The Barack Obama re-election campaign has pivoted from attacks over Mitt Romney’s stewardship at private equity firm Bain Capital.

President Barack Obama. File photo/ Associated Press.

Now it is focusing on his tenure as governor of Massachusetts — and not painting a pretty picture.

The Obama campaign said in a statement that Romney’s economic plan in the state resulted in “slower job creation, more debt, bigger government and cuts to programs essential to the middle class. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.”

During Romney’s term, the Obama campaign said, Massachusetts fell to 47th out of 50 states in job creation and manufacturing jobs fell at twice the national average.

The  Romney campaign cited its own statistics, including an unemployment rate in Massachusetts that fell from 5.6 percent to 4.7 percent. The campaign also said that the state added tens of thousands of net new jobs during the Romney administration.

Mitt Romney/AP File Photo

“President Obama would love to have Mitt Romney’s record of job creation and economic growth. Instead, he’s stuck defending an unemployment rate that has failed to meet his own goal of 6 percent and an economy that’s stuck in neutral,” Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg said on the campaign’s website.

“If President Obama had even half of Mitt Romney’s record on jobs and the economy, he’d be running on it,” she said.

So much for that cordial congratulatory call from Obama to  Romney on securing the GOP nomination.

– John Guerriero