Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins went on the attack this week against Democratic Senate nominee Troy Jackson, with her campaign releasing two ads blaming the former state Senate president for high costs, while the candidate herself took a shot at his personal life in a new national interview.

In her first attack ads of the midterms, Collins blamed Jackson for high property taxes and electricity costs, citing his votes in the state Senate. And in an interview with Politico, Collins jabbed Jackson for fathering two children with his second cousin — something that is legal in all 50 states.

David Farmer, a senior adviser for the Jackson campaign, said the attacks by Collins are a “desperate attempt to hold onto power and protect her billionaire backers” and to distract voters from her record of supporting President Donald Trump.

“Sen. Collins can’t defend her record or the fact that she voted with Donald Trump 96% of the time, so she’s launching MAGA-style attacks against Troy’s family and distorting his record,” Farmer said. “But Mainers are seeing through it, and they are ready to hold her accountable for her record and her failure to stand up to Donald Trump.”

Collins campaign spokesperson Blake Kernen defended the ads, saying Jackson’s record as Senate president is fair game.

“Troy Jackson was Maine’s second-highest-ranking elected official and Mainers wound up with the highest increase in electric prices in the nation and highest property tax burden based on income,” she said. “He wants to blame Susan Collins for Maine’s problems, but every other state in the nation did better than Maine on these issues — that is an Augusta problem and it got worse during Troy’s time as Senate president.”

Negative ads are not uncommon in political contests, but they are typically produced and funded by outside groups so candidates can focus on telling their own stories with positive ads. Collins has run attack ads in the past, including eight spots during her 2020 reelection campaign.

But the current attacks could suggest Maine’s senior senator believes she is trailing in the closely watched race, said Dan Shea, a political science professor at Colby College.

“My best guess is that her polling tells her that she’s likely losing a number of key issues, that the race is tight, that there’s some momentum against Republicans,” Shea said. “There’s a dramatic enthusiasm gap. So it doesn’t surprise me that she would come out negative.”

Kernen did not respond to questions about whether Collins believes she’s trailing in the race.

Ad Impact, which tracks ad spending and political ads, has a service that categorizes commercials as positive, negative or contrasting candidates.

As of Sept. 3, its data shows that groups have spent $138 million on ads in Maine’s U.S. Senate race, including more than $45 million on negative ads. The negatives were split fairly evenly among Republican- and Democratic-aligned groups.

But Republican groups have stepped up their attacks since Jackson became the nominee on July 25.

Of the $50 million in ads since Jackson became the Democratic nominee, nearly $20 million went toward negative ads, including $12.9 million by Republican-aligned groups and $7 million by Democratic groups.

Shea, who was bullish about Jackson’s chances to win in a July op-ed in the Press Herald, said that attack ads are less about persuading voters and more about boosting voter enthusiasm and turnout. He speculated that Collins may be concerned that swing voters and soft supporters may be willing abandon her this cycle as long as there is a viable alternative.

“What they’re doing is to try to make Troy Jackson not a viable alternative,” Shea said.

Collins’ campaign has spent about $135,000 on the two negative ads so far. But most of her spending — more than $5 million — has been on positive ads boosting her image.

In 2020, her campaign spent nearly $1 million on ads attacking her Democratic opponent, former Speaker of the Maine House Sara Gideon. Public polling routinely showed Collins trailing Gideon in that race, but the incumbent went on to win by about 9 points.

In addition to the ads released on Tuesday, Collins also hit Jackson’s personal life in an extended interview with Politico that was released on Wednesday.

Politico’s Jonathan Martin asked Collins if the circumstances of Jackson’s “personal life and the mother of his children (should) be relevant to this campaign.”

“Well, I’m not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin,” Collins said. “I don’t know whether people know that or not. … It’s not something I’m going to be emphasizing.”

No state in the U.S. prohibits people from marrying their second cousin; Jackson and his partner are not married.

Collins also hit Jackson’s political evolution, saying he “started out as a very conservative Republican and now he’s essentially a Democratic socialist.”

Jackson first ran for state office in 2000 as a Republican and lost. He ran two years later as an independent and won, going on to become a Democrat two years later.

As a Democrat, he was an opponent of abortion, but he has since become a strong supporter of reproductive rights for women, co-sponsoring a bill to expand abortion access in Maine after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the national protections afforded under Roe v. Wade in 2022.