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San Diego Daily Transcript
10/19/2001

Challengers Hope To Unseat District Attorney Pfingst In March Primary

By DAVID HICKS
    District Attorney Paul Pfingst has not formally announced that he will run for a third term next year, but plenty of challengers are already leveling harsh criticism at the county's top prosecutor. Pfingst may be waiting to jump into the race because he's not looking forward to a long political season. He'll no doubt be forced to answer uncomfortable questions from his challengers about a series of ethical lapses in the office.
    "The administration has been plagued by scandal after scandal," said Deputy District Attorney Mark Pettine, one of three candidates who already have said they will challenge Pfingst. "It's a crisis of leadership. What you need to do is set a tone of honesty, integrity and ethics." Superior Court Judge Bonnie Dumanis and private attorney Michael Aguirre also have said they intend to run against Pfingst in the March primary election. "I would instill ethics from the top down," Dumanis said. "We would do the right thing. It would be prosecution, not politics."
    Two cases in particular have damaged the credibility of the District Attorney's office and undercut the morale of the nearly 300 attorneys there, Pettine and Dumanis said.
    In one, former prosecutor Peter Longanbach -- who was a high-level member of Pfingst's management team -- has been charged by the Attorney General's office with a crime for allegedly using his staff to conduct private business transactions.
    "When it was brought to the DA's attention, he basically looked the other way, promoted him and gave him a pay raise," Pettine said. Pfingst also has come under fire for the handling of a murder case in the 1988 slaying of San Diego police officer Jerry Hartless.
    While the incident occurred before Pfingst took office in 1994, the case extended into his administration. An appeals court later threw out the convictions of four defendants. They were allowed to plead guilty to lesser charges and the District Attorney's office was ordered off the case.
    In an interview Tuesday, Pfingst stood on his record, saying the office has been singled out on a national level for innovations in the field. The prosecutors here have the highest conviction rate in the state at 92 percent. And crime in the county has dropped by 47 percent since Pfingst took office. Meanwhile, child support collections tripled under the DA's tenure.

    The welfare rolls decreased dramatically, in part because every applicant now receives a visit by an investigator from the DA's office to confirm eligibility, he said.
    As far as the "scandals" are concerned, Pfingst defended his record there as well. The Hartless case really predates him, he said. In the Longanbach incident, Pfingst said he reprimanded Longanbach when the problems surfaced. When they resurfaced several months later, it was Pfingst who called for the Attorney General's office to investigate, he said. Pfingst, 50, said he would formally announce his campaign in several weeks. He ran unopposed in his first re-election bid four years ago.
    There is still plenty of time for more candidates to get into the race for the post, which pays a little less than $150,000 a year. The last day to enter the race will be Dec. 7, according to the Registrar of Voters office. The three challengers who have said they will run are all familiar faces within the county's legal community.
    Michael Aguirre, 52, has been a private attorney specializing in fraud cases for more than 20 years. At the beginning of his career he served as an assistant U.S. attorney. He also has taken up several high-profile causes on a pro-bono basis, including the fight against the city of San Diego's decision to guarantee the sale of tickets to Charger games. Aguirre said he plans to base his candidacy on the need to equip the prosecutor's office with the ability to cope with more complex crime, including terrorism and organized crime.
    Bonnie Dumanis, 49, served as a deputy district attorney from 1978 to 1990, when she became a traffic court referee. She ran for and won a seat on the San Diego Municipal Court bench in 1994. She ran again and won a seat on the Superior Court bench in 1998.
    Mark Pettine, 52, is a career prosecutor with a long list of major murder convictions to his credit. In addition to his 23 years with the office, he also served for six years on the Carlsbad City Council. He won a two-year term in 1984 and then a four-year term in 1986.


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