When Walter Dalton was 8 years old, his father died of a heart attack. Nearly 40 years later, Dalton's memories of his father helped motivate him, first to decline a run for public office, and, later, to reclaim his father's seat in the N.C. Senate.

Dalton, a Democrat from Rutherfordton, now is vying for the second highest state office, lieutenant governor, running on a 12-year career in the legislature that took him to one of the Senate's most powerful posts.

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.

Far from flashy, the affable Dalton commands attention when he explains a complicated budget provision on the Senate floor. In debate or conversation, he will pause and speak in measured phrases rather than toss a barbed one-liner.

It's the same style that opposing lawyers saw in Rutherford County courtrooms.

"Judges listened to what he had to say because he didn't come up with a bunch of cock and bull," said District Court Judge Tommy Davis, whose career as a lawyer included squaring off with Dalton many times.

Charles Dalton didn't run for a second term in 1950 because he had an infant son, Walter.

In 1994, Walter Dalton was geared up to run for the Senate when his teenage son, Brian, was diagnosed with a progressive visual impairment that ultimately left him legally blind. Dalton remembered losing his father and decided he needed to be home. The opportunity to run for the Senate arose again two years later. With his son's vision impairment being managed and mindful of his father's public service, Dalton won with a 320-vote margin of victory out of 44,000 votes.

He quickly became co-chairman of the Education Committee and then to one of three co-chairmen of the powerful Appropriations Committee that writes the state budget.

Dalton said some days he wakes up and hesitates to get going because of the pile of tasks that lie ahead, but then he is reminded of the obstacles his son faces.

"I think of his day," Dalton said, "and it's not too hard to get up then."

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