ROCK HILL - Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt demanded Saturday that front-runner Howard Dean release records of meetings and phone calls about tax breaks given to energy giant Enron, which Dean denies he did.

Visiting with local Democrats in Rock Hill, Gephardt alleged that Dean, while Vermont's governor, "met regularly with the corporate chiefs who benefited from the tax windfall he created for them."

"A chief beneficiary of his tax cuts for corporate special interests was Enron," he said.

Dean has faced questions about corporate tax breaks enacted during his 11 years as governor. Enron set up an insurance subsidiary in Vermont in 1994, a year after the tax break to the insurance industry went into effect.

Dean insists he never gave tax breaks to Enron, the Houston energy-trading company whose 2001 bankruptcy cost thousands of employees their retirement accounts.

"Just more desperate distortion and negative attacks from Dick Gephardt," Dean spokesman Jay Carson said. "He would rather desperately attack Gov. Dean than talk about his record."

Carson said that Enron had given $176,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee at a time when Gephardt was the Democratic House leader. Gephardt said Saturday the campaign committee raised money from a lot of people and the reason the Dean campaign knows about it is because the records are open.

Dean has come under heavy fire from his rivals since former Vice President Al Gore endorsed him Monday.

Carson said releasing any records was not the issue. "In 1994, no one knew that Enron was a bad company," he said.