With Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal sure to be out of the job in 11 months or less, Republican candidates for the office pledged Wednesday to reform his agency well beyond the parts affected by the current e-mail scandal.

Their recipes for change showed the differences in their viewpoints and backgrds.

"Change is here, and unless you live under a rock, you've got to know it's coming one way or the other," said candidate Jim Leitner, a defense lawyer and former prosecutor.

In their first joint campaign appearance, none of the four candidates mentioned Republican Rosenthal's name. Candidate Pat Lykos, a former judge, referred to the district attorney's e-mail saga as "those recent events."

Instead, the contenders portrayed Rosenthal predecessor John B. Holmes Jr.'s administration as the good old days.

"Johnny Holmes left this office with the reputation that it was never about politics," said prosecutor and candidate Kelly Siegler.

Still, candidate and Houston police captain Doug Perry, who has accounting and law degrees, said it was not time to go backward.

"Some things have been done the same way for the last 26 years," Perry said, adding that the time police officers must take to file charges with prosecutors and obtain search warrants can be shortened, to the benefit of crime fighting.

The winner of the March 4 primary will face Democrat C.O. Bradford, the former Houston police chief, in the November general election.

The state attorney general's office is investigating Rosenthal at Harris County's request after the disclosure in a federal lawsuit against the county of scurrilous e-mails he received and sent on government equipment. They involved romantic messages to his executive secretary, with whom he had an affair several years ago; racist and sexist jokes; sexually explicit videos and material for his now-abandoned re-election campaign.

The local Republican Party, which convinced him to withdraw from the ballot, says he should resign now rather than finish his term that ends with the calendar year.

In Wednesday's downtown forum, sponsored by the Houston Professional Republican Women, Siegler said she would make the district attorney's office more transparent to defense lawyers and the public.

"It will not be an office with prosecutors that win at all cost," said the chief of Rosenthal's special crimes bureau.

Siegler also said she would first solicit reform ideas from fellow prosecutors. "We know what's wrong. We know what's broken. ... I am the only one who has worked there the last 21 years. I know how it it operates."

Lykos said she would establish an office of professionalism and ethics at the agency, push for the creation of a regional crime lab with no direct links to any single law enforcement agency and especially involve the DA's office in crime prevention programs.

"We need to have reformation, rehabilitation and restitution," she said.

Perry said that in addition to streamlining prosecutors' work with police, he would work aggressively as a law enforcement ambassador to the public and law enforcement agencies.

Leitner said he would work for the crime lab — which as part of the Houston Police Department reported a series of false and sometimes fabricated results — to operate independently and would make sure his conduct is transparent and beyond reproach.

"I don't want anybody in the office ever to think I am above the law or that anybody in the office is above the law," he said.

In another reference to Rosenthal, Lykos asserted that the reputation of the district attorney's office affects the economy of the Houston area.

"If you are a company looking to locate in Texas and you have been reading the newspapers lately, would you go to Harris County-Houston?" she said.

alan.bernstein@chon.com