Now that the election is all but over in the 52nd Congressional District, there is renewed interest in the DeMaio office break-in. When the break-in occurred in May, the DeMaio campaign cast aspersions on the Peters’ campaign then later walked the statement back while accusing Todd Bosnich of the burglary.
Todd Bosnich was a former DeMaio campaign staffer who would subsequently accuse the candidate of sexual harassment.
Unsealed court documents obtained by the U-T San Diego indicate that Bosnich contacted MaryAnne Pintar, Congressman Peters’ campaign manager, via email attaching campaign strategy material. The emails were subsequently turned over to the police.
Pintar later met with Bosnich where additional materials were given to her and this also was when Bosnich indicated that he had been sexually harassed by DeMaio. Pintar copied the materials, gave a copy to Peters, who gave a copy to his wife. The material was subsequently turned over to the police by Peters’ wife.
The renewed interest in this incident surrounds the timeline of when the Peters’ campaign received the materials and when they were turned over to the police. The underlying assumption being that the Peters’ campaign got some unfair advantage by receiving the material and that the Peters’ campaign knew that the material was stolen or obtained under questionable circumstances.
When Bosnich sent the material to the Peters’ campaign, it would be assumed that this was an action of a disgruntled employee. Pintar was responsible for assessing whether Bosnich had the right to share the documents and whether they seemed real.
The Peters campaign must have determined that Bosnich did not have the right to share the documents or, simply under an abundance of caution, thought it best to turn the emails and attachments over to police.
Some in the media are suggesting that something nefarious occurred because it took two days for the Peters campaign to turn over the emails to the police. That is a naive and surprising view. Anyone who works in the media knows that emails from the public about politicians, candidates and other public figures practically come in every day. It is even worse for a political campaign.
I am sure Pintar and all of the Peters campaign staff were barraged with emails about DeMaio, his partner and reputed campaign tactics. It is part of every political campaign, just like workers removing competitor’s campaign signs. It should be noted that removing campaign signs is not usually done by the candidate himself, but DeMaio was implicated in actively participating in the practice during a previous campaign. But I digress.
If Pintar took every email or accusation that she likely received about DeMaio and investigated it, she would have had no time to run Scott Peters’ campaign. Clearly, Pintar assessed that the Bosnich situation seemed different.
Pintar subsequently met with Bosnich knowing she had alerted the police to the previous emails. Whether Pintar contacted the police before the meeting is not clear, but if she had they would have likely told her to meet with Bosnich to determine if he was attempting to commit a crime. At the meeting Bosnich gave Pintar additional materials and also made the sexual harassment allegations against DeMaio. After several days, the police were contacted and the materials were turned over to the police. Pintar personally contacted police and told them about Bosnich’s sexual allegation claim and indicated she was concerned about the young man.
All this renewed interest about the DeMaio campaign break-in and the Peters campaign is much ado about nothing. The Peters campaign acted prudently by turning all information over to the police, as well as bringing the sexual harassment allegations to the forefront. I only wish people had acted so prudently during the Filner debacle, it would have saved the city a public nightmare.
Some say that the Peters campaign got to review important strategy information from the DeMaio campaign. That was because Bosnich gave it to them. How else was the Peters campaign to assess that the Bosnich situation was relevant to the police? Trust me, if my newsmagazine, or a political campaign, sent every email and letter from the public making allegations or supposedly revealing strategic information during an election season, the police would have to create a department that did nothing but review ill advised emails from citizens.
Pintar and the Peters campaign did the right thing. Plain and simple. The real question should be why were so many former staffers out to get DeMaio?
No surprise. The LGBT Weekly and political GBT groups would never back an openly gay Republican running for office. Nor would you would even bother to try to come to defend DeMaio. Instead, you are Pro Peters all the way. Just admit you’ll never write a favorable article on an openly out of the closet candidate unless he or she is a Democrat. Its amazing that both Republican bigots and LGBT Republican haters would form an unholy alliance to prevent DeMaio from being elected into office.
Actually, Mr. Hemedes, during the campaign there were MANY pro DeMaio gays in the district. I personally researched both candidates and made my choice purely based on my own observations. I could and would say the same about you. After also getting to know DeMaio’s partner, I made my own personal choices. You are painting with an EXTREMELY broad brush.
Thomas Miller: I am not condemning the pro DeMaio gays – odds are they are gay Republicans like him. Given San Diego’s history of conservatism, it would make sense that many of San Diego’s own gay population would identify themselves as Republican and are pro gay rights. But you and the LGBT Weekly and other Democrat gays are the true hypocrites – you would never back an openly gay Republican running for a political seat. Same thing happened in Los Angeles when an openly gay Republican ran as mayor for LA – the gay LA Democrats couldn’t conceive or even comprehend of voting for an an openly gay Republican. Gay Democrats think that all Republicans are EVIL, so when they encounter an openly Gay Republican, they can’t quite comprehend what that person is and treat them like they would an extraterrestrial. I learned long ago that unless you are Democrat, the Democrat controlled LGBT community will never back you even if you are openly gay and pro gay rights. Peters and his campaign manager are scum of the earth like Filner was, but we all know that it took a long time for the San Diego Democrats to acknowledge that Filner was scum and tried every method of denial about his own filthy past until it was just too glaring to pretend it didn’t exist and he became too much of a political liability to continue to support and protect.