Apr 01 2008
Dalton Runs on Experience
Dalton is campaigning as a veteran elected official with a checklist of legislative successes for which he gets partial credit: raising teacher pay, providing children’s health care for low-income families and helping recruit new businesses.
His campaign Web site includes much on his accomplishments but less on an agenda for the state’s No. 2 job.
“One of the great things [about campaigning] is looking around and seeing the results of things you’ve done,” Dalton said after a visit to a new health insurance call center in Granville County, near the Virginia line.
Dalton doesn’t highlight issues that appeal to the party’s more liberal base. He was criticized for co-sponsoring legislation to allow a popular vote on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in 2005 and for a 1998 questionnaire in which he did not say that abortion should be permitted to protect the health of the mother, crucial language to supporters of abortion rights.
Dalton has since said the anti-gay marriage legislation was a reflection of representing a conservative district and that his abortion answer was poorly worded and should have included the exception for the health of the mother.
The ideal race for November for the Lieutenant Governor spot would be Pittenger on the Republican side and Dalton on the Democratic side. They are both good representatives of a broad base of North Carolina. Dalton is far more in touch with the mainstream than this Democratic primary opponents. I hope he will be successful in May.
