State Senate candidate Anna Caballero's Merced campaign office burglarized on Election Day eve.

When volunteers showed up early, around 7am on Election Day, Nov. 6, at the Merced campaign office of Anna Caballero for State Senate, they arrived at a crime scene. 

The glass panel next to the door had been smashed in, then the door apparently opened from the inside. Some $24,000 in campaign materials and electronics were stolen, according to Merced Police Lt. Alan Ward. 

"There are no suspects and no video in the area," Ward adds. "Right now we don't have a lot, just the reported information."

The materials taken are mostly door hangers, some 9,500 of them (about $20,000 worth); in addition, a desktop and several laptops and other electronics were stolen. 

Campaign spokesperson Bob Sanders says it looks like a strategically targeted burglary, not a random crime, noting that the door hangers in particular are of no value except to the Caballero campaign. 

"It wasn't some homeless guy looking for spare change," Sanders says. "They took computers which contain voter information, schedules and precinct maps, and thousands of door hangers.

"My instinct tells me [it was] somebody had been there before, perhaps in the guise of a volunteer, to scope the place out and who knew where things were."

Caballero, a Democrat and former Salinas mayor, is currently in her final months as a member of the State Assembly before terming out. It's her second time seeking the position of State Senate District 12; she ran and lost to outgoing State Sen. Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres, in 2010. 

Today, Caballero faces off against Madera County Supervisor Rob Poythress, a Republican. The two were the top vote-getters in a four-way primary in June, and the election has attracted millions of dollars in campaign contributions from both the Democratic and Republican parties. If Democrats take control of District 12, viewed as a swing district that's been occupied for eight years by a Republican, they stand to retake a supermajority in Sacramento.