Exclusive: Leaked DCCC documents reveal effort to replace Shea-Porter with ‘fresh face for 2016′

Documents purportedly stolen from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in a well publicized cyberattack reveal the campaign arm of the House Democrats aggressively recruited Executive Councilor Chris Pappas to run for Congress in the state’s first congressional district while actively discouraging former Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter from entering the race.

The documents, leaked by a mysterious hacker who goes by the name Guccifer 2.0, date from December, 2014 to April, 2016 and include detailed strategic plans, budgets, election data, turnout models, media and direct mail plans and opposition research for the first district race. The DCCC has not confirmed their authenticity.

‘We recommend a fresh face for 2016′

Of particular interest to Granite State political insiders will be the numerous call sheets and memos that document an aggressive recruiting effort by the DCCC to convince Pappas to enter the race – with support from local party officials.

The effort began in December, 2014, just one month after the midterm election in which Congressman Frank Guinta defeated Shea-Porter for the second time, when DCCC political director Ian Russell reached out to second district Congresswoman Ann Kuster and asked her to help recruit Pappas.

At the same time, the DCCC was working to discourage Shea-Porter from making another run for the seat she won in 2006, 2008 and 2012. In a January 9, 2015 memo, Russell bluntly told House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, “we do not recommend encouraging her to run.”

“Shea-Porter’s campaign fundamentals have always been lacking – she raised $1.7M for the 2014 race, not enough to compete in a swing district that is 92% covered by the expensive Boston media market,” he noted.

“We recommend a fresh face for 2016,” Russell added. “In-state political leaders, including Rep. Kuster and State Party Chair Ray Buckley are encouraging businessman and Executive Council Member Chris Pappas to run.”

Pappas wooed in DC

DCCC memos document a trip Pappas made to Washington on January 21, 2015 to meet with seven members of Congress including DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Luján and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer. Talking points prepared by the DCCC asked the members to encourage Papas to run and to suggest he adopt a timeline “that is least likely to result in former Rep. Shea-Porter entering the race.”

“In-state sources including Rep. Kuster and the state party chair believe that Pappas is the strongest potential contender to take on Rep. Guinta,” the memo read. “The biggest variable is what former Rep. Carol Shea-Porter will do – in past races, her strength among the left flank has made her difficult to beat in Democratic primaries, even though she is not a strong general election candidate.”

An April 22, 2015 memo by the DCCC northeast regional political director noted Pappas was "strongly considering an exploratory announcement” to begin raising money and building momentum but was worried that his entry would “provoke” Shea-Porter.

The memo suggested Pappas could explain his entry into the race by using first-time candidate Shawn O’Connor as a foil. "Both Pappas and O’Connor are gay,” the memo noted. “O’Connor has been able to successfully peel of [sic] some prominent LGBT donors. Pappas can relay to Shea-Porter that he wants to make sure that this community does not stand with O’Connor and therefor [sic] feels the need to enter the race until she makes her decision in June/July.”

Shea-Porter enters the race

Despite the enticement, Pappas declined to enter the first district race. Shea-Porter filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commision in August, 2015 and officially announced her candidacy at the Democratic Party State Convention in September, 2015.

The DCCC grudgingly accepted Shea-Porter as the Democratic candidate but threatened to withhold funding if she failed to achieve certain metrics. “Unlike in past cycles when Shea Porter was an incumbent, this district is not an automatic target for the DCCC – and we have told her this,” one memo read. “If she doesn’t commit to a solid call time schedule and lags in the polls, this district may fall off of the target list.”

Despite the grumbling, the DCCC designated the first district as a Red to Blue “Emerging Race” in February, 2016 and added Shea-Porter to the Red to Blue program in April, 2016 with a promise to provide financial, communications, grassroots and strategic support.

A rocky relationship with party leaders

The backroom maneuvering to replace Shea-Porter is just the latest chapter in a rocky relationship that dates back to her first run for office in 2006, when the DCCC endorsed her primary opponent three months before the election. Even after she defeated state House Minority Leader Jim Craig by a 54 percent to 35 percent margin, Shea-Porter received no funding from the DCCC for the general election.

The Boston Globe reported the committee called Shea-Porter with its first offer of financial support on the day after her general election victory over then-Congressman Jeb Bradley. "They asked us if we wanted them to pay our debt, and we told them we didn’t have any,” Shea-Porter said. “But it was nice of them to offer.”

In the next election cycle, Shea-Porter initially declined a DCCC offer to provide financial and logistical support via its Frontline program, which helps protect vulnerable incumbent Democrats. She told Politico that she wanted to run a grassroots campaign similar to the campaign she ran in 2006. As Republican attacks intensified, Shea-Porter subsequently asked the DCCC for help and was included in the Frontline program.

The committee reportedly judged her 2010 campaign to be a lost cause and declined to get involved as she was defeated by Guinta and was swept out of office in the Tea Party wave. In 2012, however, the DCCC supported her rematch with Guinta and spent nearly $2 million on the race as part of the committee’s Red to Blue program.

Shea-Porter also received DCCC support for her 2014 reelection bid, but her failure to meet the committee’s fundraising target was likely instrumental in the party seeking a “fresh face” for 2016. “She only raised $1.7 million in 2014, and much of this came from having the advantage of incumbency,” a DCCC memo complained. “The DCCC and allied groups spent millions to make up for her lack of fundraising.”

Behind the scenes: Me and Guccifer 2.0

“hi man, r u going to make a story about me?” And so began my conversation with the man who goes by the name Guccifer 2.0 and who may or may not be a Romanian lone wolf hacker responsible for the DNC and DCCC data breaches.

In July of this year, the DCCC disclosed the committee’s computer network had been compromised in a manner that appeared similar to an earlier data breach at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The committee did not reveal what, if any, data had been stolen.

The hacker who claimed responsibility for the DNC breach, and for leaking the DNC documents to WikiLeaks, announced on August 12 that he was also responsible for the DCCC hack. “It’s time for new revelations now,” Guccifer wrote on his website. “All of you may have heard about the DCCC hack. As you see I wasn’t wasting my time! It was even easier than in the case of the DNC breach.”

Along with the announcement, Guccifer publicly released documents he claimed he had stolen from the DCCC that included personal cell phone numbers and private email addresses of Democratic House members. He followed up by leaking DCCC campaign documents related to upcoming congressional elections in Florida and Pennsylvania.

Guccifer claims to be a Romanian hacker who works alone, but many cybersecurity experts believe the online persona is a front for a Russian disinformation operation. The New York Times reported senior U.S. national security officials have “high confidence” that the DNC intrusion was carried out by Russian intelligence agencies.

On August 16, the Washington Examiner published a story revealing Guccifer had provided them with documents related to New Hampshire’s first district congressional race “as part of an ongoing effort to engage reporters.”

I tracked down the mysterious hacker on Twitter and sent him a message to see if he would also share those documents with me. A few hours later, Guccifer replied, and after chatting a bit – he asked me to send him a link to the Examiner story – he typed, “check ur email.” I had the documents.

That was the easy part. I was uncertain about what I should do next and had more questions than answers. Would publication make me an unwitting player in a Russian intelligence operation? Would candidates I support be negatively affected by the story? Do First Amendment protections extend to reporting on stolen documents?

(On the last question, a lawyer with the First Amendment Coalition – an organization worthy of your support – was reassuring. “The seminal case on this is Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514, 535 (2001),” she wrote, “which stands for the proposition that even if the information was illegally obtained by a third party in the first instance, those who have lawfully received the information from that source have a right, under the First Amendment, to publish information gleaned from those documents that relate to matters of public concern. … At the very least, reporting on state politics is undeniably a matter of public concern, and it seems that the documents you have obtained are related to this issue.”)

After weighing the tradeoffs, I concluded this is a story that needs to be told; one that contributes, in a small way, to a better understanding of the political process and the forces that influence it.

I made a conscious decision not to disseminate copies of the documents or to reveal any details related to strategic plans for the upcoming campaigns. My caution may soon be a moot point. Guccifer has promised another WikiLeaks data dump: “I’ll send the major trove of the #DCCC materials and emails to #wikileaks keep following…” he tweeted recently.