Jan Goldsmith just won the endorsement of the Municipal Employees Association, a union that represents City Hall’s white-collar workers.
The MEA endorsed City Councilman Scott Peters in June’s primary election, but decided today to throw its support behind Goldsmith, the judge just told me.
The endorsement is hardly surprising. The MEA’s attorney, Ann Smith, has been Aguirre’s chief rival in his flagship pension litigation. Goldsmith was pleased with the endorsement, saying “There’s more issues in this race than just the pension litigation.”
“We are developing a legitimate coalition and we’re coalescing around the concept that the City Attorney’s Office is about law and not about partisanship or politics,” he said.
The union represents several members of the city attorney’s staff, Goldsmith said, including a number of city attorney investigators and deputy city attorneys.
For his part, incumbent City Attorney Mike Aguirre said Goldsmith was acting irresponsibly by siding with a union that is at the heart of the city’s pension litigation.
“He’s already said he’ll settle that lawsuit,” Aguirre said. “This is a pending case with the city and, for him to get endorsements from the POA and other unions without setting terms for that settlement, that’s an example of putting politics before the law. That’s very self-serving.”