Mystic - Saying it would restore support to a major state economic driver that has been damaged by two years of budget cuts in Hartford, Democrat Dan Malloy on Monday proposed a $15 million campaign to market Connecticut as a tourism destination.

On a tour of southeastern Connecticut tourism-related businesses, including the Mystic Seaport Museum, the Mystic Aquarium and Cross Sound Ferry in New London, Malloy, who is seeking the governor's office, and his running mate, Comptroller Nancy Wyman, said Connecticut must revive its dormant marketing campaign to lure out-of-state visitors, and said the state's investment would be returned as much as threefold in new revenue and business activity.

"The idea that we have a zero ... dollar advertising budget is a vast embarrassment to me and should be to everyone else," Malloy said, referring to the decision to eliminate the budget for state tourism marketing in the budget approved last fall by Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the state legislature.

That budget cut, said officials from the seaport, the aquarium and the ferry company, had dumped the responsibility for luring tourists from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts onto the tourist venues themselves. And they say it has cut into business not just for them but for all the other state businesses that thrive on the disposable income of outsiders, from gas stations to bed-and-breakfasts.

"Our only option is to go it alone, and we don't have really deep pockets to do it," said Stephen C. White, the president of Mystic Seaport. "So we're really feeling it."

"We were bringing a tremendous amount of resources to the state," White said, "and for the state to cut us off completely after all that we've contributed to the state's revenue doesn't make any sense."

In the meantime, Mystic-area destinations have formed the Greater Mystic Visitors' Bureau and spent $500,000 in combined private funds to try to draw visitors.

But with greater state support, said Stephen Coan, the aquarium's president and chairman of the bureau, the group could purchase far more expensive advertising in coveted markets like New York and southern Massachusetts.

"Those are two of the most expensive markets to buy media in, and currently we have very little media exposure in those areas," Coan said. "The largest population is in those areas and therefore the potential is huge within those markets. ... We have to be investing exponentially in those markets in order to make a dent."

"What I'm proposing is not risky at all: to invest in tourism, an industry that already pays the state $1.3 billion in revenue, which we believe could be enhanced," Malloy said, as he and Wyman stood amid the hum of parents and children who clustered by the tanks of fish, rays, sea lions and sharks.

(Both Malloy and Wyman, along with a handful of enthusiastic campaign aides, reached into the water to touch the white spotted bamboo and coral cat sharks as they swam by.)

But if not risky, it is, at least, a campaign promise. Malloy's plan would use the existing hotel occupancy tax to fund the $15 million marketing budget, and he said the marketing budget could increase as returns from that tax rise on an anticipated wave of new visitors.

Malloy's opponent for the Democratic nomination, Ned Lamont, looked favorably on new tourism business investment, but also said he was loath to make a commitment to new spending in what is shaping up to be a very difficult budget season next spring.

"I suppose as a politician I should say '$16 million,'" Lamont said with a chuckle. "Look, I can't out-promise Dan. I think tourism dollars, to the degree to which they generate jobs, are something that are going be very important."

"But," Lamont added, "when you've got a $3.5 billion (projected) deficit, I think you've got to be very careful about what promises you make. The first promise I'm going to make is an honest budget; that's the only promise I'm making right now."

Malloy issued no such qualification.

"It's one of the things that we're just going to find the money for," he said.

t.mann@theday.com