Two legislators from Massachusetts, the state’s House Majority Leader Ronald Mariano and Steven Walsh, chairman of the committee on health care financing, flew to Las Vegas last week, then made a side trip to Nye County Democratic Party headquarters to debunk some of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s rhetoric.

Both politicians worked with Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts. They acted as pundits after last Thursday’s presidential debate.

“When Mitt Romney was elected, he really was elected because of his debating skills. He was running against a woman who was not as experienced and as articulate as he was,” Mariano said. “He’s a debater. He’s a person who will say anything and do anything to get elected. We’ve seen that act when he ran against Ted Kennedy for the Senate; he was pro choice. Now he’s moved back from that position because he knew he couldn’t get the nomination if he came out and said he was pro choice. This is a consistent pattern with this guy.”

Mariano laughed at Romney’s statement he was able to work with Democrats across the aisle, what Romney cited as a major difference between the Massachusetts health care bill, or Romneycare, and Obamacare.

“I was chairman of financial services, which is the second most powerful committee behind Ways and Means. We dealt with banks, insurance, all the money-generating institutions in Massachusetts. I didn’t meet the guy, never talked to him until two years into his term. So if that’s reaching across the aisle, he’s redefined it. You know we didn’t see that sense of cooperation,” he said.

But Romney did indeed meet with Democratic leaders on Mondays while governor — it was a tradition that began three governors before him, Mariano said.

“One of the reasons why we got on a plane and came out here is because we wanted to let people know what this guy is really about. The fact of the matter is he will say anything and it’s troubling to us. We got hoodwinked. We don’t want to see the country get hoodwinked. He came out of nowhere. There was a question whether or not he was even a resident of Massachusetts,” he said.

Walsh said Romney made the statement in the debate he’s for coal.

“One of the first things he did as governor of Massachusetts is tried to shut down the Salem Power Plant, which is a clean coal plant. It actually allows people in the northeast part of Massachusetts, the poor people, to get heat in winter,” Walsh said.

During the Oct. 3 debate with President Obama, Romney also said Massachusetts had the No.1 educational system in the country.

“That may be true, but not under him. He cut education funding. He cut our local aid, which cut our police, our fire and our education when he was the governor of Massachusetts. We had to override those vetoes,” Walsh said.

He said Romney out-sourced some state government jobs to India.

“He left a billion dollar deficit when he left and he left the working families of our state crushed. It’s taken us probably six years to bounce back and recover,” he said.

Mariano said the Massachusetts economy was robust with a life sciences and biotech industry. But when the economy tanked, Romney raised fees and licenses by $750 million, which increased the tax burden for the average Massachusetts taxpayer by $1,200, he said.

“Obamacare is based on what we did in Massachusetts, the exact same thing. We have 98 percent coverage; 98 percent of the residents in Massachusetts have health insurance. What do you have in Nevada?” Mariano asked.

If the Republican’s Medicare voucher plan passes, Walsh predicts community hospitals will be in deep trouble.

“Your level of care will go down and you won’t have too many community hospitals any more,” he said.

Pahrump and Tonopah residents are served by community hospitals.

Walsh said Obamacare moves the leverage away from insurance companies and gives it to a patient and their doctor, not a third party that takes 10 percent off the top and has no medical experience. Now Massachusetts is working on cost containment to bring health care costs down by making common sense decisions. He said they’re also providing more disclosure to patients online, through their website: <a href=mahealthconnector.org.

>mahealthconnector.org” Walsh asked rhetorically.

Mariano said Massachusetts began studying a health care plan because the state had a free health care bill of $1.1 billion in the budget every year, emergency care that went to people who could afford health insurance but didn’t buy it. When Romney signed the bill, it was real pomp and circumstance, with a drum and bugle corps and a giant signing ceremony, said Mariano, who was on the conference committee for the Massachusetts health care bill in 2006.

“In order to cut programs, he was going to say ‘is this program worth borrowing from China for,’ which I just find so hypocritical. This is a guy that has his money in trusts and investments that is investing in the economy of China as we speak and now he holds this out as some symbolic stick he’s going to measure everything by,” Mariano said.

He predicted Romney’s advantage in the first debate will only be a temporary bump in the polls.

“People are too smart. When you start to throw the details of his plan out, they don’t add up. It just doesn’t work and I think his candidacy is going to go by the wayside,” Mariano said.

Walsh called Romney, “a devil in a Boy Scout uniform.” While Obama will win Massachusetts, states like Nevada are critical, he said.

Typically, presidential debate viewership grows with each subsequent event.

Yet, candidates don’t want to get off to a bad start. In 1996, viewership fell from the first to second presidential debate between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole after Clinton was viewed as the clear frontrunner.

While the 2012 election may not be won tonight, it certainly can be lost with one slip of the tongue, not-so-subtle glance at a watch or subconscious sigh.

Not surprisingly both parties were busy Wednesday framing the first presidential debate between President Barack Obama and GOP nominee Mitt Romney before the 90-minute showdown even started.

Wednesday morning, Rep. Mark Amodei and Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki staged a conference call with media members to attack Obama’s record on job creation and remarks Tuesday by Vice President Joe Biden.

Amodei criticized the president for not approving the Keystone Pipeline project, and for limiting oil and gas exploration in the United States, all of which, the representative said, would create jobs.

On Tuesday, at an event in Charlotte, N.C., Biden criticized the Romney economic plan.

“How they can justify raising taxes on a middle class that has been buried the last four years? How in Lord’s name can they justify raising their taxes with these tax cuts?” Biden asked the crowd.

The Romney campaign immediately jumped on the comments as an admission that Obama’s policies have hurt the middle class, while Biden clarified that he was referring to proposals that would lower the taxes for wealthy Americans while placing a greater burden on the middle class.

Krolicki said it’s “unconscionable” that mining projects in Nevada have been delayed or squashed by Bureau of Land Management regulations.

“Perhaps the vice president yesterday stumbled upon the truth and made mention of it,” Krolicki said. “That’s how I would look at. Perhaps in his debate prep he learned what the admin has done (to the middle class).”

Meanwhile, Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., and two Democratic Massachusetts state representatives, Ronald Mariano and Steven Walsh, were in Las Vegas on Wednesday to offer their predebate spin.

“When you take the second half of somebody’s sentence you can make it sound any way you want,” Walsh said of Biden’s comments. “The bottom line is that the whole country is coming out of a recession, it wasn’t a depression because of this president and what he’s done, and we’re coming out faster certainly than we did in Massachusetts when we had Gov. Romney as our leader. So the vice president was trying to suggest that the middle class will do even worse under Gov. Romney, who doesn’t care about jobs. When he was governor he outsourced our government call center jobs to India.”

Mariano, who worked on the Massachusetts health care act, said Romney rarely forged bipartisan compromise and the “rainy-day fund” the former governor often touts as a legacy of his leadership in the northeastern state was more the result of hard work by the state House of Representatives.

Touching on energy policy, Becerra offered his outlook for the debate and the final few weeks of the campaigns.

“I think people are still wondering ‘Who is the real Mitt Romney?’” Becerra said. “(Obama) needs to continue this conversation with the American people, about how he’s going to continue moving forward creating jobs, how he’s going to in source jobs, not outsource jobs, how he’s finally going to make sure that we are home growing our energy versus having to import it. It’s about time America talked about exporting something other than jobs and importing something other than oil. … Actually we are exporting oil for the first time in quite some time.”

On Monday morning, the Obama campaign announced that a team of Massachusetts politicians would fan out to battleground states and position themselves in advance of Wednesday’s debate to “tell the truth” about Republican Mitt Romney’s record while governor of the state.

Officials planned to travel to Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin. They include: Majority Leader Ron Mariano, Rep. Steve Walsh, Rep. Martha “Marty” Walz, Rep. Han Naughton, Rep. Linda Forry, Rep. Bill Straus, Rep. John Scibak, Mayors Setti Warren, Joe Curatone, and Rob Dolan and Boston City Council member Felix Arroyo.

“They are in a unique position to tell voters across the country about Romney’s record of failed leadership and failed policies in Massachusetts, which included slashing funding for education and job training while raising taxes and fees on middle class families and small businesses,” Obama campaign spokesman Adam Fetcher said. “The decisions Romney made in Massachusetts caused the state to fall behind badly: ranking 47th out of 50 in job creation and leading the nation in debt per-capita.”

Obama’s campaign released a video featuring some of these politicians last week. Here’s a fact check on some of Democrats’ claims about Romney’s gubernatorial record.

In the few references to Mr. Romney’s time as governor during the first day of speeches, national Republicans focused on how he balanced the budget, cut taxes and created jobs.

“As governor, he has unleashed a true Republican revolution that has already accomplished so much. It is a success story of fiscal responsibility, controlled government spending, lower taxes, and pro-growth policies,” said Luce Vela Fortuno, the first lady of Puerto Rico, from the podium at the Tampa Bay Times forum.

Among Massachusetts delegates — state Reps. Kim Ferguson, R-Holden; Stephen Howitt, R-Seekonk; and Donald Wong, R-Saugus — all contended that, despite having to govern with a super-majority of Democrats in the Legislature, Mr. Romney was able to turn the state’s economy around.

“He was governor, but he ran government as a business,” Mr. Wong said in an interview.

“I think the big difference between Romney and Obama is that, as an executive, Mitt didn’t make excuses about the mess he inherited as governor,” added state Rep. Paul Frost, R-Auburn.

To be sure, Mr. Romney’s record as a fiscally prudent government executive from 2003 to 2007 was buoyed by a strong national economy. Still, he did turn a deficit into a surplus.

Mr. Romney cut state spending by $1.4 billion in his first year, dropping it from $36.3 billion to $34.9 billion. His final fiscal budget in 2006 was $34.8 billion. Revenues climbed every year during his term, from $34 billion in 2003 to $40.8 billion in 2006.

As with most convention speeches, those focusing on tax and spending cuts do not delve into the details of how Mr. Romney righted the Bay State’s fiscal ship. To achieve this, he increased fees for services such as court filings and marriage licenses, and closed several tax loopholes to raise state revenues.

Total tax revenues and total fee revenues climbed during Mr. Romney’s stewardship. Tax revenues rose every year, from $15.2 billion in 2003 to $18.7 billion in 2006. Fee revenues were $8.6 billion in 2003, rising to $11 billion in 2006.

Democrats and other critics contend that while Mr. Romney professed to cut taxes as governor, the overall governmental burden on Massachusetts residents increased. The Tax Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based think-tank, reported that the burden increased from 9.9 percent of an average income in 2003 to 10.2 percent of income in 2006. The Tax Foundation reported that, in both years, Massachusetts was above the national average.

Massachusetts House Majority Leader Ronald Mariano, a Quincy Democrat, said in a phone interview that GOP rhetoric on Mr. Romney’s tax cuts is a distortion of his gubernatorial record. Mr. Mariano said that it obscures the increased fee burden Massachusetts citizens face. He estimated that the total tax and fee burden increased by $1,200 per year for the average citizen under Mr. Romney.

Mr. Mariano also charged that the Republican presidential candidate takes too much credit for balancing the state’s budget — arguing that reforms in Massachusetts occur only with the consent of the Democratic super-majority in the Legislature, and that Romney governed in good economic times.

“Sometimes you get the benefit of an up-cycle in the economy,” said Mr. Mariano, who has served in the Legislature since 1991.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s speech to the convention applauded Mr. Romney’s record as a job-creating governor, saying Mr. Romney “went from the loss of tens of thousands of jobs to the creation of 40,000 new jobs by the time he left office — and he did it in Taxachusetts of all places.”

Mr. Kasich’s statement matches figures used by the Romney campaign, which say that the newly anointed presidential candidate added 49,100 jobs in his time as governor. But that figure may be potentially misleading when cited without the context of national trends at the time.

In her speech Tuesday night, Ann Romney recapitulated figures from a campaign advertisement crediting her husband with lowering unemployment in Massachusetts to 4.7 percent. Mr. Romney governed between two national recessions, which could help to explain the drop in unemployment.

During his tenure, unemployment did drop from 5.6 percent to 4.6 percent in Massachusetts. But the state’s unemployment rate was slightly lower than the national rate when he took office.

When his term was over it was roughly the same, according to FactCheck.org.

Not surprisingly, none of the national Republicans lauding the Romney record in Massachusetts have mentioned health care reform.

Similarities between the Massachusetts law and the Affordable Care Act pushed through by the Obama White House in 2010 — which Mr. Romney has promised to seek to repeal if elected — have served to highlight Mr. Romney’s transformation from moderate Republican governor to conservative party standard-bearer.

Speaking to The New York Times on the health care law in 2006, Mr. Romney said, “People ask me if this is conservative or liberal, and my answer is yes. It’s liberal in the sense that we’re getting our citizens health insurance. It’s conservative in that we’re not getting a government takeover.”

State Sen. Robert Hedlund, R-Weymouth, a delegate at this year’s convention who voted for the Massachusetts health care reform law, praised Mr. Romney for attempting to solve the biggest problem facing the state — the ballooning cost of health care.

In an interview, Mr. Hedlund said he’s not sure why Mr. Romney doesn’t talk about it more, while acknowledging that the former governor gets “twisted in knots” when he does talk about it now.

“What we have now is a little different than what he first proposed,” said Mr. Hedlund, noting that the state has added new mandates, and that the cost as well as the size and scope of the program have increased.

Mr. Mariano was one of the drafters of the Massachusetts health care reform during Romney’s tenure. He said he is puzzled by the former governor’s effort to downplay the most significant legislation passed under his watch.

“If I was in human resources and saw a gap of four years in your resume, I’d want to know what happened during that time,” Mr. Mariano said.