was due to the candidate's not knowing the company by name, but only by what it did.

Rose was not the only one involved in her special election race who was unclear as to what Data and Field Services provided to the campaign. Asked to clarify the company's role, David Jones, the campaign manager for Rose's special election effort in February, said he had no memory of a company by that name. When reminded that the campaign had paid $45,000--a third of all the money available to the campaign between private and matching funds--Jones shrugged off the idea that this was a notable sum.

"I paid a lot of people," he said. "To you, it's a lot of money. To me, it's not a lot of money."

But Jones did remember the assistance that the campaign got from staff of the Working Families Party.

"The Working Families Party provided some analysis, things of that nature. They were very helpful in that regard," he said. "Their role is that they did a lot of data analysis and were very good at that."

This is despite Cantor's insistence that the WFP does not provide direct help to campaigns and that DFS does not deal in much data.

When presented with the fact that no payments had been made by the campaign to the Working Families Party for these services, Jones reconsidered his statement.

"The Working Families Party, they help out--there's another company that comes in that provides certain aspects, certain operations," he said. "There are other companies they recommend, and you can or can't use them. It's up to you. They give you a list of companies, and you pick and choose."

Just a few minutes later, Jones gave yet another account of how the breakdown of responsibilities worked.

"The Working Families Party was just like 1199 or DC 37. Their job was to coordinate the unions," he said. "That's what their contribution was. The companies that did data analysis and things of that nature, that's what they did."

For another special election held simultaneously in Queens, Julissa Ferreras spent $17,000 with DFS. Though Rose lost after an extended recount, Ferreras rode to victory to take the seat on the Council which had been held by her old boss, now State Sen. Hiram Monserrate. Fellow Queens Council Member Elizabeth Crowley has the distinction of being the first candidate ever to report spending money with DFS, sending $3,060 to the company during her unsuccessful special election campaign in June 2008. (She later won the seat in her rematch with Anthony Como in November 2008.)

Confusion between the two entities seems to be pretty standard. Also in February, the campaign of Mark Lesko for Brookhaven town supervisor drew headlines for writing $124,000 in checks to the WFP that it said was actually intended to go to DFS. WFP seems to have cashed the checks before realizing that the money needed to be refunded, which they were. That money was part of a total of $169,000 the Lesko campaign paid to DFS.

The campaign manager for Lesko's race, Lisa Wieber, would not comment on what services the campaign received for those payments, indicating that a communications director would call back on her behalf, though no one ever did. An April 5 report in Newsday on the WFP's involvement with the race, however, noted that there were 30 paid WFP operatives working in Brookhaven for most of the race, growing to 100 in the final days, with Wieber calling the WFP "crucial" in identifying 7,000 out of 24,000 voters assumed to be Lesko supporters.

Unclear from public reports is how much less support, if any, the Rose campaign received for the $45,000 spent with DFS in the Council race than what the Lesko campaign received for the close to four times as much it spent in the Brookhaven race for an election that was decided just five weeks later. Without that level of disclosure, there is no way to prove that the $45,000 was a fair market price, was overpriced, or was undervalued. The same is true for other clients.



Cantor said the determination for which campaigns use DFS is pretty simple from his perspective. The candidates using DFS, he explained, "are priority candidates."

And the campaigns seem to be happy with what they are getting from the company.

DFS is certainly worth hiring, said Brian Fritsch, campaign manager for Jimmy Van Bramer, who is running for the Queens Council seat being vacated by Eric Gioia.

Fritsch said that the $4,700 the Van Bramer campaign paid to DFS was to cover the costs of collecting about 1,000 signatures he deemed "high quality," with workers simultaneously distributing Van Bramer campaign literature.

Ray Cline of the Progressive Strategies Group, another company specializing in signature gathering said that in terms of the current market, the amount of money paid for that number of signatures "could be a little high," though noting "it's a City Council race--there's no rhyme or reason."

Fritsch said he was confident the Van Bramer campaign had gotten a good value from DFS.

"We wanted to have far more petition signatures than necessary" Fritsch said, "and we felt that going with Data and Field Services was the best route."

Fritsch said the contract had been mostly settled before he began working on the Van Bramer campaign himself in late May, though the payment was not made to DFS from the campaign until July 1.

Fritsch said the petitioning work concluded the Van Bramer campaign's contract with DFS.

But as for the WFP, Fritsch said, the work together continues.

"They're involved in the campaign, definitely," he said. "They're helping with our canvas right now."

Fritsch explained that the campaign coordinates with Joe Kenton, a WFP employee who Fritsch referred to as the WFP field manager, to make sure the campaign staff and volunteers do not cover the same ground as the WFP workers who are in the district on their behalf.

The help goes beyond people on the ground, Fritsch explained.

"They're also doing our data management. We have their VAN [Voter Activation Network] service as well," Fritsch said, adding that he believes the campaign is paying the WFP for this help, though he was "not sure how it breaks down from the contract that we have with them."

According to city campaign finance disclosures, though, the Van Bramer campaign has yet to make any payment or contribution to the WFP or to Kenton. However, the WFP's state Board of Elections campaign finance disclosure shows a check for $4,700--the precise amount of the DFS contract--cashed and logged on July 7. Since Van Bramer shows a $4,700 expenditure to DFS, and WFP shows a payment from Van Bramer for $4,700, it appears that Van Bramer wrote a check to DFS that the WFP cashed.

Asked later, Cantor said he believed Kenton's work on behalf of the Van Bramer campaign was probably part of the DFS contract, and disputed Fritsch's statement that the campaign's contract with the company was concluded. He also disputed Fritsch's statement that there were any WFP people working in the district.

Other campaigns draw different delineations. The campaign of S.J. Jung, running for the Queens Council seat being vacated by John Liu, paid $10,820 on June 15--the most of any campaign reported so far during the current election cycle--to DFS, which campaign manager Lenny Sapozhnikov said covered the costs of some signature gathering and a retainer for canvas services. Sapozhnikov said he expects that DFS will do more voter contact in the future on behalf of the Jung campaign.

"We don't have any Working Families staff on any canvas shifts. We have largely volunteer effort, supplemented by DFS paid canvassers. The Working Families Party is not staffing our campaign," adding a moment later, "directly."

But that statement came after Sapozhnikov initially tried to direct the inquiries about the campaign to Bryan Collinsworth, a member of the WFP communications staff who coordinates interviews with Jung. Sapozhnikov referred to Collinsworth as "our spokesman."

Cantor made no mention of communications staffing as a DFS service.

A call to Collinsworth was unreturned.

Asked to clarify that relationship, Sapozhnikov said Collinsworth "works for the WFP, which has endorsed us, and as part of our endorsement, he helps us with some press work. He's also helping other WFP-endorsed candidates, such as Danny Dromm, Debi Rose in Staten Island," adding, "part of the endorsement deal that sometimes he's available to answer some of the questions."

Elaborating further, Sapozhnikov explained that while the campaign's general communications consultant is Red Horse Strategies, as for the WFP, "They're sort of in the background sometimes."

Campaign finance disclosures from the Jung campaign show $4,000 in payments to Red Horse Strategies, but nothing to Collinsworth or the WFP. At first, Cantor said he did not know if Collinsworth is a DFS employee, but when told of Collinsworth's work on behalf of the campaigns, Cantor said, "he's getting paid by DFS to provide the campaigns communications help to various candidates."

Indeed, Jung's campaign is not the only one getting help from WFP staff for its communication work, nor is Collinsworth the only WFP employee providing help. Fielding calls for Jumaane Williams' campaign to unseat Council Member Kendall Stewart in Brooklyn is a woman named Saba Debesu. Debesu appears to be a WFP employee--she is listed as the contact for applications for the WFP's 'organizing intern' program on the WFP website, and has a WFP email address.

Reached for comment, Debesu was not able to immediately provide what Data and Field Services did on behalf of the Williams campaign, which paid DFS $4,000 on June 16. She pledged to call back with more, but never did, nor did she return a follow-up call or email.

Campaign finance disclosures from the Williams campaign list no payments to Debesu or the WFP, aside from a $100 political contribution made on Sept. 17, 2008.

Asked for Debesu's status, Cantor said, 'she's not a Working Families employee during the campaign. She's getting paid by DFS,' adding when informed that Debesu had not seemed to be familiar with what DFS was, 'I don't know. She probably does know. I don't know.'

Then there is the campaign of Daniel Dromm, running against Council Member Helen Sears, which goes beyond referring calls to staff at WFP headquarters. After all, the campaign has its own WFP staffer regularly in the office, a woman named Melody Lopez, who serves both as the Dromm campaign manager and as the organizer for the Manhattan chapter and Bronx Co-Op City Club for the WFP. (She also seems to be the 'Melody L.' of the current WFP employees encouraging new people to apply on www.workingfamiliesparty.org/jobs, saying, 'I started working with WFP during spring break of 2004. Two years later, I was responsible for a staff of 25 and I was running the field operation for a congressional campaign.') In addition, Lopez and Debesu, who is working on the Williams campaign, were the contacts for candidates in Manhattan and the Bronx filling out their 2009 WFP endorsement questionnaires.

Reached at the Dromm campaign office August 7, Lopez said that she is being paid by the Dromm campaign, but that all the money for her salary comes through Data and Field Services. The Dromm campaign made one $2,600 payment to date to DFS on June 15. Lopez was posting information on the Dromm campaign website's blog as early as June 9, identifying herself as the campaign manager in an item encouraging people to get involved with petitioning on behalf of the campaign.

Lopez said that money also covers voter contact and organizing efforts on behalf of the Dromm campaign, though was not used for petitioning. She was not able to immediately provide any breakdown of what the Dromm campaign got from DFS in terms of hours worked or other data.

Lopez said she was indeed on staff of the WFP, but was on leave, a fact that is not mentioned in her voicemail greeting at her extension at WFP headquarters.

Asked if this leave was official, Lopez said no.

'It's actually because I'm normally in the organizing department, so I'm on leave from the organizing department. I'm not doing my normal work. I'm sort of doing political work,' she said. 'Technically, I'm on staff.'

Lopez confirmed that she is still also receiving her normal salary from WFP.

Campaign finance disclosures from the Dromm campaign list no payments to Lopez or the WFP to compensate for her time.

Cantor, who had not previous included managing campaigns as one of the services DFS provides, gave a different account of how Lopez's payment works.

'Melody is under contract with the Danny Dromm campaign. They have a contract with DFS for campaign management and campaign services and campaign direction,' he said. 'After the election, hopefully she'll return to the Party.'

He seemed unclear of what a leave from the WFP to go work on a campaign would entail.

Shortly afterward, Cantor ended the conversation, but called back several minutes later with information that he had been told by an unidentified person other than Lopez that the contract between DFS and the Dromm campaign was much larger, somewhere between $40-50,000, and the $2,600 payment on 6/15 represented only the first in what will be a series. (This would be true of more campaigns as well, Cantor said, explaining, 'There's still plenty of work to do.')

He said more payments will be visible on Dromm's next campaign finance filing, but that Lopez's salary for her first month on the job was indeed a portion of the $2,600. With reasonable estimates of deductions for the voter contact and organizing efforts which Lopez said the DFS payments covered, that would put Lopez on track to make a salary of $20,000 annually or less.

Cantor then said that Lopez was right to say that she is getting her full normal salary, but that it is paid for by the Dromm campaign. As for Lopez's impression that she was still getting her full normal salary from the WFP, Cantor said she is not aware of where her checks were coming from, though he was.

Though Cantor said he had not talked to Lopez about what she had said about her payments, Cantor said he guessed that she had been confused by questions about where her checks were coming from to pay for the Dromm campaign work.

"She's getting the exact same paycheck she got beforehand--this is totally innocent, actually, but you're not going to believe it--but it's being funded from the silo of the Dromm campaign contract with DFS," Cantor said. "It's the same paycheck, deposited in the bank account, for the same amount. Because we're not going to cut someone's salary for going to work on the Dromm campaign."

Cantor said Lopez knows the difference, despite what she herself said and the lack of any information on the checks or elsewhere which he could point to where this information would be readily available to her.