Peters is still considered hugely vulnerable. While he was on the San Diego City Council from 2000-2008, the city plunged into a financial crisis over decisions to intentionally underfund pension payments for retirees. This led to national ridicule and the 2005 resignation of Mayor Dick Murphy. Peters’ defensive framing of his behavior during the scandal — blaming his staffers and a media allegedly devoted to inventing scandal — flabbergasted even some of his supporters.

After their huge success in the past three House elections, national GOP operatives have been hunting for a San Diego Republican to take on Peters in 2016 in the belief that the centrist Democrat was one of the relatively few incumbents vulnerable in a national election — one in which Barack Obama would no longer help spike voter turnout among minorities and young whites.

Monday afternoon, it appeared they thought they had their man: a San Diego Republican who stomped Peters in the 2008 primary to be San Diego’s city attorney:

National Republicans are in talks with a potential challenger to California Rep. Scott Peters, whose tossup district makes him a perennial target.

San Diego City Attorney Jan Goldsmith is slated to have a phone conversation soon with Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., recruitment chairman at the National Republican Congressional Committee, according to a source with knowledge of the discussion.

The NRCC doesn’t overtly play in primaries, but an aide there said Goldmith is “a candidate of interest” to run against Peters in the 52nd District. The Democrat was one who got away last cycle, as Republicans picked up seats in the House and Senate across the country.

“He definitely is a candidate whose bio is appealing to us, and somebody we are interested in talking to,” the NRCC aide said when reached by CQ Roll Call.

Within an hour, Goldsmith’s spokesman ridiculed Congressional Quarterly’s report as simply wrong. His language seemed categorical:

He has, “No plans to run. No plans to make plans. If nominated, he will not accept. If elected, he will seek a recount,” said Gerry Braun, communications director for the San Diego City Attorney’s office.

Borrowing from William F. Buckley’s jokes in his 1965 run for mayor for New York City may make some smile, but the national GOP won’t be happy. So their hunt will resume for a good 52nd district candidate.

Unless Goldsmith changes his mind. In 2008, when the state judge, former Poway mayor and former state assemblyman ran for San Diego city attorney, he defeated incumbent Mike Aguirre and Peters in the primary and then trounced Aguirre in the runoff.

After his 32 percent to 20 percent defeat of Peters in a head-to-head election in 2008, Goldsmith may not see Peters as particularly formidable.

Obviously, there’s been focus-group testing galore that leads Dems to think this theme is powerful and resonates with independent voters. And so the decision to make the race a referendum on the Tea Party.

But the 52nd congressional district isn’t West Los Angeles or Marin County. It covers mostly affluent coastal and northern San Diego and went decisively for Mitt Romney, a part-time resident of the district, in 2012.

And given the fact that DeMaio is gay, the usual tactic of depicting tea party members as social conservative extremists doesn’t work so well — the “war on women” shtick, etc. Here’s an example of this framing, a Washington Post story headlined “Social conservatives are mobilizing in France, leading to talk of a tea party.”

It’s quite possible that Democrats and some in the media actually don’t realize that the Tea Party is fundamentally libertarian — devoted to liberty and small government — and is not a conspiracy-mongering birther front. When the only people you listen to are those on MSNBC and Daily Kos, and Paul Krugman, you’re inclined to see all Republicans as contemptible haters.

Tea Party no fan of GOP establishment’s views on immigration

Yet the more sophisticated observers get that the Tea Party really is at odds with the modern GOP establishment — not just on its habit of giving in and accepting the big-spending federal status quo but on immigration. This isn’t just an anecdote-based claim. This info is from Thomas Edsall, the veteran journalist who for decades has actually tried to bring political science research into political journalism:

Parker and Barreto conducted surveys to see if Tea Party conservatives differ from non-Tea Party conservatives. … the two kinds of conservatives diverge significantly on key issues: immigration, civil liberties and in how they see President Obama.

The surveys showed that 50 percent of Tea Party-identifying members opposed the DREAM Act vs. 30 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives; 66 percent of Tea Party-identifying members opposed the path to citizenship for illegal immigrants vs. 46 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives; and that 58 percent of Tea Party-identifying members correlated more immigration with more crime vs. 49 percent of non-Tea Party conservatives.

But other surveys show Tea Party members more likely than standard conservatives to reject limits on abortion and gay marriage — the social issue litmus tests. They’re not bomb-throwers on social wedge issues.

Tea Party members I’ve talked with often say they back higher immigration — but with a Canada-style approach valuing applicants with needed job skills, not a system in which immigrants essentially self-select.

DeMaio is in the real-border-security-first camp.

But he’s not making it a key theme in this very interesting congressional race.

Here’s a Breitbart account of how DeMaio is responding to the Tea Party narrative: by ridiculing it.

No one of any Dem stature ever said anything when a police officer union member identified Republican DeMaio on his blog with a pink signifier. No Dem insider ever said anything publicly about Bob Filner’s repulsive attempts throughout the 2012 mayoral campaign to remind voters that “hey, Carl’s gay!” Or to repudiate recent DUI arrestee Ben Hueso’s X-rated, unsubstantiated allegations about what DeMaio purportedly did in the bathrooms of City Hall.

Tolerance is not required when it doesn’t suit Democrats or their de facto media allies, even those most likely to moralize about bigotry. Instead, 1940s-style sniggering about sexuality is fine when the target is a Republican. Shades of the way Democrats shrug off Harry Reid’s and others’ racially charged criticism of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ intelligence, even though legal blogs across the spectrum consider him a better writer and a more interesting legal mind than most of his colleagues.

Now San Diego machine Democrats — and Democrats in East Coast Super PACs flooding San Diego’s airwaves with hit ads — will have to decide whether to use outrageous new allegations against DeMaio. As a sign of how important the national parties consider the 52nd Congressional District race pitting DeMaio and first-term incumbent Scott Peters, Politico covered the scandal as it broke:

A high-profile Southern California congressional race descended into chaos on Wednesday when Republican Carl DeMaio was peppered with questions from reporters about whether he had sexually harassed and then intimidated and attempted to bribe a former campaign staffer.

At a news conference at his campaign headquarters, DeMaio called the allegations “absolutely untrue” and a “complete lie.” He added that authorities had questioned him and his campaign staff about the harassment claims, concluded they were unfounded and closed the case. DeMaio, 40, said the accuser concocted the story after he was identified as a “prime suspect” in a break-in at DeMaio’s campaign office last spring.

“All the evidence that was collected by the police department clearly indicated this individual was the prime suspect, and, it’s unfortunate, but we will continue to allow the district attorney to proceed with her case and weighing the case to prosecute for the break-in of our office,” said DeMaio, a former San Diego city councilman trying to unseat Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) in one of the nation’s most competitive House races.

What I’m hearing as a San Diego journo is that DeMaio is on solid ground in denying everything. That appears to be what Peters believes as well. He didn’t bring up the allegations at a Thursday debate.

But, hey, it’s been reported on. I expect the attack ads by Friday afternoon at the latest.

Democrats can’t wait to insinuate a gay Republican is a reprobate.

Peters was elected in 2012 despite running in an affluent district ranging from Coronado to Rancho Bernardo that voted for Mitt Romney. He benefited from having a rough-edged GOP incumbent, Brian Bilbray, who had rubbed a lot of people the wrong way over his years in Congress and as a local politician.

DeMaio has also rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Though he helped bring major reforms and efficiencies to San Diego during his four years on the City Council, his hard-charging style offended even some Republicans, including then-Mayor Jerry Sanders. This may have led to the out-of-left-field decision last month of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to endorse Peters over DeMaio; Sanders now leads the San Diego chamber.

An architect of ‘Enron by the Sea’

But what’s peculiar and disheartening about the campaign is that Peters’ history isn’t coming back to haunt him. In 2002, he was part of a City Council majority that made the disastrous decision to underfund pensions while increasing benefits. It doesn’t get much dumber than that. This decision so undermined city finances that it led to national embarrassment — San Diego was dubbed “Enron by the Sea” — and to the 2005 resignation of Mayor Dick Murphy.

Incredibly, Peters didn’t think contrition was appropriate for his role in this debacle. At times, he’s depicted himself as a victim in the scandal. At other times, he’s suggested it was much ado about nothing. Here’s what I wrote in 2006 after an independent report by the Kroll firm blasted the 2002 City Council for negligence and malfeasance:

I’ve watched the City Council’s reaction to the Kroll report and its fallout with a steadily escalating sense of disbelief and fury. It’s obvious the five still-serving council members named as culpable in the 2002 pension scam hope that Kroll’s particulars will be forgotten and that their political careers will not suffer as a result. If that happens, that will be a disgrace.

The five should be running scared for their political lives. Recall petitions should be making the rounds. Instead, incredibly enough, Toni Atkins, Donna Frye, Jim Madaffer, Brian Maienschein and Scott Peters are all reportedly interested in seeking higher office.

All but Frye offer a weird variant of the Nuremberg Defense for their malfeasance. Instead of saying they were only following orders and were therefore not responsible, they say they were only following staff advice and were therefore not responsible.

Guilty pols advance to Congress — and Assembly leadership

But some of the City Council members didn’t just blame staff.

Even more ridiculously, Peters and Maienschein imply they are victims.

“People are really tired of looking backward and they really want to see some progress,” Peters told the U-T in a story in which he said “his lawyer advised him to be critical of the report.” Got that? He’s just too noble to point out the flaws in a report that makes a slam-dunk case he did such a horrible job as councilman in 2002 that it will haunt San Diego for decades to come.

Maienschein is much worse. In a published letter responding to a critical editorial, first he grossly misrepresented what the Kroll report said about his culpability, then he whined about those whose superior reading-comprehension skills led them to conclude the report said he and his colleagues were rotten public servants:

“[To] consistently attack the very people who make personal and professional sacrifices in order to serve their city on the City Council only does a disservice to our city by keeping honest, community-oriented people out of politics,” he wrote.

So much for my assumption that incompetence compounded with blame-ducking would hurt the careers of those involved. Atkins is now Assembly speaker. Maienschein holds a safe seat in the Assembly. And while Peters is in a difficult re-election fight, the super PAC ads targeting him don’t mention his 2002 fiasco and bizarre subsequent comments on it. They focus on his votes in Congress.

In San Diego, political karma is nowhere to be found.

“In 1978, Howard Jarvis launched the U.S. anti-tax movement in California with Proposition 13, which capped annual increases in property taxes and kept people from being forced from their homes during real-estate bubbles. A generation later, the Golden State could be on the brink of launching another populist movement, one driven by anger over government compensation practices. A key battleground is San Diego. In June, voters will decide on Proposition B, the Comprehensive Pension Reform Initiative. It would end defined-benefit pensions for all new city hires except for police officers, instead providing pensions similar to 401(k)s. It would prevent pay sweeteners from being added to base salary when calculating pensions, and it would require city workers to pay a bigger share of their pension costs. Finally, Prop. B would mandate a five-year salary freeze.”

Ventura County, Phoenix hoping for big changes in benefits

It took longer than I hoped, but it finally seems to be unfolding. Here's CalWatchdog founder Steve Greenhut in his U-T San Diego column:

“Voters approved [DeMaio's] measure with nearly 66 percent of the vote, but … the big vote numbers hid the difficulty of the battle.

“It has been challenged by a union-friendly state agency, the Public Employment Relations Board, which continues to claim that the measure — which instituted a 401(k)-style pension plan for new city hires, capped pensionable city pay for five years and ended pension-spiking abuses — improperly deprived unions of the right to negotiate. That nuisance continues, even if there’s little doubt the constitutional right to vote will ultimately trump the unions’ claims.

“But the courts have three times sided with the city as it continues to implement the measure. And while nothing has been easy here, either, officials in other places are starting to notice that the San Diego approach to reforming pensions might offer the most hope for significantly reining in pension costs without having to go through a legal meat grinder.

“Today, the county of Ventura, which operates an independent retirement system under the state’s County Employees’ Retirement Law of 1937, filed an initiative that closely copies the San Diego blueprint. Earlier this week, Phoenix also filed a similar initiative for the 2014 ballot. Arizona has a different legal framework, but the basic ideas are the same. Officials from both cities met with DeMaio and other reformers in San Diego last November. DeMaio believes that other '37 Act' California counties could follow suit.”

Good luck. As Steve's piece notes, pension reform is incredibly popular — which is why pension status quoists fight so hard to make it incredibly difficult.

And good luck to Carl DeMaio, who is running for Congress against a first-term Democrat in a district that Mitt Romney won in 2012. A McClintock-DeMaio one-two punch in California's GOP congressional delegation sounds pretty amazing to me.