ARIZONA HARD DRIVE WITH SENSITIVE DATA STOLEN FROM DEMOCRATIC PARTY OFFICE COMPUTERDemocratic office target of crimesDemocratic office target of crimes
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Hard drive stolen; window smashed

Emily Bittner
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 2, 2004 12:00 AM


SCOTTSDALE - Scottsdale Democratic Party officials feel targeted after a computer hard drive with donors' information and mailing list was stolen last month and the office was vandalized Wednesday.

"The fact that we've had two in the last three weeks is very, very suspicious," said Leon Chusid, District 8 treasurer, headquartered at 8350 E. McDonald Drive. "And it's also very terrifying."

The only thing taken in the first incident was a computer's hard drive with information about precinct committee members, mailing lists and fund-raising.

The computer monitor and keyboard were left behind and there were no signs of forced entry in the burglary, said Detective Sam Bailey, a spokesman for the Scottsdale Police Department.

The information on the computer was protected with a password, but officials are still worried.

"Someone who really knows computers can always break a pass code," Chusid said. "They got what was important to them."

The computer contained no personal information that could be used for identity theft, Bailey said.

Officers collected fingerprints from the office, but none was high quality enough to find a match, he said.

On Thursday morning, volunteers discovered that the office's window at the reception area was broken overnight with a rock.

The rock appeared to be from a statue in the office complex. The vandal would have had to bypass three other offices to hit the Democrats' headquarters, Chusid said.



"The police don't have much to go on," Bailey said, adding that if police believed party volunteers' safety was at risk, they would do more.

The information on the hard drive is already public, said Sam Wercinski, chairman of the Maricopa County Democratic Party.

"It would've been easier for them to go online to the Secretary of State's Office and get that information," he said.

Wercinski added that when such incidents happen more than once, there is a "sense it is politically motivated, to try and get them to shut their doors."

Tom Liddy, chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party, condemned the theft.

If it was politically motivated, "it's a crime against our democracy," he said.

He added that a list of Democratic donors wouldn't be valuable to Republicans.

"All it's doing is wasting my postage and my printing money," Liddy said.

Scottsdale's Democratic office is the only headquarters for an individual district in the state and opened four months ago to fanfare.

District 8 covers the northeast Valley and is the most Republican-dominated district in the state.

Chusid said the party has no other reason to feel targeted.

Local party officials aren't intimidated by the incidents, Wercinski said.

"You don't get a group of individuals to staff an office in a Republican area that's just going to lie down and give up," Wercinski said.