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In politics, particularly, it's best not to throw stones in glass houses.

For the most part, the seven candidates in the District 29 Democratic primary have kept the race a friendly affair. But one candidate, former Border Patrol agent Ephraim Cruz, has been particularly critical of some of his counterparts' legal affairs.

He has raised issues about incumbent Tom Prezelski's numerous parking and traffic tickets. He has also criticized fellow challenger Daniel Patterson's fight against the Mount Lemmon recreation fee and a protest arrest for disorderly conduct in 2000.

Such hardball wouldn't be surprising except Cruz has had his own issues. He has recently had to explain why four years ago a Superior Court judge ordered him to pay child support, including more than $15,000 back support. Cruz has said he has paid off the debt and always provided some degree of financial support for his son. There was just no formal arrangement until the order.

"I had been paying $400 to $500 a month between birth" and when child support was set, he said. "It wasn't that I wasn't paying child support."

Cruz's son was born in 2001, but he said he is estranged from the boy and his mother. Child support was set in 2004 with monthly payments of about $775, court documents show. At that time, Cruz was a senior U.S. Border Patrol agent making about $75,000 a year, and he said making the payments was no problem.

Cruz made headlines last year when he was acquitted of charges he knowingly took a Mexican woman across the border. Cruz has said the charges were filed in retaliation for concerns he raised about the treatment of illegal entrants by the Border Patrol.

But throughout the ordeal the Border Patrol suspended him without pay, making it difficult to make the child-support payments, he said. Cruz said he paid off the arrears in April and showed a receipt for $10,045 for the delinquency from the state Department of Economic Security. The balance he said had been paid off previously, but he did not have receipts.

Cruz called questions about his child support a non-issue that distracts from an important race. He acknowledged he has run an "assertive" campaign, but he said he wants to highlight differences with the other candidates on immigration, health care and transportation policies.

But other candidates see his campaign as less positive.

"Really the only person who has any major glaring verifiable mud is Ephraim Cruz," said Matt Heinz, a physician running in the district.

The attacks have baffled Patterson.

"I can't understand why when you have some serious personal issues you would want to start attacking your opponents," Patterson said.

Patterson has long argued against the recreation fee for Mount Lemmon, even joining a civil suit against it. His 2000 arrest for disorderly conduct came while protesting the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In June, a federal judge ordered Patterson, an ecologist, to pay $85 for not paying the Mount Lemmon recreation fee. Patterson has said he is considering appealing the fine, and if elected, he said he will continue to fight the fee.

"It's an unfair shakedown," he said. "I think for the feds to try to charge an additional fee for unimproved areas for Mount Lemmon is unfair and unethical."

Prezelski said he, too, has been surprised by the attacks, but he figured it's just the game of politics.

"I think this happens when you don't have much to say, and you are trying to distinguish yourself from a field where we pretty much are in agreement with what our community needs," he said. "It doesn't speak well when you are trying to distinguish yourself by bringing other people down."

The district primarily covers a portion of Tucson's South and Southeast sides.