Qualifications and voting records separate the two Democrats running for Florida attorney general. Dan Gelber is much better on both.

Sen. Gelber, a state senator from Miami Beach, spent eight years with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida prosecuting major crime and corruption cases. He then spent two years in Washington as chief counsel for Democrats on the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. Since 1996, he's been in private practice.

Sen. Aronberg, a state senator who since 2002 has represented a district that stretches from Greenacres to the west coast, worked for two years as a prosecutor in the Florida attorney general's office and has spent 10 years in private practice. Sen. Gelber is correct when he says, "The difference in experience between us isn't a little; it's a lot."

As a legislator, Sen. Aronberg has made fighting consumer fraud a priority. His office has helped constituents recover money, and this year he filed a bill that would have toughened requirements for companies helping victims of Chinese drywall. Yet in 2003, Sen. Aronberg voted for a controversial phone rate increase. In 2009, he voted to deregulate property insurance. This year, he voted not to confirm two Public Service Commission members who had rejected FPL's $1.4 billion annual rate increase. Consumer groups had opposed all three of those votes. Sen. Gelber voted against insurance deregulation and for one of the two utility regulators.

This year, Sen. Aronberg took credit for the Legislature passing a weak public corruption bill. Sen. Gelber pushed bills that would have done more to address the problem. Both candidates oppose an Arizona-style immigration law for Florida and Attorney General Bill McCollum's challenge of the federal health care law. Both oppose the gay adoption ban.

Sen. Aronberg has hurt his credibility by trying to invent a controversy. Sen. Gelber worked most recently for the firm of Akerman Senterfitt, on salary, not as a partner. In May, BP hired Akerman Senterfitt for work related to the Gulf oil spill. When Sen. Gelber heard, he resigned as soon as he could transfer his cases, to avoid any professional conflict in a future role as attorney general.

Sen. Aronberg claims that Sen. Gelber would have to recuse himself from BP cases if he became attorney general, and that Sen. Gelber showed poor judgment. As to the first point, the Florida Bar and legal experts say Sen. Aronberg is wrong. As to the second point, Sen. Gelber resigned so quickly that he upset Sen. Aronberg's plan to criticize him for not resigning quickly. The non-controversy is one more issue on which Sen. Gelber looks more like attorney general material than Sen. Aronberg.