California Democrat Rep. Scott Peters (CA52), is one of the GOP’s top targets in the 2014 midterm elections. Peters is a freshman Congressman and won by only a few points in 2012. The Republicans have a credible candidate to oppose Peters in Carl DeMaio, a young and “new generation” Republican who, so far, is beating Peters by a healthy margin in polling match ups.

This should be one of the midterm races to watch. But Peters has a problem that certainly isn’t going to help Peters gain any ground with San Diego voters who, based upon the polling, are already hesitant to give him a second term in 2014.

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, a political ally of Peters who endorsed him last year, is taking heat over and ducking questions about a federal investigation into a $100,000 donation a developer gave to the city. It so happens that the developer, Sunroad Centrum Partners, is seeking approval from Mayor Filner for revisions to a local project.

Filner may already be deep in the mud, but Republicans have been asking what Rep. Peters thinks about the growing scandal — specifically, will he stand up for principled, ethical leadership and condemn his political ally?

Peters hasn’t said anything about this scandal for days, but Tuesday afternoon someone at Peter’s office apparently recognized that this is enough of a problem to merit quietly taking down the announcement of the Filner endorsement on his website. Peters campaign obviously wasn’t meticulous enough in the scrubbing effort. Even though they removed the press release devoted entirely to Filner, he is still included as an endorser on the elected officials list. Nevertheless, thanks to the internet, a cached version of the endorsement is, of course, still there.

There’s still no actual comment from Peters, or his staff, on what he thinks about Filner’s troubles. Every day Peters remains silent on this issue is another day more voters decide to vote for DeMaio next year. If Peters can’t even bring himself to condemn or even question an apparent bribe, how can the voters of San Diego expect him to represent them in Congress?

UPDATE: Sometime early this morning, the Filner endorsement page reappeared on Peters’ web site. Apparently the Congressman can’t decide how he feels about this. Or perhaps they didn’t like getting caught scrubbing the site. Either way Peters is just digging a hole for himself, while we’re still waiting for some kind of comment.