I’ll be honest: I just don’t get Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton’s strategy in running for governor against former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory.

Gov. Bev Perdue is deeply unpopular. Republicans/McCrory want to link Dalton to Perdue. Democrats/Dalton, meanwhile, want to link McCrory to the Republicans running the General Assembly. That’s all pretty basic stuff, but it’s also where things start to break down for Dalton. It’s just more difficult to tie McCrory to the General Assembly because he’s never served there.

That isn’t the big problem for Dalton though. The defining issue over the just-completed session was the battle over the budget between Perdue and the General Assembly. Perdue wanted to keep most of an expiring temporary 1 percent additional sales tax increase in place to fund education; the Republicans wanted to let the tax expire. The General Assembly overrode Perdue’s veto of a budget without the higher tax rate lat year and this year. In the Democratic primary, Dalton fell in behind Perdue’s budget plan, which makes it extremely easy to tie Perdue to Dalton.

Even more fundamentally though, Dalton takes it a step further and is running on the idea that North Carolina is currently on the right course expect except for the General Assembly’s refusal to tax enough for and spend enough on education. Which is to say that Dalton is embracing the legacy of Bev Perdue and Mike Easily.

That might make sense if Perdue were popular and the state were doing well — Dalton could argue that he’s the logical guy to carry on that success. But the state’s unemployment rate is currently 9.4 percent, Perdue is among the least popular governors in the country and Easily is now a convicted felon.

I just don’t see how Dalton can win the governorship with this strategy, especially since he’s behind in the latest polling (see previous post) and trails badly in fundraising. Now McCrory could do something stupid and hand the election to Dalton. Or maybe the hope is that North Carolina remains a battleground state in the presidential election, and a late huge surge for Barack Obama carries Dalton into office on Obama’s coattails like what happened to Perdue four years ago. But Dalton has no control over whether either of those things take place.

There’s still time for Dalton to craft a more appealing message. Whether he and his campaign do so remains to be seen.

Bonus observation: The second biggest recent state political issue issue? The amendment to the state constitution banning gay marriage. Bringing that up won’t do much for Dalton.