Emerging from the weekend, Tommy Moore bashed Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, while Frank Willis touted his executive-level accomplishments for his Pee Dee region.

The two major candidates for the Democratic nomination for governor continued their pattern of Moore, a state senator, assuming a front-runner's stance of jumping from primary to general election issues and Willis, the mayor of Florence, leaning on his executive resume as an outsider willing to shake up state government.

State Rep. Fletcher Smith, D-Greenville, a Moore supporter, said his candidate is doing exactly what he should, campaigning "as the consensus candidate of the party."

An absence of independent polling data and the low-key campaigns each man is waging cloud the front-runner question.

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Moore, a 27-year legislative veteran from Clearwater in Aiken County, said Sanford is levying de facto taxes on the state's working people by revamping Medicaid requirements, cutting the Department of Commerce industry-recruiting budget and depriving schools of mandated appropriations.

"Every critical problem we don't solve in South Carolina costs us money," Moore said. "A tax by any other name is still a tax."

Jason Miller, Sanford's campaign manager, said Moore "was chock-full of false factual assertions."

He said the criticism of Sanford on school funding is false because under his administration, "The Base Student Cost was fully funded last year for the first time in five years, and this year's executive budget proposed to fully fund" it for the coming school year.

"While Moore claims to be concerned about the state's unemployment rate, his only policy proposal would actually cost South Carolina jobs," Miller said. He referred to Moore's introduction last week of a $150 million cigarette tax increase for a new health-care program that would require employer and employee contributions.

In a statement released by his campaign, Willis was portrayed as an action-oriented mayor who, during a drought in 2002, badgered state officials for help in convincing North Carolina to open the floodgates of dams to increase the flow of the parched Pee Dee River. The river, originating in North Carolina, is the region's source of drinking water and sustenance for plants and wildlife.

It is part of a new Willis initiative, referred to in campaign handouts as "Frank Willis Works," periodically focusing on issues his campaigns says he tackled in his 10 years as mayor.

Rebuffed at the state level, Willis organized the Pee Dee River Coalition of cities, counties, businesses and assorted users of the river's water to raise funds to challenge the re-licensing of the North Carolina dams, his campaign said.

Last year, with the re-licensing process under way, Willis sought help from the Department of Natural Resources, but was turned down for lack of funds. According to his campaign, Willis "convinced state officials to appropriate the necessary funds."