Elephant Fight!

Published: Thursday, May 15, 2008 11:50 AM PDT

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City attorney candidate Brian Maienschein just upped the ante in the increasingly heated race for city attorney.

Maienschein's camp just sent out a mailer festooned with Republican Party logos and urging voters to compare Maienschein's record to that of his main Republican rival, Jan Goldsmith, who has the endorsement of the local Republican Party.

Here's some detail from Maienschein's mailer:

Note that he attacks Goldsmith for the former legislator's stance on immigration and his record at the state Legislature. That's a theme Maienschein's introduced a couple of times at candidates' forums, but here he really spells out his opposition in the mailer. You can learn more about Goldsmith's legal career, including his years at the legislature, here.

In reply, the Republican Party has sent out a two-page mailer that specifically targets Maienschein, without even mentioning Goldsmith.

Here's detail from that mailer:

The Republican Party's message is clear, the first page of the mailer states: "City Councilman Brian Maienschein. He betrayed our trust. Now he wants to be our City Attorney."

You can find out more about Maienschein's legal career here.

So far, most of the attacks in this campaign have been directed at Aguirre, and the new mailers certainly show the competition ratcheting up on the Republican side of the race. Maienschein and Goldsmith are the only two Republicans running, so they're competing for a specific pool of voters.

But it's interesting to see the Republican Party so vehement in its opposition to Maienschein, himself a diehard Republican.

A recent poll showed Maienschein and Goldsmith to be running even, two points behind Scott Peters for second place. If no candidate gets 50 percent of the vote on June 3, the top two vote-getters advance to the November runoff.