INDIANAPOLIS | The Indiana Chamber of Commerce advocated bipartisanship Tuesday in the last of eight policy letters to the candidates for governor.

The final dispatch to Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels and Democratic challenger Jill Long Thompson warns that "strident partnership breeds mistrust of government, turning 'politician' and 'politics' into dirty words."

Chamber President Kevin Brinegar said working across party lines will be critical to achieving the education, energy, health care and tax issues to which the business group has sought to draw attention with its series of letters.

"Why do we do this? To get these important issues in front of the candidates and the general public," Brinegar said during a news conference Tuesday morning. "With today's hectic, always-on-the-go lifestyles, too many voters are simply paying attention to the personalities and not the policies."

Brinegar pointed to Indiana's surprise role in the marathon Democratic presidential primary season, saying it was great for the state, but "many people, however, probably paid attention to the shot and the beer that Hillary Rodham Clinton drank in Lake County or the comments of Barack Obama's minister rather than what either candidate would do to solve some of our country's biggest problems and challenges."

At the state level, the chamber didn't have many positives to say about the bipartisan efforts of the past two years during which a GOP-controlled Senate and Democrat-led House combined to pass a balanced budget, expand health care for the working poor and pass a homeowner-slanted property tax overhaul. The chamber instead cited 1999 education reforms and a 2002 tax restructuring that ended the levy on business inventories as recent feats of political cooperation.

Brinegar also lauded the 27 local government reforms proposed last year by a commission led by former Democratic Gov. Joe Kernan and Indiana Chief Justice Randall Shepard. The chamber pushed for legislation to implement the so-called Kernan-Shepard report in one of its earlier letters to the gubernatorial candidates.

Meanwhile, Brinegar said the chamber would prefer to see Indiana legislators back away from a bipartisan push to craft a state response to illegal immigration.

"We don't see this as an issue for state legislatures," he said. "We see this an issue for the federal government."

Frustrated by inaction at the federal level, the General Assembly this spring considered legislation to punish Indiana employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Next month, a summer study committee will begin to sort out House and Senate disagreements on the stalled measure.