Bloomberg-backed data firm Hawkfish shutting down

Democratic data firm Hawkfish, which is supported by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is closing. 

Hawkfish CEO Josh Mendelsohn informed staff of the closure in an internal note obtained by The Hill in which he touted the company’s work during the 2020 presidential election.

“We take enormous pride in what we’ve accomplished — and the meaningful impact our work had on Joe Biden’s margin of victory in the 2020 election,” he said.

“After the election, Hawkfish’s leadership team and stakeholders started exploring potential avenues for the company’s future and concluded that Hawkfish would not continue in its current constitution. The decision to wind down Hawkfish’s operations was not made lightly or without considering other courses of action.”

Mendelsohn confirmed in a statement to The Hill that Hawkfish is shuttering, a process he said would likely take three months. 

“The decision to wind down Hawkfish’s operations was not made lightly or without considering other courses of action. The company expects wind down by May, providing staff with a three-month runway to remain at-will employees of Hawkfish and continue to be eligible for pay and benefits while they secure their next position,” he said. “We take enormous pride in what our team at Hawkfish accomplished and we look forward to seeing their work carried forward in the future.”

Hawfish was a key driver for Bloomberg’s ill-fated presidential campaign. While Bloomberg dropped out of the race after failing to win any major Democratic primary or caucus, he dumped another $35 million into the firm to help prop up eventual nominee Joe Biden’s campaign.

While Biden declined to directly cooperate with Hawkfish due to concerns from progressives, the company was still tapped to work for top super PACs and spent millions on outside support for the former vice president.

In the memo to staffers, Mendelsohn cast Hawkfish as a key component of Biden’s victory, claiming that it helped supplement his campaign’s presence in battleground states and noting that it was among the first to warn the public of a “Red Mirage” in the presidential race, referring to the idea that GOP-leaning in-person ballots could give an early indication that Biden could be losing before more Democratic-friendly mail-in ballots were tallied.

“We anticipated, educated the media, and coined the ‘Red Mirage;’ we embedded several of our colleagues in the Biden campaign and powered the analytics and voter registration in key battleground states; we executed on Biden campaign media buys in the election’s home stretch; we targeted and powered the digital ads for the historically successful virtual Democratic National Convention; and we served dozens of progressive clients across 16 states where we succeeded in reaching, registering, and engaging hundreds of thousands of voters to help remove a dangerous President from the White House,” he said.