Peter Matthews, a long-time Democratic challenger for California’s 37th congressional district seat, said he has not yet made a final decision on a write-in candidacy, but noted that he is actively gauging the amount of local support he would receive for such a move.

Matthews said he believes that a large percentage of voters were unaware of Richardson’s personal financial troubles before they went to the polls on June 3.

Richardson won her first primary as an incumbent member of Congress earlier this month by almost 60 percentage points, beating Matthews 74-17, according to Los Angeles County records.

But Matthews said he believes the results would have been far different if voters had more than just a few weeks to digest news of Richardson’s frequent defaults on multiple home mortgages, including a sub-prime mortgage.

After reports surfaced in May that Richardson lost her Sacramento home to a foreclosure auction, Los Angeles and Sacramento county records showed that Richardson had a history of defaulting on the mortgages on her two other homes, in Long Beach and San Pedro.

Richardson had used the equity in her Long Beach home to take out a $100,000 personal loan for her California General Assembly campaign. She has refused to answer questions about whether she similarly borrowed against her home equity to loan her 2007 congressional campaign $77,500.

Matthews said Richardson’s refusal to come clean about the circumstances surrounding her foreclosures has kept voters in the dark.

“More than half the people I’ve talked to said they didn’t know about Richardson’s troubles,” Matthews said.

Richardson’s campaign did not return a phone message seeking comment.

Matthews has until Oct. 21 to become eligible to receive write-in votes.

The civics and government professor finished fourth of 11 Democrats running in the July 2007 Democratic special-election primary to succeed the late Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D).

In the 2006 Democratic primary, Matthews lost to Millender-McDonald 76 percent to 24.