INDIANAPOLIS | The candidates for Indiana attorney general offer a vision for the office as unique as the career paths that led them to the race.

Republican Greg Zoeller, a soft spoken New Albany native, spent 10 years as a Senate and White House aide to former Vice President Dan Quayle before making an unsuccessful attorney general bid at the 1996 state GOP convention. He threw his support behind the man who beat him, Lake County native Steve Carter, and when Carter was elected four years later, he made Zoeller his chief deputy.

"My entire campaign has been based on a single theme, which is experience matters," Zoeller said. "I think in the last eight years, serving with Attorney General Carter, I've really learned the role of the attorney general and know how to get the job done."

Democrat Linda Pence, a tough-talking Indianapolis trial lawyer making her first run at public office, touts her 34-year legal career, the first nine years of which were spent tackling complex civil and regulatory cases for the federal government.

"I began my career at the attorney general's office -- the United States Department of Justice," Pence said. "I'm running because I believe the attorney general's office can be a much better office than it has been."

Both candidates are running ads on downstate television and each had raised more than $600,000 heading into the final weeks of the campaign, with Pence leading the fundraising race. An independent poll last week had Pence up three points, while an earlier survey sponsored by an Indianapolis television station show a 10-point lead for Zoeller.

Pence has laid out an aggressive agenda for the office, which includes launching a new independent review process for child abuse cases, strengthening laws against sexual predators and pursuing greater state involvement in complex local criminal cases.

But Indiana is among a minority of states in which the attorney general cannot bring prosecutions, and Zoeller argues Pence is giving voters a false impression of the powers of the office.

Zoeller points to the recently completed work of a state and local task force that won convictions against 46 of the 53 individuals charged with vote fraud after the 2003 Lake County primary. The effort began only after the local prosecutor asked the attorney general's office for assistance.

And while he criticized Pence for potentially overstating the scope of the office, Zoeller wooed Northwest Indiana voters with repeated pledges to build upon Carter's pursuit of Lake County corruption cases,

Zoeller and the state GOP also have called attention to Pence's legal defense work for a paving firm that settled out of a pending corruption lawsuit targeting former East Chicago Mayor Robert Pastrick. Pence said that if the case is solid, she will continue the pursuit of the longtime Democratic mayor.

Zoeller has joined Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels in a campaign pledge to seek stronger protections for teachers sued for meting out student discipline. And Zoeller emphasizes his experience managing the 140 lawyers employed by the attorney general's office.

Pence, meanwhile, has sharply criticized Zoeller for signing off on a $1.3 million contract that outsourced the office's tort division to a former employee who was still on the attorney general's payroll when the 2005 deal went up for bid.

Zoeller says privatizing the work, which, for instance, would include a damage claim brought by a driver whose car was struck by a state vehicle, has saved taxpayers more than $300,000. Pence said contracting the work took away a training opportunity for young state lawyers.