In early October, 2013, Legal Insurrection
broke the story of a claim by Martha Robertson, the Emily's List-backed Democratic challenger in NY-23, that GOP operatives were caught trying to take down her website during a crucial fundraising period last fall.
The District is a key priority for both parties, and money is pouring in from around the country. The District leans Republican, but Democrats are hopeful they can pull a rabbit out of a hat here because of the large liberal vote in the Ithaca area. It's a Wendy Davis strategy -- get out the base in the liberal areas, and hope others stay home.
Robertson never has provided any evidence of such hacking, but promised to hire a forensic computer expert to provide the proof. Then Robertson broke that promise, and said
she would not be hiring an expert.
Jazz Shaw at Hot Air had a write up on Robertson's fundraising problem,
Could NY-23 Dem candiate have (gasp) lied about GOP cyberattack?
The claim of GOP hacking appears to have been false. The type of disruption her campaign described was the type of
routine server issue almost every website experiences, and there is no evidence of any actual disruption.
Rather than come clean, admit the error, and offer to refund donations to people who received the false solicitation, the Robertson campaign is in shutdown mode on the issue. They have not returned my inquiries for months, and now are dodging the major local media outlets.
When the local Republican Party filed an election complaint recently, the Robertson campaign still refused media inquiries.