Peters late, DeMaio reveals Reason

Freshman Democratic congressman Scott Peters, locked in a tight re-election battle with former San Diego Republican city councilman Carl DeMaio, has been given another 30-day extension to file his personal financial disclosure report with the House ethics committee.

The filing is now due August 13, according to the extension grant, dated July 16.

The congressman had previously received 30-day extensions on June 16 and May 15, the day of the formal filing deadline, House documents show. Members can't file more than 90 days late. Last year, Peters received similar extensions and filed on August 6.

That disclosure, covering 2012, showed that the La Jolla congressman was the sixth wealthiest House member, with an estimated net worth of $112,467,041, according to the website OpenSecrets.org.

Peters is married to Lynn Gorguze, an heir to the manufacturing fortune of her late father, Vincent Gorguze, who died in La Jolla last October at the age of 97.

So-called periodic transaction reports required to be filed by House members show that in late December of last year and this January Peters was a heavy seller of PMFG, Inc., a holding company that owns Peerless Manufacturing.

"Peerless is a global provider of engineered equipment for the abatement of air pollution, the removal of contaminants from gases and liquids, industrial noise control, and heat-transfer," according to PMFG's website.

The stock reached a two-year high of nine dollars a share in January and has since fallen to around $4 before lately recovering to $5.50.

Members of the Gorguze family have long been inside stockholders in the company, SEC filings show.

Other securities sales reported by the congressman included sizable holdings in APCO Oil and Gas, Inc., which operates in Argentina and Colombia, and Ecology and Environment, Inc., which deals "in the assessment and mitigation of complex environmental and human health issues as they relate to environmental challenges around the globe," according to the company's website.

We have a call in to Peters district chief of staff Mary Anne Pintar for more details on the filing delay and the timing of the stock selloffs.

For his part, GOP candidate DeMaio asked for and received a 90-day reporting extension of his own back in June of last year. He filed on September 16, 2013 for the period covering January 2012 through August 2013.

In that document, DeMaio reported getting $78,000 in salary as a city councilman and collecting an additional $37,500 in consulting fees from the conservative Reason Foundation.

This year the Republican filed on May 8. His disclosure covers the "current year until filing," the document says.

DeMaio reported his sole source of earned income was $120,000 in consulting fees from Reason.

In announcing his relationship with the foundation in January 2013, DeMaio told U-T San Diego that he would "receive a stipend from the Reason Foundation for his state work, but it likely wouldn’t cover much more than his expenses and the sum had yet to be determined."

DeMaio's unearned income came from a variety of sources, including between $1001 and $2500 in interest from the Bank of America. Major stock holdings included between $15,000 and $50,000 in Qualcomm, founded by La Jolla billionaire Democrat Irwin Jacobs, who heavily funded Nathan Fletcher, one of DeMaio's mayoral opponents in 2012.

DeMaio reported owning Google stock in the same value range. Each asset produced between $1 and $200 of income, according to the filing.

The candidate's biggest source of unearned income were rental properties on Old Bridgeport Way and Benavente Way in San Diego, each of which brought in income of between $15,000 and $50,000, the report says.

A "vintage movie poster collection," worth between $50,001 and $100,000, generated no cash flow.

On the liability side of DeMaio's ledger were two mortgages held by OPES Advisors, Inc., totaling between $200,002 and $500,000.