Wisconsin candidate David Daniels denies setting up adult dating accounts connected to him

Republican Wisconsin Assembly candidate David Daniels joins a growing list of Badger State political figures with ties to adult dating platform accounts established during their marriages.

Daniels is the Republican nominee for Wisconsin’s District 53 Assembly seat. According to his website, Daniels is a dedicated family man who has been married to his wife Lucy for 38 years. However, files from major cybersecurity leaks reveal that email accounts tied directly to Daniels were registered on explicit hookup websites.

Data from the publicly reported 2016 breach of AdultFriendFinder — a platform widely known for casual sexual encounters — includes the address “davidmdaniels1@ameritech.net.” A newsletter for The American Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists tie the email to Daniels, who used to serve as the organization’s vice president.

A second email address, “davidmdaniels1@juno.com,” appears in both the AdultFriendFinder breach and a leak from Fling.com, another casual hookup site. Web registry records show Daniels used the same address in 2016 to set up the website for his business, Compassion Homes. According to his LinkedIn page, Daniels operated Compassion Homes from 2015-19.

On Fling.com, the associated profile used the handle “ddaniels1” and listed explicit interests in “fetish” and “groupsex” activities. Data breach records also show the account’s password was “illucy1” — an apparent abbreviation for “I love Lucy,” possibly referencing Daniels’ wife. Other data breaches show that the “illucy1” password was used for Daniels’ accounts on iMesh.com, DropBox, MySpace and Evony.com before and after the Fling.com breach in 2011.

When reached for comment, Daniels strongly denied creating or authorizing any adult website accounts.

“I did not create or authorize the creation of the accounts you are referring to,” Daniels told Heartland Signal in an email. “That fact has not changed.”

While Daniels initially claimed he had abandoned the email addresses years prior following historical breaches, he later clarified that the accounts remained active and were monitored by his business staff.

“They were never deleted or canceled,” Daniels said, noting that his office manager monitored the inboxes for customer inquiries and state regulatory correspondence with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Daniels also noted that over the years, roughly 25 employees had access to computers at his shop.

However, Daniels did not explain how his personal password structure, specifically the password “illucy1,” came to be used on Fling.com, as well as on his accounts across mainstream platforms including iMesh, Evony and MySpace.

Public records also conflict with Daniels’ initial timeline. Despite initially claiming he abandoned the Juno email address following a 2008 data breach, registry records show the email was actively used to set up his company’s website eight years later in 2016.

Wisconsin’s 53rd Assembly seat, a key swing district, is currently held by retiring Rep. Dean Kaufert (R-Neenah). Kaufert announced his retirement shortly after Heartland Signal uncovered a sexual harassment scandal from his time serving as the mayor of Neenah, Wis.