In Tuesday’s North Carolina primary election, Democrats chose outgoing Gov. Bev Perdue’s top deputy to run for her job. Republicans pounced early Wednesday, launching a new website that dubs the campaign of Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton “Bev Part Two.” Dalton will run against Republican Pat McCrory in November.
“North Carolina Democrats have just ordered a sequel to the Perdue administration,” North Carolina GOP spokesman Rob Lockwood told The Daily Caller. “This would be the most expensive sequel North Carolina taxpayers would ever see, as Walter ‘Bev Part 2’ Dalton has an affinity for raising taxes by billions of dollars.”
The Democratic Party in North Carolina was rocked by a same-sex sexual harassment scandal this year that claimed the jobs of its chairman and executive director. Perdue, who told a reporter to “get over it” in response to questions about how she knew of the alleged harassment months before it became public, later decided against seeking re-election.
Perdue also attracted unwanted national attention by suggesting in September 2011 that the federal government should consider canceling congressional elections to give lawmakers time to focus on the nation’s economic problems.
Her would-be successor, according to the new GOP website, would return similar political priorities to North Carolina. “Her agenda and my agenda are very much the same,” Dalton said in 2009, according to the flashy site.
In one part of the online site, the state GOP notes that Dalton and Perdue voted alike 98 percent of the time during their two terms together in the North Carolina Senate.
The two have also had a 15-year history of collaboration. “When Walter Dalton came to the North Carolina General Assembly back in 1997, he served on two Senate committees with Bev Perdue, including the Appropriations Committee,” according to the website. “While Perdue was elected Lt. Governor under Mike Easley, Dalton served as a key ally in the Senate for eight years. In 2009, Perdue and Dalton were sworn in together as Governor and Lt. Governor.”
Dalton won his party’s nomination handily Tuesday night — dispensing with Bill Faison, a state legislator who barely registered double digits in statewide polls, and former U.S. Congressman Bob Etheridge – who was caught on video in June 2000 trying to choke a young man who asked him if he supported the “Obama agenda.”
The new GOP website tying Dalton to Perdue also includes a video parodying Dalton’s first campaign ad, in which he associates his name with the phrase “Great Jobs.”
In the parody ad, the GOP associates Dalton’s name with Perdue’s, with tax increases, and with “flip-flop[ping] on political positions — just like Bev Perdue.”
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