It’s a question of stability versus new blood in the race to be Douglas County’s top criminal prosecutor.

Democrat Charles Branson, a private-practice attorney and part-time Eudora prosecutor, is looking to unseat Republican incumbent Christine Kenney, who hasn’t been challenged since taking office in 1996.

Branson, 34, acknowledges he’s never prosecuted a jury trial. But he has cast himself as someone who would bring more public accountability and better services to the office. He wants to start a consumer-protection division in Douglas County and a better orientation program for victims and witnesses who are called to testify.

He also says Kenney doesn’t spend enough time in court and that her prosecutors’ trial performance is subpar.

“I want to do some things different for Douglas County that it hasn’t had before and that I think Douglas County deserves to have,” he said. “The public needs to know their district attorney is working hard for them, and that’s in the office and in the courtroom.”

Branson also has questioned why the budget for Kenney’s office increased 46 percent during her two terms.

Kenney said her biggest assets were her efforts to educate the public about crimes against elderly victims and her good working relationship with other agencies.

She has said she doesn’t want to talk about Branson, preferring instead to focus on her record. Her campaign ads carry the headline, “Justice You Expect from a Leader You Trust.”

But when asked to describe a difference between herself and Branson, she has described herself as the more qualified prosecutor and attorney. He’s been practicing law about nine years; she’s been a prosecutor for 15.

“I believe that experience is the key to efficiently running the office of the district attorney,” Kenney said. “You really cannot understand everything that the district attorney’s office is responsible for unless you have had the hands-on experience of doing it yourself.”

Kenney said she didn’t think the volume of consumer complaints in Douglas County required a separate office. The way the system works now, such complaints are referred to Atty. Gen. Phill Kline’s office in Topeka.

She also said her job required a lot of administrative work that sometimes kept her out of court.

A major issue Branson has raised since defeating Martin Miller in the Democratic primary is that Kenney isn’t winning enough cases at trial. He ran an ad saying her office had failed to win a guilty verdict in more than half of its felony trials so far this year.

A closer look found Branson’s ad didn’t tell the whole story. Of the 24 felony cases submitted to juries, 54 percent ended with a verdict of either guilty as charged or guilty of at least one felony.

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Another 21 percent ended with a misdemeanor conviction but no guilty verdicts on felony charges.

Kenney said she read that as a 75 percent winning rate and proof that Branson was misleading the public — something she said a prosecutor couldn’t afford to do.

Branson said he stood by his numbers, which he was drawing from a summary report kept by the district court clerk that counts only the outcome of the first charge listed in each case.

He said he still didn’t think Kenney’s conviction percentage was high enough and said he thought misdemeanor convictions shouldn’t count as victories in felony cases.

“They have an obligation to Douglas County taxpayers to effectively use the resources of the office,” he said.