By Jeremy Ogul
Mission Times Courier
SAN DIEGO — After narrowly defeating incumbent Paul Pfingst in 2002, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis sailed through the 2006 and 2010 elections unopposed. Now, nearly 12 years into her tenure as San Diego County’s top prosecutor, two challengers are waging campaigns to oust her.
One is Bob Brewer, a former prosecutor who has spent the past 32 years in private practice specializing in civil litigation and white-collar defense. The other is Terri Wyatt, a career prosecutor who tallied more than 26 years as a deputy district attorney before retiring last fall to run against her former boss.
Both argue that Dumanis has become too political and say that her 2012 campaign for mayor of San Diego underscored a lack of commitment to the job of district attorney.
Dumanis counters that she retains an unmatched passion for protecting the public. She says she ran for mayor out of a sense of duty to the community, particularly in light of the danger that disgraced former mayor Bob Filner represented.
Despite the criticism, her record of more than 11 years at the helm gives Dumanis a natural advantage coming into the race. A mid-March poll of San Diego County voters found that nearly 65 percent of respondents recognized Dumanis’s name. By contrast, 12.6 percent recognized Brewer and 11 percent recognized Wyatt.
In a test ballot, Dumanis held a 36-percentage point lead over Brewer and a 38-percentage point lead over Wyatt. The survey was paid for by the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation and conducted by Smith Johnson Research.
County voters tend to stay with whom they know in district attorney elections. James Don Keller was elected in 1946 and served 24 years. Ed Miller was elected in 1970 and also served 24 years. Paul Pfingst won in 1994 and served eight years before losing to Dumanis in 2002.
Pfingst said incumbents tend to run into trouble when a high-profile case goes sour. The botched prosecution of falsely accused church volunteer Dale Akiki on charges of child sexual abuse contributed to Miller’s downfall, Pfingst said. The bungled prosecution in Stephanie Crowe’s murder case contributed to Pfingst’s defeat.
“The DA is sort of at the mercy of what cases the media thinks is important,” Pfingst said. “If cases do go well, then generally that’s a good thing in DA elections.”
Dumanis has not suffered the scorn of a high-profile loss in the courtroom since her last election, and she touts a 94 percent conviction rate.
The aftermath of a run for mayor
Months after she began her third term as DA, Dumanis began organizing her campaign for mayor of the city of San Diego. Considered by some to be an early frontrunner, Dumanis captured just 13.23 percent of the vote in the primary, finishing far behind then-City Councilmember Carl DeMaio (31.28 percent), Bob Filner (30.33 percent) and Nathan Fletcher (24 percent).
“I think when I ran for mayor what I heard strong and clear was that people thought I was doing a great job as DA and they wanted me to stay DA,” Dumanis said.
To her opponents, it showed she no longer wanted the job of DA.
“I think that was a terrible error of judgment for her,” said Brewer, who added that the Dumanis campaign created “layers of conflicts” that still resonate today.
He noted that the Dumanis mayoral campaign and subsequent endorsement of DeMaio in the runoff created a conflict of interest when news broke of Filner’s sexual misconduct in office, Brewer said.
Sheriff Bill Gore, a Dumanis supporter, disagrees. “She could have prosecuted that case just fine,” Gore said.
Law enforcement officials — including Gore, Dumanis and San Diego Police Chief Bill Lansdowne — collectively decided to assign the investigation to the Sheriff’s Department to avoid the appearance of bias, not to avoid a real conflict, Gore said.
“Mr. Brewer would face far more conflict of interest than I would because many of his clients [from his private practice] would require him to conflict out,” Dumanis said.
But more important than perceived conflicts of interest, Dumanis’s campaign for mayor hurt business in the DA’s office, Wyatt said.
Dumanis frequently left the office to campaign for mayor, and her executive staff had the interests of her mayoral campaign in mind when making decisions, Wyatt said.
“Making the best prosecution decisions—based on justice, based on integrity, based on ethics, based on fairness, based on all the things you want in a district attorney—unfortunately became secondary to the DA’s political ambitions,” Wyatt said.
How political is ‘too political’?
Dumanis promised in 2007 not to make endorsements in races that did not impact public safety. Since then, her endorsements — of candidates for mayor, county supervisor, judge and members of the legislature — have been prolific.
“As a leader, I think it’s important to endorse those who will be helpful and supportive of public safety issues,” Dumanis said. “I make endorsements because it helps us get legislation and the funds and the resources that we need to do our jobs.”
Brewer argues the endorsements have politicized the office and put Dumanis in compromising positions. He has promised not to make any endorsements or run for any other office after he is elected DA.
According to Wyatt, however, Brewer is no less political than Dumanis.
Wyatt said she did not decide to run for district attorney until she witnessed Brewer’s “backroom wheeling and dealing” and “pandering” to get police unions and deputy district attorneys to support his campaign.
“I don’t want the office turned over to someone who is even more political than the current DA,” Wyatt said.
Brewer, who has been running an aggressive campaign, has a long list of endorsements, including the police officers’ associations in each of the cities of San Diego, Carlsbad, Chula Vista, Coronado, El Cajon, Escondido, La Mesa and Oceanside. Other supporters include former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association of San Diego County and the San Diego County Probation Officers Association.
Brewer, with $568,344, has raised more than any other candidate, including $96,000 that he lent himself.
Dumanis also has an impressive list of supporters, including Gore, the San Diego Deputy District Attorneys Association, the San Diego County District Attorney Investigators Association, all five San Diego County supervisors, California Attorney General Kamala Harris, San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith and the district attorneys of 29 counties across the state.
She has raised $408,103, according to the latest available filings.
Wyatt’s most notable endorsement is Bob Doyle, the former Riverside County sheriff and chair of the state Board of Parole Hearings. The latest campaign filings show Wyatt has raised $105,009, including $99,409 she lent herself.
Dumanis, meanwhile, has found herself ensnared in a local campaign finance scandal. The FBI alleges that Mexican tycoon José Susumo Azano Matsura illegally funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to independent groups supporting Dumanis. She has not been charged with any wrongdoing, and she said she had no coordination with the groups or knowledge of the illegal donations.
Brewer has also faced questions about campaign finance compliance.
An independent committee supporting Brewer, called San Diegans for Better Justice, raised $47,500 as of March 17. Filings show that amount included $10,000 from retired federal judge Irma Gonzalez, who is Brewer’s wife. Election laws mandate that independent committees cannot coordinate with the candidates they support. After Dumanis supporters raised questions about the legality of Gonzalez’s contribution, Gonzalez requested the money be returned to her to avoid a distraction.
The June primary is set for June 3. Mail ballots will be available beginning May 5. Early voting will open at the Registrar of Voters office on at 8 a.m. on May 5.
If one candidate does not receive more than half the votes, the top two candidates by vote count will advance to a run-off election in November.
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Preceding story was reprinted from the May, 2014, edition of the Mission Times Courier. Jeremy Ogul is a staff writer of that publication, and may be contacted via jeremy@missionpublishinggroup.com