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Tillis: 'Deeply disturbing' if company accused of misusing Facebook data misled campaign

"My expectation is that all services provided to my campaign are lawful," North Carolina Republican says in statement.

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By
Travis Fain
, WRAL statehouse reporter
RALEIGH, N.C. — U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis responded briefly to the Cambridge Analytica scandal Tuesday, saying in a statement that it would be "deeply disturbing" if the company, or any vendor, misled his campaign.
Tillis, whose 2014 Senate campaign spent $30,000 with the group since accused of stealing data from Facebook users to build psychological profiles, described the company as a fairly minor player in his 2014 win over Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan.

"Cambridge Analytica was one of many vendors that provided limited services during my campaign," Tillis said in a statement released by his spokesman. "However, they were not our digital vendor, and they have ceased to be a vendor for my campaign for more than three years. My expectation is that all services provided to my campaign are lawful – regardless of who provides them, including third parties. If we were misled by a vendor, that would be deeply disturbing."

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis

The Tillis campaign spent another $100,000 with Cambridge Analytica in 2015, all for "micro-targeting," according to Federal Election Commission records.

The state Republican Party also engaged Cambridge Analytica in 2014 and 2015, spending $215,000 with the group. The party was the company's fourth-largest client in 2014.

Tillis and his aides had declined to answer questions about the company Monday, after The New York Times and The Observer of London reported that the firm harvested private information from 50 million Facebook users without their permission.

The company includes the Tillis campaign on its website as a case study, saying it was "contracted to provide modeled data and data analysis on partisanship, turnout, issue importance, and personality profile for North Carolina GOP" in the 2014 race. The company said it used its "unique data-rich voter file ... to accurately predict partisanship, turnout, issue importance and build psychographic profiles for all voters in North Carolina," enabling, "the creation of tailored messages directed at those audiences."

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State GOP Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse provided WRAL News with example mailers the company's research was used in, and they tend to criticize Hagan either for missing a Senate committee briefing on ISIS or her voting record or because a company co-owned by her husband won federal stimulus grants.

Woodhouse, who was not employed by the party during this campaign, stressed that "no one company and their data set" decided who got which mailers. Those decisions are made off an aggregate data file including information from multiple vendors as well as the Republican National Committee, Woodhouse said in a text message.

The company also worked with the John Bolton super-PAC in 2014, and the PAC was active in Tillis' race. The company case study for the super-PAC states that the company "implemented a psychographic messaging campaign across three key states," targeted different personality types with tailored messages.

"Highly agreeable viewers were shown an advert that downplayed political conflict and promoted peaceful security," the case study says. "Whereas, highly neurotic viewers were shown an advert that highlighted the failures of recent national security policies."

Cambridge Analytica says on its website that its tele-canvassing program in the Tillis race contacted 123,138 individuals, resulting in an increase in turnout of 12.57 percent, or 15,478 voters. Tillis won that race by about 45,600 votes.

The company would go on to work for President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Steve Bannon, an executive in the firm, was at one point Trump's campaign manager.

Cambridge Analytica has denied any wrongdoing, saying it fully complies with Facebook's terms of service and that it contracted through another company to legally obtain data.

"When it subsequently became clear that the data had not been obtained ... in line with Facebook’s terms of service, Cambridge Analytica deleted all data received," the company said in a news release.

North Carolina Democrats held a press conference to conference on the controversy Tuesday with state party Chairman Wayne Goodwin questioning whether state Republicans "helped this firm steal, weaponize, and exploit people’s private information."

Goodwin said "our very republic" depends upon answers to these questions.

Woodhouse said that "the media and Democrats are creating an absurd new standard where customers are maligned for being misled by vendors or contractors."

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