Sanders campaign disavows its own nutty conspiracy theory

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Chris Brennan managed to do what no other reporter did after a top Sanders adviser advanced a wacky theory about its former data director being a DNC plant in a Christmas Day Yahoo! News story — he asked the campaign about it:

Uretsky, that article says, came to the Sanders campaign with references from Andrew Brown, the DNC's national data director, and Bryan Whitaker, who had been chief operating officer for the computer vendor NGP VAN.

"It's not as if we conjured this guy Josh from thin air," Mr. Anonymous told Yahoo.com.

Let's pause here to acknowledge two things:

First, it would be so amazing if we could conjure from thin air data wizards when needed.

And second, Uretsky comes from a pretty small club of people who focus on data collection and mining for political campaigns. The fact that two well-known guys in that small field recommended him is pretty shaky ground on which to construct a conspiracy.

Guess who agrees with that? Why, it's the Bernie Sanders campaign!

Michael Briggs, a Sanders spokesman, said the campaign "does not believe the theory" explored in the Yahoo.com story.

Briggs, in a move Brennan called “Clintonian,” refused however to say anything else about having thrown my friend Josh Uretsky under the bus.  As Brennan puts it, the modus operandi seems all too familiar: “Sacrifice a staffer for a scandal, then redirect attention to a suitable bad guy like the DNC, and then rough up some reputations on the sly while assuming a ‘Who, us?’ stance in public.” 

I recognize that this community is dealing with incomplete facts here, and you all can reasonably disagree from the outside on what Uretsky’s intent was, whether any substantive harm befell either the Clinton or Sanders campaigns from this incident, or whether there is any basis for the Sanders lawsuit proceeding now that the need for injunctive relief has been mooted. [I have strong conclusions on each of these questions.]

But I hope you’ll take a few seconds to put the story in context, and understand the Josh Uretsky that many of us back here in Philadelphia have gotten to know over the years, one who at every career fork chose the more progressive option:

Uretsky's friends in progressive Philadelphia circles doubt he would behave unscrupulously.

"He's dedicated his life to trying to implement things that he believes in," said Dan Fee, a longtime political consultant who runs The Echo Group in Philadelphia.

Fee got to know Uretsky when Fee was managing the successful 2009 campaign for Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, a Democrat. Uretsky was a field worker in that race, Fee said.

He called Uretsky a man of "integrity."

He was not alone in saying that.

"I have trusted Josh with data for a long time," said Kati Sipp, director of Pennsylvania Working Families, an independent political organization that champions progressive causes.

Sipp said she worked with Uretsky on voter targeting efforts on various races over the past six years, including while Uretsky was on staff at America Votes Pennsylvania. One such campaign included the successful primary bid earlier this year by Philadelphia Mayor-Elect Jim Kenney.

But, as a Republican friend of mine noted on my Facebook page a few days ago, when we were talking about all this, and it's equally true on both sides of the aisle and for all politicians, regardless of the nobility of their political views:

Politicians are not loyal to staff. Politicians are not loyal to staff. Politicians are not loyal to staff. This requires repeating to all young activists every few years.