“There’s a certain kind of equation that Democrats are doing,” Ducheny said. “Their concerns are that it’s Sanders and Francis and, gosh, is there anybody else?”

I first heard rumblings about this at San Diego Politico last week, and now VoiceOfSanDiego has dug into it with greater depth.  With Donna Frye demurring on another run for mayor of San Diego, Dems are looking at State Senator Denise Moreno Ducheny as a candidate for mayor next year.  She’s exciting a lot of Dems for being business-friendly in a cycle that may see Republicans split between current Mayor Jerry Sanders and 2004 candidate Steve Francis, who has become a consistent critic of Sanders.  Ducheny would have the added benefit of not being tainted by recent city-level scandals and has drawn the support of at least one high profile Democrat: City Attorney Mike Aguirre.

San Diego Democrats are facing a potentially golden electoral opportunity in 2008.  Dissatisfaction with Jerry Sanders from business Republicans has given Steve Francis a wedge with which to gain some traction on the right.  A divided Republican electorate combined with an increasingly unpopular Republican Party at the national level and the forgotten Democratic registration advantage presents a great chance for Democrats to take the mayor’s office.  The only problem so far has been figuring out who should run.  San Diego doesn’t have the deepest of benches after a generation of rising progressives was virtually wiped out by corruption and Target San Diego (pdf).  Much of the remaining Democrats in office are reliably liberal but also inextricably linked to dissatisfaction with local government over the past five years.

As the VoSD article notes, before Donna Frye, Democrats hadn’t made a serious run at the mayor’s office since 1992, and now find themselves back to starting with the opportunity and searching for a candidate.  Ducheny’s experience in Sacramento on budget matters make her particularly attractive to local Democrats in light of the city’s fiscal struggles, though there are concerns about the level of support that she would inspire from local labor, but given the thin bench after years of lackluster success at the nonpartisan level, any solution is likely to be imperfect.

Sen. Ducheny has expressed no particular hurry to make a decision in either direction, though the sooner the better by most estimations.  Jerry Sanders’ reelection campaign is set to kick off tomorrow.