Walter Dalton promoted his Home Protection Pilot Program in Raleigh today.

At a meeting of the N.C. Housing Finance Agency, the candidate for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor talked about a program that provides no-interest bridge loans to workers who have lost their jobs to prevent them from losing their homes.

The program has helped more than 300 families in 61 counties get bridge loans to keep their homes.

Dalton plans to make the program permanent, extend it to all 100 counties and double the funding.

Spokesman Lewis Lowe said the program began as a response to the displaced textile workers in the senator's home district of Rutherford and Cleveland counties.

"I listen to my constituents," Dalton said. "Many of my textile workers came to me and they were very fearful they would lose their home."

Sharon Lowery, who is a middle school secretary, approached Dalton at a meeting of the N.C. Association of Educators to thank him. She was later invited to share her experience at publicity events.

"I have screamed it from the rooftop 'Thank you Senator Dalton for helping us keep our house,'" she said.

Beverly Perdue has released her answers on a teacher's survey as well.

Not surprisingly, the lieutenant governor's responses to the N.C. Association of Educators are the same as those of state Treasurer Richard Moore, her rival in the race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

She also supports keeping the cap on charter schools, using lottery money for public education and developing a "professional competitive salary" for teachers.

Like Moore, she opposes school vouchers and criticizes the federal No Child Left Behind Act, saying it is "significantly under funded and overly bureaucratic."

Perdue's answers draw more heavily on her biography, however. She notes that she was a public school teacher for kindergarten, ninth and 12th grades in Georgia and Florida, led Senate committees on education and received the NCAE's 2004 "Friend of Education" award.

"As a former teacher, and the mother of two boys, I believe no job is more important than the one that teachers do everyday," she wrote.