But I don’t think it’s hard to get this stuff at all.

Okay, then show me: If its just that easy, find my old reddit account.

You are here on lemmy. That means you are EASILY more technically competent than 97% of the staff at any given newsroom in the US. And I know for a fact I'm an easily doxx-able account.

I've built tools like this and have some knowledge of the price for API's that give these kinds of access. The API's you are imagining to exist (and a few do) are priced at the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollar per month. There are minimum purchases. Like you don't even get basic access without getting to price points in the hundreds of thousands. And even then, you need skilled operators, technicians, and programmers to build around those API's to get the kinds of information you are looking for.

I think you are massively underestimating the technical skills and overestimating availability of the tools required to do these things.

What I would suggest is that this information came through the work of a private investigation outfit; a contractor that specializes in this kind of work. I also don't think its coincidence that the governor also announced their candidacy for Senate on the same day. I would guess that someone "in the know" had a PI outfit building this profile and released the information to CNN to try and sabotage GP. Not necessarily someone in the office, but some one with knowledge of the plan and independent funding to carry out the work.