Zoeller favored:

Of the five open state attorney general seats up for election Tuesday, Democrats are expected to win all of the races but one — the one seat currently held by a Republican, polls indicate.

Democratic candidates for attorney general are expected to win in Missouri, Montana and Ohio. In Oregon, where no Republican ran for the seat being vacated by Attorney General Hardy Myers, the Democratic candidate is all but guaranteed a win.

The one open seat where the Republican candidate is favored to win is in Indiana, where Greg Zoeller, the chief deputy to Attorney General Steve Carter is vying to succeed his boss.

Zoeller is running against Democrat Linda Pence, a high-profile Indianapolis attorney. Zoeller leads Pence 30 percent to 24 percent in a recent Howey-Gauge Poll.

Interestingly, Zoeller leads Pence by six points in a state where Republican presidential nominee John McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by just two points, according to the same poll.

The Howey-Gauge Poll of 600 likely voters was conducted October 23 and 24, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percent.

Good news, even if the site has an awful photo of Zoeller (his campaign website really needs a downloadable press kit with a good photo in it).

From WISH TV:

INDIANAPOLIS – A Statehouse scandal is now an issue in the race for attorney general. Democrat Linda Pence is under fire from Republicans for her role in an old case.

When State Senator Sam Smith went to court six years ago accused of tax evasion, Linda Pence was his defense attorney. Smith eventually made a plea deal and paid his back taxes, but the case is back in a campaign commercial purchased by Indiana Republicans that criticizes Pence’s choice of clients.

Both the Pence and Greg Zoeller (R) campaigns have traded attack ads. The Pence campaign said it welcomes comparisons.

“People come to Linda Pence because she’s good and she’s effective and she’s a fighter and she wins. So we’re not surprised at all that they’re gonna attack Linda’s clients. Her shoulders are broad, she can take that,” said Joel Miller of the Pence campaign.

Meantime Republicans believe Sam Smith could be a deciding factor in a close race.

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Heh:

But the truth is, even if Linda Pence had NO new ideas for the office, you’ll notice that NOBODY, and I mean NOBODY has said Greg Zoeller is a better lawyer than Linda Pence. Because they can’t. They just can’t.

They can. I can. I have.

Greg Zoeller and Linda Pence have a history. They have encountered each other in the legal arena before. Linda Pence’s client was the paving firm Rieth-Riley, which was a codefendant in the largest corruption case in Indiana history.

Rieth-Riley settled out of that case. Greg Zoeller and Steve Carter won. Linda Pence lost.

History tells us who got the better of that encounter; I think it says a lot about who will make a better attorney general.

And, no, don’t feed me some line about it being expedient for Rieth-Riley to settle out. Linda Pence was unable to defend her clients or to prevail on their behalf. That Rieth-Riley may have caved because Carter and Zoeller squeezed them over their other state contracts is icing on that cake (and rapidly disspells any notion that Zoeller is insufficiently zealous).

Regardless, Linda Pence can be as zealous as she wants in her defense of drug dealers, convicted murderers, corrupt CEOs, corrupt politicians, and so forth. She’s an Indianapolis trial lawyer (and a liberal trial lawyer at that). It’s expected. That doesn’t make her qualified to be attorney general; it makes her qualified as the lawyer of choice of Hoosier criminals, not as someone tasked with keeping them in jail or bringing them to justice.

From the Indy Star:

Zoeller’s style and approach to the job are less dramatic than Pence’s. But, as mentioned, he has a record of quiet and effective service on his side.

Zoeller promises to target sexual predators and root out public corruption. He also wants to expand an existing identify-theft program and protect teachers from nuisance lawsuits.

Both candidates are clearly qualified. The choice comes down to whether Pence’s vision of a much larger influence of the attorney general on the local level is a better approach than Zoeller’s strategy of continuing but enhancing the office’s traditional functions.

The Star favors Zoeller in part because of his record of success. But also because his understanding of the attorney general’s role appears more realistic than Pence’s.

From the NWI Times:

(Read what other papers are saying including my thoughts after the leap)

A bit over a week ago, WISH TV put out a poll on the AG race indicating a ten point Greg Zoeller lead over shady Democratic candidate Linda Pence. Coverage of the race has been relatively sparse, despite it supposedly going to be “one to watch” and one of the few seriously contested statewide races (the presidential race now takes that prize, and the gubernatorial race hasn’t exactly been exciting or captivating in a news reporting sense).

The extent of media advertising in the campaign has been that both candidates have each run a warm and fuzzy ad about how great they are. Zoeller’s ad has run statewide in every media market. Linda Pence’s ad has not; it is not running in Terre Haute, Evansville, or Louisville. That would seem to indicate that Pence is ceding the entire southern and southwestern regions of the state to Greg Zoeller.

WISH doesn’t provide crosstabs on its polling, so we don’t know the regional breakdowns, party identification numbers, ideological ratios, name identification numbers, or anything else. In the southern part of the state, Zoeller benefits from his famous last name, shared with a popular local golfer who happens to be his cousin. In the eastern part of the state, Linda Pence benefits from sharing the name of a popular conservative congressman who has absolutely nothing in common with her and probably finds her defense of shady characters and corrupt Democrats to be abhorent.

So what does a poll asking voters their preference tell us?

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Can Linda Pence Say This About Corruption?

ZOELLER WILL SEEK ENHANCED PUBLIC CORRUPTION AUTHORITY

Priority to restore and retain public trust with transparency

(INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA) – Greg Zoeller, Republican candidate for Attorney General will seek additional authority for fighting public corruption by the Office of the Attorney General. “Fighting public corruption will be a priority in the Office of the Attorney General,” said Zoeller. “Our goal will be to provide greater public confidence in the handling of taxpayers’ money.”

Zoeller noted it is the statutory duty of the Attorney General to collect public funds following the certification of an audit by the State Board of Accounts (SBOA). During 2007 the SBOA certified over 50 audits to the Office of the Attorney General for collection. These include cases of theft and embezzlement of public funds by those entrusted with the responsibility over the money. Other cases involve poor record keeping and mismanagement of public accounts.

Zoeller said the Public Corruption Unit within the office would only handle those cases involving a breach of trust for personal gain and not cases involving accounting errors that required regular collections efforts. Under Zoeller’s proposal the Office of the Attorney General would seek additional authority:

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You just can’t make this stuff up…

Meet “The Yogurt Connection.” In the 1980s, it was the largest marijuana-smuggling ring in history. Started around 1975, it spanned eleven states and shipped 125 tons of marijuana valued at anywhere between $50 and $100 million from Columbia, Jamaica, and Thailand. And it was operated out of (believe it or not) Indianapolis, Indiana.

The drug ring was operated by Linda Leary and her two sons, Richard and Paul Heilbrunn. The Yogurt Connection (a term coined by prosecutors at their trial) got its name from the yogurt franchise that the family owned.

Mrs. Leary and her sons were high class dealers. They sold drugs on the side and circulated, their dealing unknown, at the highest levels of Indianapolis society. Paul Heilbrunn was a broker and a financier. He wrote a column for a local business news magazine (his business acumen helped to launder the gang’s drug money in various Caribbean and Latin American banks). The family made frequent loans to such places as a radio station and a cable company (and even to that ubiquitous hotel room staple, the Indianapolis Dining Guide).

Leary was the head of the Indy League of Women Voters and was president of the local chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women. She held fundraisers for the Indianapolis Zoo and publicly supported the drug enforcement policies and good government campaigns of Dick Lugar, who was then the mayor of Indianapolis.

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Ah, the miracle of Google.

Meet Carl Liebowitz, a lawyer and “promoter of tax shelters.” In 1984, a grand jury started looking into the legalities of Liebowitz’s tax shelters. Two years later, Liebowitz became concerned that his business partner, Gary Van Waeyenberghe, was going to testify against him before the grand jury.

So Carl Liebowitz went to a guy named Donald Wrobel and hired him for a hit on his partner’s life. Wrobel tried to murder the partner, failed, and was eventually arrested. Wrobel and Liebowitz were eventually convicted.

Court documents indicate that Liebowitz lured his partner to a phone booth to receive a call from him at an appointed hour. Wrobel, armed with a rifle and a pistol, was hiding nearby. The phone in the booth rang. Liebowitz, on the call, spoke to his partner, saying, “I hear you’ve been talking to the feds.” At that moment, Wrobel fired at the phone booth, shattering the glass, but missing Van Waeyenberghe.

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Or rather, her firm’s clients.

Wednesday, Linda Pence called on Attorney General Steve Carter to investigate the recent hike in gas prices in Indiana. She blamed price gouging.

Carter responded by pointing to busted pipelines, a hurricane closing almost five hundred oil platforms in the gulf, that big wind storm Pence was apparently oblivious to, and similar gas prices in neighboring states.

Carter then encouraged Pence to be forthcoming with any evidence of price fixing and collusion that might aid in an investigation by his office. Thus far, she hasn’t provided any.

Then Advance Indiana pointed out this:

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Linda Pence had a press conference demanding that Attorney General Steve Carter investigate allegations of gasoline price gouging in the wake of the remnants of Hurricane Ike battering much of Indiana.

Steve Carter’s response is priceless.

From the Courier-Journal, she asks:

“It is the job of the attorney general not to turn a blind eye to big oil,” Pence said. “In this situation, the attorney general should actively investigate the pricing practices in Indiana and why our consumers are treated differently.”

Steve Carter answers:

Carter said there are good reasons for some of Indiana’s increases. The wholesale price that Hoosier stations were paying for gas recently spiked higher than their retail prices, although the wholesale price has dropped in the past two days. Also, many crude-oil operations in the Gulf, where Indiana gets much of its gas, remain shuttered and a major pipeline to the region is not pumping gas.

After laying out the market situation, which sort of makes Pence’s claims and demands look absurd, Carter suggests that all of those facts might still be wrong, and says that Linda Pence can provide any information she might have to aid with an investigation:

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It seems that Linda Pence was just too shady a character for them, having spent so much time defending the folks that the members of the Fraternal Order of Police spend an awful lot of effort catching.

Zoeller Receives Backing of Indiana F.O.P.

(INDIANAPOLIS) Republican Candidate for Indiana Attorney General, Greg Zoeller, has received the Indiana Fraternal Order of Police Endorsement.

The organization announced the names of the candidates it voted to support in the upcoming November 4th Election. “…we need your help to elect those candidates at the state and national levels,” the announcement on the F.O.P. website said. There are 14,000 members of the Fraternal Order of Police in Indiana.

“I am honored to receive the endorsement of the Indiana State F.O.P.,” said Zoeller. “Their support can be seen as an affirmation of the work I have done with law enforcement officers across the state over the past 8 years as Chief Deputy Attorney General.”

“These officers recognize the important role of the Attorney General’s Office in law enforcement to protect the people of Indiana. I pledge to continue to earn the support of those in law enforcement by supporting them in all they do.”

If elected, Zoeller has pledged to work with Indiana prosecutors, sheriffs and law enforcement to protect our children against online sex predators, continue the fight against telemarketers and public corruption and to defend our teachers in nuisance litigation to help them restore discipline to the classroom.

The NWI Times has an article about the AG race:

Democrat Linda Pence on Friday accused the Republican Indiana attorney general and his chief deputy, Greg Zoeller, of dragging their heels on a region corruption case in furtherance of their political careers.

Pence, who is battling Zoeller to become the state’s next top lawyer, sharply criticized the progress GOP Attorney General Steve Carter has made in a 2004 federal civil lawsuit he filed to hold former East Chicago officials financially responsible for a 1999 sidewalks-for-vote scheme.

“If there’s a corruption case in Indiana, it will not take me nine years and still not have it done,” Pence said in a meeting with The Times. “I could have had this done in two years, easy.”

Linda Pence either just doesn’t get it, or she’s deliberately trying to be misleading. I’m disinclined to think she is stupid, so the latter must be operative here.

The East Chicago corruption case, involving Democrat Bob Pastrick’s “sidewalks-for-votes” scheme, has 27 defendants and is being pursued under the RICO statue. That’s a lot of defendants, and RICO cases tend to be more complex than the sort of average case that can be solved in an hour on Law & Order or be the subject of pithy snark by William Shatner on Boston Legal.

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