The issues

What's one specific way you would change the way the Attorney General's Office operates?

Cooper: "I'd like for the Attorney General's Office to have more tools to fight public corruption. We've been asking the General Assembly to allow us to convene investigative grand juries and to make it a crime to lie to SBI agents. Having this authority would give us more power to institute public corruption investigations on our own."

Crumley: "The first thing I'm going to do the very first day I walk in the door is I'm going to be asking these people, 'Who are your customers? Who are your clients?' And I'm going to drive into that organization a customer service mentality, a mentality where you get the job done."

We've experienced a steady run of public corruption cases in state government. What ideas do you have to keep government honest and catch those behaving badly?

Cooper: "Clearly we need to look at better disclosure laws and better investigative tools for law enforcement and prosecutors. ... With better investigative tools, we can provide an even greater deterrent to public officials who abuse the public trust."

Crumley: "If I'm elected attorney general, whether Pat McCrory or Bev Perdue is elected governor, you can be sure that we will be in their offices educating their staff right up front about what the open meetings law is, what the public records law is, what the law in this state is on taking bribes, taking gifts or gratuities. ... Now, unfortunately, the legislature has not seen fit to give the attorney general a very broad hand when it comes to investigative grand juries."

In what ways has criminal activity shifted in recent years, and how would you deal with those changes?

Cooper: "We've seen an overall 15 percent decrease in the North Carolina crime rate over the last 10 years. However, we're seeing a shift where criminals are using technology to rob us of our money and sometimes our safety. ... That's why I created the SBI computer crimes unit to fight these criminals on their own turf. And we have to continue to increase our level of technology to meet that of the criminals."

Crumley: "The first is the criminals we have in North Carolina now are much more violent, and they require additional measures to protect our law enforcement officers and additional measures to deal with those (criminals), and I believe that's primarily because of the rise in gangs. The second area of crime in North Carolina that has gotten more sophisticated (is) computer crime, scams, Internet crime, white collar crime."

How would you handle consumer protection for the next four years?

Cooper: "We want to broaden our help to consumers even more. For example, we've started, and are hoping to expand, a patients' assistance program that helps people cut the red tape of their health insurance and get coverage for their medical problems."

Crumley: "We're going to have an aging population in North Carolina, we're becoming a haven for retirees. One thing we know, scam artists like to scam old people. ... So as we know that North Carolina is getting a bigger elderly population, it means we need to be thinking about that."