ELECTIONS VENTURA CITY COUNCIL : Candidate’s Headquarters Burglarized

A computerized list of undisclosed campaign contributors and 50 political posters were stolen Wednesday night in a burglary at the headquarters of Ventura City Council candidate Greg Carson, the candidate and his campaign manager said Thursday.

Carson said computer disks containing lists of his campaign contributions and supporters that were vital to a campaign rally planned for Saturday, along with a computer, phone equipment and fax machine, were stolen.

“They took everything, they took our computer files and they locked the doors after them,” Carson said. “It was pretty clean. It wiped us out.”

Carson, a pro-business candidate who has received more endorsements and financial backing than any of his 17 opponents, said the theft, which came only five days before Tuesday’s City Council election, “. . . seems suspicious to me. It really does.”

Carson’s east Ventura campaign headquarters are little more than a desk with a phone, computer and fax machine tucked into the corner of an otherwise vacant former nursery at 130 S. Wells Road.

The building is not lit at night, nor does it have an alarm, said Carson’s campaign manager, James Vaughn, the only one who regularly works there.

The intruder or intruders broke no windows or doors but may have used a credit card or a sliver of plastic to jimmy a door lock, said Ventura Police Officer Graham Jeffrey.

Vaughn discovered the burglary at 10 a.m. Thursday when he went to work and found his desk cleared of the equipment--an IBM-type computer, two answering machines, a telephone, a fax machine and his own portable stereo.

Carson said it will cost him about $4,000 to replace the equipment, all of which was loaned by supporters but not insured by him.

The thieves also took computer disks that had been in the computer and on the desk, Vaughn said. The disks contained campaign records, including a list of contributors to a Carson fund-raising effort called the $99 Club, he said.

The $99 Club allowed campaign contributors to remain anonymous by giving $99 or less. The law does not require candidates to report contributions under $100.

The disks also contained lists of campaign supporters and volunteers, Carson said.

“We lost our support base for sending out invitations to a rally that we’re going to do Saturday,” he said. “All of our financial records--we have to go back now and duplicate everything from our hard copies.”

Also missing were 50 signs touting Carson’s candidacy and a handwritten list of locations where the signs were to be posted on Saturday by volunteers from the Ventura Fire Department, Vaughn said.

Jeffrey took notes on the equipment, bagged for evidence a plastic Evian bottle that was moved in the burglary, and questioned Vaughn Thursday morning.

“Is it someone doing it to try and nix the campaign?” Jeffrey asked.

“I think it’d be really going out on a limb to say the opposition had anything to do with this,” Vaughn initially responded. “It was a regular burglary. If it was anything else, they really tried hard to make it look like a regular burglary.”

But by Thursday afternoon, after discovering that campaign signs and other materials were missing, Vaughn said he agreed with Carson that the break-in seemed suspicious.

“It was so neat,” he said. “Nothing was trashed, nothing was thrown around.”

Carson said, “If it was part of the campaign, the scary part is that somebody that would do this kind of thing . . . could actually get elected, and they’ll take that type of moral characteristic with them into the council.”

Jeffrey said police will investigate the break-in. But he warned Vaughn, “There’s not much to go on.”

Carson, the 34-year-old owner of the Mound Garden Center, is backed by the Chamber of Commerce and the pro-business Venturans for Responsible Government. He has become the top money raiser of the 18 candidates in the 1991 campaign, taking in $24,331.