Names of 40,000 ‘Inspired’ Givers : Gary Hart Contributor List Sells for $6,500
A computerized contributor list from the Gary Hart presidential campaign, seized by a creditor, fetched $6,500 at an auction Thursday from a political marketing firm that hopes to take advantage of Hart’s yuppie appeal.
“Hart inspired the young, upwardly mobile political givers to give as no one had before,” Mel Nasielski of West Conshohocken, Pa., co-owner of the firm of Allen & Nasielski, told reporters.
The magnetic tape, said to contain about 40,000 names of donors to the former Colorado senator’s 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, was confiscated by marshals at a Marin County computer facility in June at the request of Tri-State Envelope Corp. of Beltsville, Md.
The company, which made fund-raising envelopes for Hart in 1984, said its $105,000 bill was not paid at the end of the campaign and has grown to $140,000, including interest.
Hart, who dropped out of the 1988 presidential race because of allegations about extramarital affairs, still has $1.3 million in unpaid debts from his 1984 campaign.
Nasielski said he hopes to rent the list to one or more candidates and will talk to “most, if not all, of the presidential candidates.”
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