Young, Rich and Relocating Yet Again in Hunt for Political Office

Two years ago, Sean Eldridge and his husband, the Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, bought a $5 million estate in Garrison, about 50 miles north of New York City. It offered 80 acres of rolling fields and a farmhouse once owned by a Vanderbilt. It would also allow Mr. Eldridge, 26, to run for the local Congressional seat if he chose to.

But that seat appeared unattainable, and soon the couple’s gaze shifted north, to the neighboring district on the other side of the Hudson River. In January, they bought a $2 million modern home here overlooking a reservoir, laying the groundwork for Mr. Eldridge’s campaign for their new local Congressional seat, New York’s 19th.

Word of Mr. Eldridge’s political plans has delighted the friends who make up his social circle: Donors to his exploratory committee include George Soros, the billionaire financier, and Sean Parker, the tech entrepreneur behind Napster and Spotify.

But his ambitions have puzzled some residents among the farmers, mill workers and small-business owners who populate this district, which rises through the Catskills and rolls north through cornfields and apple orchards to the Vermont border.

Amy Shields, a mother of three children who lives a few miles from Mr. Eldridge, cannot get over the fact that he has just moved into town and is already planning a run for Congress.

“It’s a little bit presumptuous,” Ms. Shields said. “In a community like this you like to know who your neighbors are. Having ties to your neighbors is important. How can he expect to represent people he doesn’t know?”

Mr. Eldridge and Mr. Hughes are among the most politically active of a new generation of entrepreneurs who gained their fortunes in Silicon Valley. Mr. Hughes, who left Facebook with about $500 million, oversaw online organizing for President Obama’s 2008 campaign and has since bought The New Republic. The two men helped raise tens of thousands of dollars for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his push for same-sex marriage.

But Congressional campaigns, especially in upstate New York, can be very personal contests, built on longstanding relationships and local perceptions. And it may be hard to dislodge the incumbent, Representative Chris Gibson, a well-liked Republican and veteran of the Iraq war who lives in a modest home around the corner from where he grew up.

In an interview, Mr. Gibson, 49, politely deflected questions about Mr. Eldridge. But he hinted at the kind of campaign he might run, noting that his constituents included lifelong friends and relatives. “There are some things money can’t buy,” he said.

Mr. Eldridge’s arrival is being taken seriously by Republicans in Washington, who worry that his sizable checkbook makes him a threat, given the time he has to lay the foundation for his candidacy before the election next year.

Mr. Eldridge is not a newcomer to tough campaigns — though he has never been a candidate. In 2011, he left law school to join Freedom to Marry, a group that pushed lawmakers in the New York Legislature to legalize same-sex marriage.

In an interview, he dismissed any suggestion that his move to the 19th District was motivated by politics. “The Hudson Valley is my home,” he said. “It’s where I work. It’s where I got married.”

Mr. Eldridge said he and his husband, who also own a loft in SoHo in Manhattan, were settling into their new upstate home. He described a routine that includes grocery shopping and dining in Woodstock, the artsy enclave nearby. “We’re very involved in the community,” he said.

Mr. Eldridge’s supporters note that for all the trappings of wealth he now possesses, Mr. Eldridge grew up in a middle-class community in Ohio, where both of his parents were doctors; they say he has a genuine understanding of people of modest means.

And while the 19th District has vast stretches of rural, conservative communities, it is also home to more Democratic-leaning places, like New Paltz and Monticello, that could give his candidacy a lift.

“He clearly has a bright future,” said Mike Hein, a Democrat who is the Ulster County executive.

Still, as Mr. Eldridge has sought to ingratiate himself with local residents, some awkward moments have resulted.

New York Comptroller Sues Qualcomm for Data on Political Giving

The suit by the comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, was a novel and potentially significant tactic in the running battle over corporate political spending in the post-Citizens United era, after a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened the door to unlimited political spending by corporations and unions.

Qualcomm’s founder, the billionaire Irwin Jacobs, and some of the company’s top executives are major donors to the Democratic Party: Mr. Jacobs contributed at least $2.3 million to three Democratic “super PACs,” including one dedicated to re-electing President Obama, last year.

Mr. DiNapoli, a Democrat, is also seeking to determine whether Qualcomm made corporate contributions to tax-exempt groups and trade associations that are not required to disclose their donors. Such groups poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2012 election, including money from large corporations seeking to avoid negative publicity or customer outcries.

A Qualcomm spokeswoman would not comment on whether the company had contributed to tax-exempt groups.

In a statement, Donald J. Rosenberg, Qualcomm’s general counsel, said the company was surprised by the lawsuit. “Qualcomm is well regarded for its open and transparent culture and fully complies with all local, state and federal laws governing political activity and the disclosure of that activity — and the lawsuit does not suggest otherwise,” Mr. Rosenberg said.

He said that Mr. DiNapoli “knows from conversations we have had in the past Qualcomm was already in the process of enhancing our shareholders’ ability to access Qualcomm’s political contributions on our Web site.”

Mr. DiNapoli is asserting the right to access Qualcomm’s spending records as the sole trustee of the New York State pension fund, which is a major shareholder in Qualcomm and one of the largest public institutional investors in the country. He maintains that the contributions could pose financial risks for shareholders.

Qualcomm is based in California but registered in Delaware, whose law gives shareholders the right under some circumstances to inspect a company’s books.

Mr. DiNapoli filed the lawsuit on Wednesday in a state court in Delaware after Qualcomm rebuffed requests by the New York pension fund and other institutional investors to disclose its political spending. If successful, he could establish a precedent giving shareholders the right to inspect contribution records.

“We’ve done the petitions and the letter-writing,” Mr. DiNapoli said in an interview. “We’ve done shareholder resolutions. Rather than continue to be rebuffed, we’re taking this new approach.”

Mr. DiNapoli’s suit is one of a wave of actions by pension funds and other institutional investors attempting to limit or force disclosure of corporate political spending in the wake of the Citizens United ruling. More than 100 shareholder resolutions concerning corporate political contributions were filed last year, according to Institutional Shareholder Services, which tracks proxy actions.

“We believe that shareholders have a right to know how money is being spent in the political arena,” said Amy Borrus, deputy director of the Council of Institutional Investors, an association of pension funds, endowments and foundations. “Boards need to step up to the plate and ensure that political checks that a company writes enhance, not erode, shareholder value.”

Many of the new efforts to force disclosure of contributions are emerging in New York, where some of the nation’s biggest corporations and charities do business, giving state and local elected officials the leverage to pursue political spending that has national implications.

The New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, has spent several months investigating political spending by politically active tax-exempt groups that raise money in New York; last month, he issued a regulation that will force many of them to disclose their donors. Bill de Blasio, the New York City public advocate, who is a trustee of the city’s pension fund, has secured pledges from a number of large businesses that they will not spend money on campaigns.

Mr. DiNapoli’s suit, filed in Delaware Chancery Court, is known as a books-and-records demand. While such demands are typically used to try to prove mismanagement, waste or wrongdoing by corporate executives or board members, the comptroller’s complaint asserts that political spending creates financial risk for companies and that shareholders should be entitled to be able to evaluate those risks.

“It really gets to the heart of the question of transparency,” Mr. DiNapoli said. “How is a corporation spending money in the political process and how does that impact shareholder value? The first step in evaluating that from a shareholder perspective is to find out where the money is being spent.”

Harvey Pitt, who was chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission under President George W. Bush, said he believed that Mr. DiNapoli’s suit was consistent with the purpose of the Delaware law that permits such records demands.

“I don’t want to predict where the Delaware court will come out, but where you have a very large shareholder and something related directly to corporate governance, it seems to me a pretty compelling circumstance” under the state law, Mr. Pitt said.

Qualcomm scores relatively low on the CPA-Zicklin Index, a ranking of corporations’ policies on political transparency, which was created by the Center for Political Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog organization.

Microsoft Battles Google by Hiring Political Brawler Mark Penn

SEATTLE — Mark Penn made a name for himself in Washington by bulldozing enemies of the Clintons. Now he spends his days trying to do the same to Google, on behalf of its archrival Microsoft.

Since Mr. Penn was put in charge of “strategic and special projects” at Microsoft in August, much of his job has involved efforts to trip up Google, which Microsoft has failed to dislodge from its perch atop the lucrative Internet search market.

Drawing on his background in polling, data crunching and campaigning, Mr. Penn created a holiday commercial that has been running during Monday Night Football and other shows, in which Microsoft criticizes Google for polluting the quality of its shopping search results with advertisements. “Don’t get scroogled,” it warns. His other projects include a blind taste test, Coke-versus-Pepsi style, of search results from Google and Microsoft’s Bing.

The campaigns by Mr. Penn, 58, a longtime political operative known for his brusque personality and scorched-earth tactics, are part of a broader effort at Microsoft to give its marketing the nimbleness of a political campaign, where a candidate can turn an opponent’s gaffe into a damaging commercial within hours. They are also a sign of the company’s mounting frustration with Google after losing billions of dollars a year on its search efforts, while losing ground to Google in the browser and smartphones markets and other areas.

Microsoft has long attacked Google from the shadows, whispering to regulators, journalists and anyone else who would listen that Google was a privacy-violating, anticompetitive bully. The fruits of its recent work in this area could come next week, when the Federal Trade Commission is expected to announce the results of its antitrust investigation of Google, a case that echoes Microsoft’s own antitrust suit in the 1990s. A similar investigation by the European Union is also wrapping up. A bad outcome for Google in either one would be a victory for Microsoft.

But Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., has realized that it cannot rely only on regulators to scrutinize Google — which is where Mr. Penn comes in. He is increasing the urgency of Microsoft’s efforts and focusing on their more public side.

In an interview, Mr. Penn said companies underestimated the importance of policy issues like privacy to consumers, as opposed to politicians and regulators. “It’s not about whether they can get them through Washington,” he said. “It’s whether they can get them through Main Street.”

Jill Hazelbaker, a Google spokeswoman, declined to comment on Microsoft’s actions specifically, but said that while Google also employed lobbyists and marketers, “our focus is on Google and the positive impact our industry has on society, not the competition.”

In Washington, Mr. Penn is a lightning rod. He developed a relationship with the Clintons as a pollster during President Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign, when he helped identify the value of “soccer moms” and other niche voter groups.

As chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 campaign for president, he conceived the “3 a.m.” commercial that raised doubts about whether Barack Obama, then a senator, was ready for the Oval Office. Mr. Penn argued in an essay he wrote for Time magazine in May that “negative ads are, by and large, good for our democracy.”

But his approach has ended up souring many of his professional relationships. He left Mrs. Clinton’s campaign after an uproar about his consulting work for the government of Colombia, which was seeking the passage of a trade treaty with the United States that Mrs. Clinton, then a senator, opposed.

“Google should be prepared for everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them,” said a former colleague who worked closely with Mr. Penn in politics and spoke on condition of anonymity. “Actually, they should be prepared for the kitchen sink to be thrown at them, too.”

Hiring Mr. Penn demonstrates how seriously Microsoft is taking this fight, said Michael A. Cusumano, a business professor at M.I.T. who co-wrote a book about Microsoft’s browser war.

“They’re pulling out all the stops to do whatever they can to halt Google’s advance, just as their competition did to them,” Professor Cusumano said. “I suppose that if Microsoft can actually put a doubt in people’s mind that Google isn’t unbiased and has become some kind of evil empire, they might very well get results.”

Nick Wingfield reported from Seattle and Claire Cain Miller from San Francisco.

Political Memo: Political Pollsters Struggle to Get the Right Cell Number

So it sounds odd that some pollsters have decided to hang up on more voters.

Yet that is one way survey researchers have adapted to the communications revolution that has upended old methods of measuring which political party is ahead. In the polarized battle between President Obama and Mitt Romney, arcane shifts in polling techniques can have important consequences for the results — and public perceptions of the contest.

Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, and Peter Hart, his Democratic counterpart, who conduct the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, proved the point in their latest poll, conducted July 18-22, when they increased the proportion of respondents who rely exclusively on cellphones to 30 percent from 25 percent. To home in on them, the pollsters ended calls answered on cellphones if the respondents said they also had land lines.

Their findings affirmed arguments that “cell only” Americans have significantly different, and more Democratic, political views than those with land lines. Over all, the poll showed Mr. Obama leading Mr. Romney by 49 percent to 43 percent — providing a confidence-boosting talking point for Democrats and provoking sharp criticism from Republicans.

Scott Rasmussen, who owns an independent polling firm, approaches the “cell only” problem differently, as he must by law. His Rasmussen Reports conducts surveys through automated dialing, which under Federal Communications Commission rules is permitted for land lines but not cellphones.

So in Mr. Rasmussen’s polls, online interviews account for 15 percent to 20 percent of each survey, which he figures helps him reach the same kinds of voters, especially younger ones, in the “cell only” category. The result he reported the morning of July 25, a few hours after the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll was released, was strikingly different: Mr. Romney had 47 percent, and Mr. Obama 44 percent.

“Nobody has the answers,” Mr. Rasmussen said of different approaches to the issue. “We’re all experimenting with the same thing. How do you reach people in a way they communicate?”

Political pollsters have long struggled to keep pace with changes in how Americans communicate with one another — or don’t. One of their central challenges is the decline in “response rates” among voters.

Another is ensuring that their means of reaching people produce accurate reflections of voter sentiment. The rapid rise of cellphones as the sole means of telephone communication for many Americans — now about one-third of the population, government researchers say — has produced a distinct subgroup within the electorate.

That group is not only younger but also “attitudinally different from other people” of all ages, said Mark S. Mellman, a pollster for Democratic candidates. Among their characteristics: they are disproportionally urban, African-American, on either the high or low end of the economic ladder — and Democratic.

“It used to be if you got the number of young people right, you got the poll right,” Mr. Mellman said. “That’s no longer true.”

But accounting for those “cell only” voters is not so easy. Regulations limit how pollsters can dial cellphone numbers, making those calls roughly twice as expensive as land line calls — a cost some pollsters and their customers are not willing to bear.

Moreover, there is no consensus on the right method for handling such polling. The ABC News/Washington Post polls, like the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, terminate calls if cellphone respondents say they also have land lines.

The New York Times/CBS News Poll, like the Gallup Organization and Pew Research Center, does not. Instead, Times/CBS pollsters complete interviews with all willing cellphone respondents and “weight” the views of those without land lines to make them reflect one-third of the survey’s results.

Others remain skeptical that one-third is even the right target for “cell only” voters.

Bits Blog: Twitter Unveils the Twindex, a New Political Index

screenshot via Twitter

We’ve seen it dozens of times before. The famous scene of a political candidate in a large room, balloons floating and banners strewn about, surrounded by supporters and family, anxiously watching the television as the election results come in.

This year’s election might look a little different. The TV may be blaring results, but the presidential candidates’ staffs may also be following the Twitter Political Index, a new feature that monitors political sentiment on Twitter.

Adam Sharp, head of government, news and social innovation at Twitter, said in a phone interview that the new Twitter Index, or Twindex, monitors hundreds of millions of Twitter messages searching for opinions and views about both 2012 presidential candidates.

The messages are then sorted by what people are saying about President Obama or Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, and then creates a poll of those views.

The new site, housed at election.twitter.com, will be updated each day at 8 p.m., Eastern time, to reflect the latest daily views about the candidates.

The Twindex is not meant to replace traditional polls, Mr. Sharp said, but rather to offer an additional, real-time view of the nation’s feelings about candidates as they appear in the news and as voters try to decide which candidate they want to run the country for the next four years.

screenshot via Twitter and TopsyThe Twitter Political Index, as compared to the traditional Gallup Poll.

“We believe the Twitter political index reinforces the transitional models of research,” explained Mr. Sharp. “By providing more signals, more dials — that can agree or disagree — these new technologies give a more complete picture of crafting a political forecast.”

On a company blog post, Twitter said the Twindex was built in partnership with a data analysis team from Topsy, an online search and analytics company, and two polling firms, the Mellman Group and North Star Opinion Research.

Topsy sifts through Twitter messages and uses advanced semantic analysis software to determine if someone is in support of a candidate, or a detractor.

Mr. Sharp said the index had a database of thousand of words to understand if these Twitter messages were for or against a candidate. As these messages are being shared by millions of people on Twitter, the software also takes into account colloquialisms.

Mr. Sharp noted that “bad,” for instance, could mean bad, or it be slang for good. He said that Topsy could differentiate between these words in a sentence and if they are positive or negative.

This is not the first time Twitter has worked on a presidential election Web site.

In 2008, during the last election, the company built a site that corralled all the Twitter messages about the candidates. But things have definitely changed in the last four years. In the last election, Twitter users sent 1.8 million messages on the day of the election. Today, with people sending 400 million messages on a typical day, that represents a little over six minutes of Twitter volume.

Advertising: Survey Shows Voters Are Wary of Tailored Political Ads

The results of a new study to be released on Tuesday by professors at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania show that 86 percent of respondents did not want political campaigns to tailor ads to their interests.

The results of the study come at a time when national and local political campaigns are steadily increasing their use of technology that traditional marketers use to tailor advertising.

For political campaigns, the process is called microtargeting. Information about voters — like the charitable donations they make, the type of credit card they use and the Congressional district they live in — is combined with voter registration records, and the result allows campaigns to send certain types of messages to voters.

For example, one person may see an ad that focuses on a candidate’s employment message while another will see an ad about reproductive rights. Both presidential campaigns use some form of microtargeting.

“The overall sense is that there is a real discontent about this,” said Prof. Joseph Turow of the Annenberg School. “You have a real disjuncture between the American public and the campaigns that are on a trajectory to increase it.”

It is not just discontent with the ads themselves that should concern politicians. Nearly two-thirds of respondents, 64 percent, said the likelihood of their voting for a candidate would decrease if that candidate purchased information about them and their neighbors for the purpose of sending them different messages.

The study was conducted this year by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from April 23 to May 6. It included cellphone and landline telephone interviews in English and Spanish with 1,503 adult Internet users in the continental United States.

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The survey also examined attitudes toward political advertising on social media sites like Facebook. Seventy percent of respondents said the likelihood of their voting for a candidate they supported would decrease if the campaign used Facebook to send ads to the friends of someone who had “liked” a candidate’s Facebook page.

“People take politics seriously,” Professor Turow said. “Even more seriously than advertising, discounts and news.”

In 2009, Professor Turow, with other professors from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a study that examined attitudes toward similar types of advertising used by traditional marketers. They found that about two-thirds of respondents objected to having their activities tracked online with the goal of sending them ads tailored to their interests.

Since then, the issue of online tracking in digital advertising has risen to the national stage. Industry groups like the Interactive Advertising Bureau, government agencies including the Federal Trade Commission, the Commerce Department and the White House, and privacy advocates have agreed to work together to satisfy both advertisers and users concerned about Internet privacy.

In March, the Federal Trade Commission issued a report on Internet privacy that called on Congress to enact legislation regulating companies known as data brokers, which collect and sell personal information to advertisers.

The commission also urged that technology companies offer a “Do Not Track” mechanism by the end of the year that would allow users to opt out of having their personal information collected online.

“Compliance with Do Not Track would be voluntary, so each entity, whether political or commercial, would make its own decision about whether to comply,” Ed Felten, chief technologist at the commission, said in an e-mail.

A handful of personal interviews conducted with survey respondents showed mixed feelings about tailored political ads, and the collection and use of personal data.

Roman Kickirillo, 42, an engineer in Franklin, Tenn., described his attitude toward online advertising of all types as “total indifference.” Mr. Kickirillo said he would only be bothered by ads tailored to his specific political interests if the candidate’s messages were contradictory.

“I might never find out that they were saying the opposite because they think that’s exactly what I want to hear,” he said.

Doug Sheaff, 77, a retiree who lives in Bristol, Va., said he would be concerned with how data was collected. “As long as it’s publicly accessible information that they are getting and they are able to tailor the message, I have no problem,” Mr. Sheaff said. “The other question is, are they building up a file on me.”

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Carol Stewart, 49, who lives in New Boston, Tex., and is unemployed after getting “caught up in the economic crisis,” said she notices advertising of all types in e-mails, on Web sites and on the right-hand column of Facebook pages.

“You visit the site and they know everything about you,” Ms. Stewart said. “I don’t like that.” Ms. Stewart, who said she considers herself a Democrat, recalls seeing ads online for Mitt Romney but not for Barack Obama but that she has not clicked on the ads.

“When I got the discount card at the grocery store I knew they were going to track my habits,” Ms. Stewart said. “But these politicians out here? I didn’t agree to let them into my life.”