Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley spent Thursday stumping for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Walter Dalton.
O’Malley, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, attended fundraisers in Winston-Salem and Raleigh, and visited STEM high school on the campus of N.C. State University.
“I am hugely impressed with the passion and the understanding that he brings to the connection between education and opportunities in this emerging new economy,” O’Malley told reporters.
He said no other state in the country is doing more for early college in high school education.
O’Malley’s organization this week began funding a TV ad campaign attacking Republican Pat McCrory.
O’Malley, who served as mayor of Baltimore, said he knows McCrory from serving with him on the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He said in a largely nonpartisan organization, McCrory was “the lone ideologue. You could always count on Pat to come in and flak for whatever bad policies the Bush administration was pushing that would undermine the cities.”
McCrory has had Republican governors come in to raise money for him, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie last week and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Wednesday. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker comes next week.
“Is that good for him?” O’Malley asked of the visits.
“I think people generally make up their own minds about these races,” O’Malley said. “The Democratic governors are by-and-large not an ideological group, they are a pragmatic group. What we have seen is a pattern with some of the newly elected Republican governors. They run on a phony promise of they are going to restore our economy and then when they get in they govern by rolling back individual freedoms, rolling back women’s rights, rolling back workers’ rights, rolling back even voting rights. It’s an affliction in their party that they are going to have to work their way through.
“We believe in arithmetic,” O’Malley added. “I will put our bond rating up against Chris Christie’s bond rating any day of the week. Last year, Scott Walker ranked 50th out of 50 states in new job creation. Maryland ranked ninth.”
Jones not endorsing Romney
Rep. Walter Jones of Pitt County is one of only three Republican House members who have not endorsed Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, Politico reports.
The others are Reps. Ron Paul of Texas and Justin Amash of Michigan. What all three have in common is that they supported Paul’s presidential bid earlier this year.
At least two Democratic House members, North Carolinians Mike McIntyre and Larry Kissell, have declined to endorse President Barack Obama’s re-election bid.
McCrory defends 47% remark
Some North Carolina GOP candidates, like Mark Meadows who is running in the 11th District, are seeking to distance themselves from comments made by Mitt Romney at a private fundraiser, which surfaced in a video released earlier this week.
Others are taking a somewhat different approach.
Pat McCrory, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, downplayed Romney’s claim that 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income taxes and “believe they are victims” entitled to government help.
According to the Fayetteville Observer, McCrory said Romney was merely doing a “political assessment of where his potential votes will come from.
“And you know, sometimes we allow candidates to speak and express themselves, from a political assessment, and not get criticized for it.”
Walter Dalton’s campaign seized on McCrory’s comment to try to tie the former Charlotte mayor to the sentiments expressed by Romney.
“I’ve always said we should respect everyone and stereotype no one,” said Dalton, the Democratic candidate for governor, in a release. “Romney’s comments were disrespectful of 47 percent of our population, and Pat McCrory seems to think that’s OK.”
Earlier in the week, Dome asked McCrory about Romney’s remarks, but he declined to comment until he had seen the full video. But he did say, “There is a fact that we have more people dependent on government.”
Staff writers Rob Christensen and Austin Baird
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