San Diego City Council President Scott Peters is the latest person to announce that he is throwing his hat in the ring for the much sought after position of City Attorney. Peters, who pledged to restore competence, integrity and ethics to the office that has been under attack several times during City Attorney Mike Aguirre’s tenure, joins a number of others in the race to unseat the incumbent candidate in the June election.

Peters, 49, has represented City Council District 1 for nearly eight years, making him one of the highest-profile challengers for the nonpartisan post. A Democrat, Peters lashed out at the current City Attorney during his announcement.

“Mike Aguirre needs to go,” Peters said, last Monday, to approximately 200 supporters at his news conference held at the new North University Community Library and Nobel Athletic Park in University City. “I am proud to have a record that my colleagues and opponents would call experienced, competent and professional. Once elected, I will recruit experienced attorneys, and I will manage them professionally. The City Attorney should help protect public resources, not spend them to hire outside attorneys.”

He went on to rebuke Aguirre saying, “he has turned one of the most important offices in this city into a playground of politics, posturing and dysfunction.”

Peters said he is the person best positioned to defeat Aguirre because his campaign will “receive support from across the City and the political spectrum,” reflecting the range of people he has worked with during his career – businesses, environmentalists and labor workers, Democrats and Republicans, and neighborhoods.

With the addition of Peters’ name, the total number of candidates running for City Attorney is seven, including Aguirre, who has been the main focal point of all of the challengers. Peters said he expects a fight and that things will get nasty.

And it didn’t take long for Aguirre, who also faces challenges from Jan Goldsmith, Dan Coffey, Amy Lupine, and District 5 City Councilmember Brian Maienschein, who is also termed out after this year, to come out swinging in response to Peters’ announcement.

“Scott Peters is not the solution. Scott Peters is the problem,” Aguirre said at a news conference later that day.

Aguirre said that Peters was a member of the City Council when “city officials knowingly engaged in the largest municipal securities fraud in American history.”

The City Attorney has gone on record accusing Peters and Maienschein of corrupt votes on city pension and sewage rate issues. The two are cited in the 2006 Kroll Report as having been “negligent” in fulfilling bond offering disclosure duties and of “knowingly and improperly” causing the city to violate federal and state laws regarding “sewage treatment cost allocation legal mandates.”

Peters addressed this issue at his campaign kick-off and said that the council spent the past five years putting the pensions system back on its feet.

“We’ve fixed reporting and budgeting problems dating back to the 1980s,” Peters said. “We stopped pension under-funding. Our employees made concessions in labor negotiations that resulted in a $350 million decrease in the pension deficit. As a result of this work, our city actuary has declared the pension system financially sound.”

Meanwhile, during his news conference, Aguirre got into a verbal spat with a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Aguirre accused reporter Alex Roth of having a personal ax to grind and criticized Roth in front of other reporters.

“Clearly, I would say there’s no substance to anything you write,” Aguirre said. “It’s unfortunate that you do not embrace any kind of ethics whatsoever.”

Roth did not respond to Aguirre’s criticism, but the two stepped away for a one-on-one discussion that lasted about 20 minutes.

While Aguirre’s battle is just beginning with Peters, the field somewhat narrowed as Burdick announced Thursday she is suspending her City Attorney bid and endorsed Peters’ campaign.

“I think Scott is the most well-qualified candidate for City Attorney,” Burdick said, adding that Peters would bring a “reasonable demeanor and comportment” to the office.

She defended Peters’ past votes on pension benefit deals and said that the issue needs to be laid to rest. Burdick placed blame on former City Attorney Casey Gwinn.

But neither Peters nor Aguirre have the support of San Diego County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, who endorsed Judge Goldsmith for City Attorney on Thursday. Goldsmith also has the endorsement of Sheriff Bill Kolender. While announcing her endorsement, Dumanis also took a stab at Aguirre.

“When pursuing justice, there can be no place for carelessness and recklessness,” Dumanis said.

Goldsmith, a former state assemblymember and Mayor of Poway, took issue with Aguirre’s longstanding argument that an elected City Attorney answers to the public, not city officials.

“Independence does not mean that you get to play mayor. It means that legal decisions, investigations and prosecutions are best based upon the law and the legal process,” Goldsmith said.

Additionally, one of Aguirre’s re-election challengers, Lepine, who is the only candidate for City Attorney who has experience working in the city’s attorney’s office, is suing him on the grounds of sexual harassment.

She recalled the office as dysfunctional and demoralized.

“I would say it was actually a factor against me deciding to run for office, because it’s so easy to call me the disgruntled employee who’s trying to take it out on Mike Aguirre,” Lepine said. “But the fact of the matter is, there’s nobody more qualified to step up and do this job who’s running right now that I could vote for.”

The deadline to file as candidates is March 6.