San Diego county District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis - who badly lost her bid for mayor last year, but has already proclaimed her candidacy for re-election next year - has her first official opponent, according to an April 4 filing posted online by the county Registrar of Voters.

http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2013/apr/09/43449/

The statement of organization, filed by a recipient committee calling itself "Robert Brewer for District Attorney 2014" and bearing Brewer's signature, is dated March 28. The committee's treasurer is listed as Nancy Haley, political finance director for Scott & Cronin LLP of Encinitas, an accounting firm that specializes in campaign work.

As previously reported, Dumanis has been busy raising cash to pay off her old campaign debts from last year's mayoral primary, in which she placed a distant fourth behind then-San Diego city councilman Carl DeMaio, Congressman Bob Filner, and Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher. Filner won the November runoff against DeMaio.

In December, Dumanis sent out a fundraising plea:

I am in the process of closing out my Mayoral campaign debt and have until tomorrow at midnight to accept contributions. Would you be able to contribute to my debt retirement in the next two days?

Thank you so much for all you have done to support me in this campaign and over the years. It truly means so much.

In addition to Evans family cash and $500 from Evans CFO Robert Gleason, Dumanis post-loss donors included DeMaio, GOP city attorney Jan Goldsmith, and lobbyist Ben Haddad of ex-Pete Wilson aide Bob White's Sacramento-based California Strategies.

$14,000 of the money raised went to pay off a debt to Jennifer Tierney's Gemini Group, Dumanis's longtime political advisor who also last year gathered the signatures for Superior Court Judge Timothy B. Taylor's nominating petition.

Taylor turned up as the judge in the case brought this year by San Diego hotel moguls against Filner in an attempt to get the mayor to sign off on a funding deal arranged by previous GOP mayor Jerry Sanders. The judge subsequently denied knowing Gleason and other signatories to his petition, including city councilman Todd Gloria, who also had an interest in the case against the mayor.

According to online records of the California Bar Association, Robert S. Brewer, Jr., was admitted to practice in California in 1975 and currently works at the firm Jones Day. He is a USD law school graduate.

In August 2007 the San Diego Union Tribune reported that Brewer might challenge then incumbent Democratic city attorney Michael Aguirre. Ultimately, Goldsmith took on Aguirre and beat him.

According to his Jones Day biography, Brewer, a onetime prosecutor, is familiar with the long history of corruption on San Diego's bench and elsewhere in government:

Bob has represented several San Diego Superior Court judges who have been the focus of investigations, including Michael Greer, who was indicted for bribery in 1996. In 1989 Bob was co-counsel for ex-mayor of Del Mar, California, Nancy Hoover, in a nine-month federal securities fraud trial.

A call to Brewer's number at Jones Day was not immediately returned.