Taped phone conversations between Rensselaer County Sheriff hopeful Gary Gordon, and members of the local sheriff's corrections union send the department reeling. An internal investigation is already underway. Our Erin Vannella reports.

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RENSSELAER COUNTY, N.Y. -- The calls to and from the County Jail date back to this summer. They feature expletive-laced discussions about Gordon's campaign against Republican incumbent Sheriff Jack Mahar.

Most notable, are conversations during which a sheriff's corrections union member can be heard asking for Gordon's help to take care of a relative's speeding ticket and as if in exchange, Gordon asks the CO to sell campaign event tickets.

What follow are snippets of those phone conversations and my conversations with Gordon and Mahar.

ON THE PHONE: "He just wrote my wife a ticket yesterday going 20...over? Tell her to slow the down!"

Caught. Members of the local sheriff's corrections union work the system.

PHONE CONVERSATION CONTINUES: "Yeah we'll take care of it. City of Troy? I'll talk to you when you get back to work. These phones are taped."

"There's evidence that I assisted somebody who had gotten a speeding ticket," said Democratic Sheriff Candidate Gary Gordon. "It goes on all the time. It's not improper. I get paid to do that."

Politics aside, not everyone agrees.

"I took action by demanding my internal affairs officer begin an internal investigation," said Republican Rensselaer County Sheriff Jack Mahar. "I sent a letter and I contacted the governor's office requesting that the governor please have the attorney general's bureau please investigate this because I want to make sure this is an impartial investigation."

"We've done nothing improper," said Gordon. "Everything that he is accusing me of doing is false. I never fixed a ticket in my entire life."

But it goes beyond traffic violations. Phone conversations transition from citations to the campaign trail.

ON THE PHONE: "Tell the if he doesn't get ahold of me, i'm not voting for him."

"I ask for no favors," said Gordon. "I have the support of 75 percent of the correction officers union. Those men and women are working very hard for my campaign. That's indicative of the treatment they receive by the Sheriff."

"I want the facts to speak for themselves," said Mahar, "and to do that I really want that independent outside source to take a look at this and really determine what happened here."