Some news just washes by like untreated sludge in the stormwater overflow, but here’s some national news with a local angle that fetched up on the shore last week.

Reports are that Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez has organized a new data-exchange operation. Perez is matching the successful GOP voter-data operation on display in the last presidential vote that is believed to have boosted their turnout. The plan is for the Democrats to do as the Republicans did and form a for-profit entity; Perez’s new organization will be gathering all available Democratic data now scattered throughout state party organizations and some non-profits.

The complex operation is coming together  after months of serious internal wrangling. Politico.com reported last December that state party officials were looking to know who exactly would stand to benefit financially from the new for profit data base entity.

Now Howard Dean, with stints as a Vermont governor, a presidential candidate, and as DNC Chairman has agreed to  oversee the new DNC voter-info project. AP reports: The arrangement would allow the national party, state parties, and independent political action groups on the left to share voter data in real time during campaigns. That means, for example, that a field worker for a congressional campaign in Iowa and another for an independent political action committee knocking on doors in Florida could update a master voter file essentially as they work. When a presidential campaign spends big money on consumer data to update voter profiles, the new information would go into the central file as well. And all participating organizations would have access to the latest information.

The new exchange will operate as an independent for-profit enterprise led initially by Democratic strategist Jen O’Malley Dillon, once a top adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. [emphasis added]

The deal worked out with the DNC chair to calm the waters among the state party officials divvies up the control over the data-exchange between former Hillary people and people seen as progressives — Howard Dean and Ken Martin (leader of the Democratic state party chairs association, a MN liberal inspired by the late Senator Paul Wellstone).

As APNews reports: Martin and Perez would chair a party committee that would license the party’s voter files to O’Malley Dillon’s group, which would establish its own agreements with PACs and other groups. Dean would chair the governing board of the new outfit, and once assembled, that board will hire staff to run the operation.

Some competition and general wrangling for resources between the national organization and state party organizations are nothing new. But a for-profit business model — copied from the GOP — stocked full of licensed DNC voter data available for a price seems designed to invite grifters up to the campaign table for a big-money feast. And as always there is the ever-present potential for hackers gaining access to all that data — all those eggs in one basket could prove an irresistible target.

By splitting up oversight Perez, Dean, and all the professional movers and shakers in the presidential election industrial complex seem to have decided for now to navigate this one with some care. Except there are still questions: 1) who keeps the profits; and 2) why should state and local volunteers provide free labor to stock a data base for sale to favored, deep-pocketed entities/campaigns, when the “profits” are not going to the parties? I’d hate to see the Democrats following the Republican-capitalist model: privatize the profits and socialize the cost and the consequences.

I hope Perez, Dean, et al., at least manage to keep the peace. After all there’s not much riding on this next election but the whole ball of wax. But let’s not lose sight of our principles in the process.