Volunteer attacked while petitioning for Liu’s seat: Wu
Posted on June 16, 2009 by Stephen Stirling in City Council, District 20
Democratic District Leader and City Council candidate James Wu said one of his petition volunteers was attacked and had a clipboard with personal information from hundreds of voters stolen Sunday.
Wu said a 19 year-old volunteer with his campaign was collecting signatures for the district leader’s bid to replace Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) Sunday, when a man ran up behind him, knocked him to the ground and stole his clipboard containing information on between 200 and 300 Democratic voters in the area.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Wu said. “And I’ve only been doing this 20 years, so what do I know?”
The incident occurred near the corner of 184th Street and Utopia Parkway at approximately 7:30 p.m. According to Wu, police were investigating the case as a grand larceny.
Because all that was stolen from the volunteer was the clipboard, containing about 20 signatures to get Wu on the ballot for September’s Democratic primary, Wu believes it may have been a politically motivated attack. It also had data on the Democratic rolls in the neighborhood.
“What do you gain from stealing somebody’s clipboard?” Wu said. “It’s incredibly unprofessional. It’s astonishing, really. It’s absolutely perplexing that anyone would do something like this.”
Anyone with information on the incident can anonymously contact the 111th Precinct at 718-279-5295.
