The Sierra Club used the organization's data to target 310,000 infrequent voters who support environmental issues in 33 races across the country, including the successful effort to unseat California Congressman Richard Pombo, Ravindran said.

In general, the system performed well, though Catalist's CTO saw room for improvement.

"Having done this before at Amazon, I know that it doesn't mean anything until you go through your first Christmas. We did scale up for [2006], and we learned how to improve the system for 2007 and 2008," Ravindran said.

In published reports, Ickes has said the Data Warehouse project amounted to a vote of "no confidence" in the DNC effort, and that the newly funded Catalist organization would provide Democrats with voter targeting and data mining capabilities on par with the Republican Party's program (Findit/4689).

Despite the history between powerful figures like Ickes and Dean, Ravindran said that he doesn't pay much attention to the "political dynamic" or history between Catalist and the DNC. He anticipates cooperation in the future.