Attorney General Mark Shurtleff is accusing his campaign rival, Sen. Bob Bennett, of hamstringing his office's operations with a slew of records requests.

Shurtleff, in his third term as the state's top prosecutor, is Bennett's leading challenger for the GOP's Senate nomination next year.

While Bennett has almost 18 years of voting records to examine, Shurtleff has not cast a vote since his days as a Salt Lake County commissioner. So the Bennett campaign, as part of its opposition research, is seeking political fodder through open-records requests.

"Campaigns are always filled with rumors," said Jim Bennett, the senator's son and campaign spokesman. "This is an appropriate way to discern what is truth and what is rumor."

The three government records requests -- dated July 8, 15 and 23 -- seek various expenses, travel records and gifts to the attorney general, along with correspondence with a number of individuals and businesses (some of whom donated to Shurtleff's past campaigns). One request targets any correspondence with or about accused Ponzi schemer Rick Koerber.

No records have been handed over yet, Bennett said.

"I've relegated myself to spending next week filling those requests," said the attorney general's spokesman, Paul Murphy .

"I have 430-plus employees who have to do a search on every person named in the requests," Murphy said. "We have to compile all those records and make copies, then determine if they're public or protected."

Jim Bennett said the campaign contracted with Kevin Wright of Virginia-based Old Dominion Research Group for $10,000 to research Shurtleff.

On Old Dominion's Web site, the business promises to provide accurate, relevant information for use when the bullets are flying in the heat of political battles.

Shurtleff fumed about what he called the cavalier attitude of the Bennett campaign.

"Their response was that it's silly of me to complain," Shurtleff said. "We've got a paid character assassin who is fishing for dirt for a personal smear campaign.

"That's part of national politics," Shurtleff conceded, "but it's not silly if it's using state taxpayer dollars and the time of state employees."

Individuals, reporters and organizations make open-records requests of government offices all the time -- some of them work intensive, said Matthew Burbank, a political scientist at the University of Utah.

"Because of Shurtleff's challenge of Bennett, this has become a political issue," Burbank said. "They're likely spinning it in such a way to infer that the Bennett campaign is up to something it should not be."

And perhaps the Bennett camp is digging for dirt.

"It may be," Burbank said. "You wouldn't want to rule that out."

cmckitrick@sltrib.com