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The mystery of where Women's Voices Women Vote got their call lists might be solved. A report by Will Evans, which accompanied NPR's reporting on the issue, shows that Women's Voices Women Vote paid Integral Resources, Inc. $800,000 in 2006. Integral Resources builds and maintains call lists for progressive and charitable organizations, engineers telemarketing campaigns for these groups, and provides associated consulting services. The firm is owned by Ron Rosenblith, the husband of Women's Voices Women Vote President Page Gardner. Rosenblith isn't, like most of the key staffers at Women's Voices Women Vote, a clear-cut Clinton backer. He was once John Kerry's Chief of Staff and played a key role in his 2004 presidential bid. He has reportedly donated to the Clinton campaign this time around. Yet, if you wanted to assemble a list of voters, and wanted to be certain that you targeted African Americans likely to vote for Obama, but didn't want anyone to know you were doing this, you can't beat the convenience of leaning over the breakfast table to say to a spouse: "Hey honey, that list I want for W.V.W.V., can you make sure it's ONLY likely Obama voters?"

It could be there isn't much of a mystery here. In a race as divided by race as the current primary season has been, any list of African Americans will likely be interchangeable with a list of probable Obama backers. Discourage African Americans from voting, and you succeed in suppressing the vote for Obama. Maybe all Rosenblith's firm had to do was deliver a list of African Americans registered to vote in North Carolina. It is an ingenious way to appear to be engaged in noble work--registering African Americans in a southern state--while, in fact, delivering a surprise win for Hillary or, at minimum, keeping enough blacks home that she suffers a narrow defeat, easily besting pre-primary expectations and making her seem to be nipping at Obama's heels even in races that were seen to be in the bag.