ATTORNEY GENERAL

L. Scott Harshbarger

Occupation: District Attorney of Middlesex County

Date of Birth: December 1, 1941

Personal background: The son of a minister Harshbarger spent a year at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He received both his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University. He has been a lecturer at Boston University law school since 1980, and lives Cambridge with his wife, Judith Stephenson, and their five children.

Experience: Harshbarger has served as District Attorney since 1982, winning a second term in 1986. Previously, he worked from 1975 to 1978 as chief of the public protection bureau in Attorney General Francis X. Bellotti's office. He then served as deputy chief for the Council of Massachusetts Defenders, and later as first general counsel on the State Ethics Committee.

Positions: Harshbarger is opposed to the CLT petition, which he says will devastate public protection and safety. However, he has said that if the measure passes, he will defend it as the will of the people.

Harshbarger opposes the death penalty. He has stressed his record prosecuting child abuse cases. Republican

William C. Sawyer

Occupation: Attorney

Date of Birth: September 6, 1929

Personal background: Born in Bangor, Maine, William Sawyer now lives in Acton with his wife, Joan Gardner, and their three children. Sawyer received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard University, and then, from 1955 to 1958, served in the U.S. Army in the judge advocate general corps, prosecuting and defending criminal matters.

Experience: Sawyer served as a selectman for the town of Acton from 1968 to 1975. He also served for 15 years on the Metropolitian Area Planning Council and was the Region One Director of the National Association of Regional Councils. He ran for U.S. Congress and lost in 1980. He is now a partner in the Boston law firm of Wood, Clarkin and Sawyer.

Positions: Sawyer lists environmental protection and fighting crime and drugs among his top political priorities. Sawyer has said that administration of special educational programs, health care and bank insolvency programs should be the purview of individual federal and state agencies.

Sawyer is an advocate of the "boot camp" programs for young offenders and drug users as alternative methods of imprisonment.