The nation's foreclosure crisis has become a political football in the San Diego city attorney's race.
Challenger Jan Goldsmith says incumbent Mike Aguirre is scoring improper campaign points off the mortgage meltdown by filing needless lawsuits against banks and lenders. Goldsmith cites Aguirre's predatory lending case against Countrywide Financial -- litigation that got extensive media coverage, and is being consolidated for settlement in federal court here in San Diego.
A Superior Court judge on unpaid leave from the bench while his campaign is pending, Goldsmith says Aguirre's Countrywide lawsuit -- filed a month after a case brought by California Attorney General Jerry Brown -- was "moot" from the start, because the AG's office has precedence in issues involving consumer protection.
"I'm accusing (Aguirre) of being motivated for his re-election, and using his office to do that," Goldsmith said in an interview. "Now whether that's a violation of the law or not, I'm not going there. I'm not after a violation of the law. What I am is, 'What's right, and what's wrong?' And it's wrong."
Goldsmith noted that Brown had to fput up with what the attorney general called "grandstanding" by Aguirre in the process of negotiating a nationwide settlement with Countrywide.
Aguirre denies the charge of politicking under the guise of litigation, and says the solution he proposed in the Countrywide litigation is identical to that in the settlement agreement.
He says the fact that a federal judicial panel chose San Diego as the settlement venue -- at his urging, during a recent hearing in Boston -- is validation of his legal cause.
Politics
"For 30 years I did this kind of work," Aguirre said in an interview. "And one of the things I promised (in his 2004 campaign) is that we would be active in consumer protection ...
"I believe the (federal) multi-district litigation panel was impressed with our case and they transferred every single (nationwide) case to San Diego. So it's an extraordiinary accomplishment for our office."
Goldsmith reads no such meaning in the local venue choice, and takes issue with the predatory lending lawsuit Aguirre filed -- and announced at a well-attended news conference -- last week against Washington Mutual.
He said the case will be dismissed because state prosecutors don't have legal authority to sue a federally chartered bank, and that WaMu's bankruptcy is another obstacle to litigation.
"That law applies to Mike Aguirre, too," Goldsmith said. "He just goes ahead and files lawsuits at San Diego taxpayers' expense ... these lawsuits he's been filing since June are so over the top and obviously without merit that there's no other basis (than political aims)."
Aguirre said the message in his Washington Mutual case is that "you can't come into our jurisdiction and use our foreclosure law if, in fact, you come with 'unclean hands' and if, in fact, you have violated the law. And I think there's a very strong case to be made (as to why the case should not be summarily dismissed)."
The incumbent says the challenger "doesn't understand the significance of the work we're doing ... that's the difference between my opponent and myself. He would give up and take a really passive role.
