His opponents in the Democratic primary agree that Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. is a nice man with a long record of public service.
But challengers Patrick J. Smith and Eleanor M. Carey claim that Mr. Curran, 63, is no longer energetic enough to be Maryland's top lawyer, and they are trying to make his recent record an issue in the Sept. 13 primary.
"Despite his relatively young age, [Mr. Curran] has demonstrated over the past several years being too old, too tired and too lacking in commitment to effectively serve as the general in the war on crime," says Mr. Smith, 46.
Ms. Carey, 52, contends Mr. Curran was "asleep on the job" for not knowing about state investments in the tobacco industry and hasn't "lifted a finger" to enter the crime debate.
The mild-mannered Mr. Curran dismisses those accusations as "unkind and untrue." He says he is proud of his eight years as attorney general, in which he has backed gun control, prosecuted drug dealers on income tax charges, fought the tobacco lobby and targeted environmental crime and insurance fraud.
The winner among the three will face Republican Richard D. Bennett, unopposed in the primary, in the November general election.
Like Mr. Bennett, Mr. Smith and Ms. Carey have promised to use the attorney general's office as a "bully pulpit" in the fight against violent crime.
Mr. Curran notes that as described in the Maryland Constitution, the office's main job is to prosecute fraud against the state government, advise state agencies and handle appeals of criminal cases. He boasts a 93 percent success rate in getting criminal convictions upheld on appeal.
But he also says he already uses his office as a "bully pulpit." Last month, for example, he preached against the state's pension fund investments in tobacco companies. (Ms. Carey, however, has criticized him for not knowing about the investments until a reporter told him.)
Mr. Curran has long lobbied for stronger gun control laws, which he supported at least a decade before the issue became politically popular.
His father, a former Baltimore councilman, was in City Hall in 1976 when an assassin came looking for the mayor, William Donald Schaefer. The gunman shot and killed Councilman Dominic Leone and shot at the elder Mr. Curran. Mr. Curran escaped the bullet but suffered a heart attack during the incident and died months later, his son recalled.
Mr. Curran has taken several other controversial stands in recent years, such as supporting a needle-exchange program to prevent drug addicts from spreading AIDS.
This month he delivered the opening arguments in a lawsuit brought against the state by the country's largest tobacco manufacturers, which are challenging a proposed statewide ban workplace smoking.
A career politician, Mr. Curran served over 28 years as a Maryland delegate, senator and eventually lieutenant governor.
In his current race, he leads in campaign fund-raising among the Democrats. He has raised $483,400, compared with $317,000 by Ms. Carey and $67,500 by Mr. Smith, recent reports show.
Although Mr. Curran has a strong record on women's issues, Ms. Carey won the support of the National Women's Political Caucus and Harriet's List, a political action committee trying to increase the number of women officeholders in Maryland.
Ms. Carey is making her second bid to become attorney general. She lost to Mr. Curran in a three-way race in the 1986 primary.
Like Mr. Curran, she had a politically active father. He ran unsuccessfully for mayor and lieutenant governor in Rhode Island years ago. Perhaps more importantly, he supported his daughter's interest in law and politics, nontraditional careers for women of her generation.
In 1978, Ms. Carey left a law practice to manage Stephen H. Sachs' successful campaign for attorney general. She went to ++ work as a lawyer for Mr. Sachs soon afterward and became the first female deputy attorney general in 1982. Her duties included supervising 216 lawyers and overseeing the enforcement of consumer protection and environmental laws.
After losing to Mr. Curran, she became a legal reporter for WJZ-TV and later returned to private practice. She joined a small team of lawyers investigating the failure of privately insured credit unions in Rhode Island.
If elected, Ms. Carey says, she will support legislation to keep guns out of the hands of people who batter their spouses. She also would push for a crackdown on violent juvenile offenders, who would be fingerprinted under her program (they are not now).
And she wants the state to set up a "fast-track gun court" to provide speedy trials for people charged with gun offenses. In the past year, she was approached by several Democratic candidates for governor who wanted her to be their lieutenant. (She won't name names). She turned them down, she says, because she didn't want to be second-in-command anymore.
"It's time for me -- it's time for many women -- to take our place in the highest levels of state and federal government, and to propose our vision of what should be done and be judged on it," she says.
One thing she can't be judged on, the Curran campaign points out, is how she would handle criminal cases.
Ms. Carey admits she has no courtroom experience in criminal cases, but says it doesn't matter. "You don't have to be a courtroom lawyer to be a real leader in the fight against crime. Some of the best public prosecutors never tried a criminal case. Bobby Kennedy never tried a criminal case" before becoming U.S. attorney general, she says.
To which Mr. Curran replies: "I worked with Bobby Kennedy in helping get his brother elected [president]. I promise you, Ellie Carey is no Bobby Kennedy."
Courtroom experience is not a problem for Mr. Smith, a Rockville resident who has litigated cases for years. His cases have involved criminal law, taxes, medicine, hazardous waste, insurance and sexual discrimination.
On his first bid for public office, Mr. Smith is reminding voters he engineered the victories of presidential candidate Paul E. Tsongas in the 1992 Maryland and Delaware primaries. He hopes Tsongas voters will give him a hand this time.
He subscribes to Mr. Tsongas' economic ideas and promises to make the attorney general's office more business-friendly. He says he would try to help companies comply with daunting government regulations, for example.
A native of Lowell, Mass., he first worked on a Tsongas campaign in 1969, when his friend was running for Lowell City Council. He later assisted in Mr. Tsongas' congressional campaign.
Mr. Smith, one of 15 children of a state legislator and his wife, went to Capitol Hill in 1976. He got a job with another Massachusetts politician, former House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" Neill Jr. He left in 1979 to become a trial lawyer, "what I always wanted to be."
Unlike Mr. Curran and Ms. Carey, he has not endorsed a proposal to license prospective buyers of handguns and limit the number of handguns a person could acquire a year.
Mr. Smith says the state's existing gun control laws are adequate, and "we're not doing enough to enforce them."
DEMOCRATS RUNNING FOR MARYLAND ATTORNEY GENERAL
ELEANOR M. CAREY
Age: 52
Home: Baltimore
Family: Husband, Anthony.
Education: B.A., Wellesley College. Law degree, University of Maryland.
Political experience: Attorney general candidate, 1986. Campaign manager, Stephen H. Sachs for Attorney General, 1978.
Other experience: Investigator of failed Rhode Island credit unions, 1991-1992. Investigator of sex abuse allegations in Anne Arundel County schools, 1993. Deputy attorney general, 1982-1987. Associate deputy attorney general, 1979-1982. Lawyer in private practice, 1974-1978 and 1988-present.
J. JOSEPH CURRAN JR.
Age: 63
Home: Baltimore
Family: Wife, Barbara, five children (one deceased).
Education: Associate of arts and law degrees, University of Baltimore.
Political experience: Maryland attorney general, 1987-present. Lieutenant governor, 1983-1987. Maryland State Senate, 1963-1983. House of Delegates, 1959-1963.
Other experience: Successfully argued Maryland case before the Supreme Court, 1990. Lawyer in private practice, 1960-1982.
PATRICK J. SMITH
Age: 46
Home: Rockville
Family: Wife, Joan, two daughters.
Education: B.A., Merrimack College, Andover, Mass. Law degree, Potomac School of Law.
Political experience: Staff assistant to House of Representatives, Chairman of the Paul Tsongas presidential primary campaigns in Maryland and Delaware, 1992.
Other experience: Special counsel to the U.S. Sentencing Commission Alternatives to Imprisonment Project, 1990 to 1991. Lawyer in private practice, 1978-present.