Democratic-aligned committees began flooding Colorado airwaves on Wednesday with ads calling a pair of Republican candidates for governor and U.S. senator “too conservative” for the state, drawing swift condemnation from the targeted candidates’ primary opponents, who described the move as a meddling attempt to yield weaker GOP nominees.

While Democrats say they’re simply giving voters the facts, critics say the ads are meant to appeal to the Republican primary electorate’s base by stressing the candidates’ conservative positions on issues including abortion and gun control, potentially boosting candidates who won’t fare as well with moderate voters in the general election.

The multi-million dollar ad campaigns land as Coloradans begin receiving ballots in the mail ahead of the June 28 primary election.

Democratic Colorado, a recently formed federal super PAC, and Colorado Information Network, a longstanding Democratic state-level independent expenditure committee, released nearly identical TV ads featuring U.S. Senate contender Ron Hanks and gubernatorial hopeful Greg Lopez, the top-line candidates in their respective Republican primary contests.

Hanks and business owner Joe O’Dea are vying for the nomination to take on Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who is seeking a third full term. Lopez, the former mayor of Parker who made an unsuccessful run for governor four years ago, is competing against CU Regent Heidi Ganahl in the primary to pick the challenger for Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. 

“How conservative is Ron Hanks?” says the narrator of the 30-ad focused on the first-term state lawmaker from Penrose. “Hanks was rated one of the most conservative members in the statehouse. He says Joe Biden’s election was a fraud. Hanks wants to ban all abortions — and he wants to build Trump’s border wall. Hanks even sponsored a bill that would allow concealed carry with no permits. Ron Hanks — too conservative for Colorado.”

Democratic Colorado Ron Hanks Too Conservative ad

The ad describing Lopez ends with the same line after making similar points, including saying the Republican “opposes gay marriage” and “will get rid of Colorado’s new law protecting abortion rights.”

A spokeswoman for Ganahl, Lexi Swearingen, said the spending by Democrats is an attempt to “pick the candidate, a former Democrat himself, that they feel they can easily beat in November.”

Lopez routinely boasts that he saw the light in the 1990s when he was a mayor and changed his registration to Republican.

Calling Ganahl “a formidable opponent” with a message that resonates with the state’s large share of unaffiliated voters, Swearingen added that Ganahl — the only Republican holding statewide office in Colorado — won election in 2016 against similar tactics.

O’Dea called the ad describing his primary opponent “an attempt to boost Ron Hanks” and said it demonstrates that Democrats are “threatened” by O’Dea’s candidacy.

“Joe Biden is wrecking the country and the Democrats’ only hope of winning Colorado is a multi-million dollar act of desperation — hijacking the Republican nomination for an unserious candidate who has zero chance of winning,” O’Dea said in a statement released by his campaign.

O’Dea’s campaign noted in a release that Hanks has raised less than $40,000 in six months, while the candidate has cultivated a reputation as “an election conspiracy theorist,” underlined by a campaign video depicting Hanks blowing up voting equipment.

The wealthy owner of a construction company, O’Dea has poured more than $600,000 into his campaign and recently announced plans to spend at least $300,000 on TV ads during the primary. American Policy Fund, a super PAC largely funded by O’Dea donors with connections to the construction industry, is spending more than $500,000 on TV ads boosting O’Dea.

Hanks, who has yet to go on the air with TV advertising, told Colorado Politics he welcomes the support.

“Unaffiliated voters and Democrats fully recognize this economy is in shambles, and Joe Biden caused it,” he said in a text message. “I welcome their support, and I am pleased they recognize my straightforward policies and professional experience make me the only choice on the Republican side.”

Hanks rejected his primary rival’s characterization of his campaign. 

“Once again, Joe is working off a bad script,” Hanks said. “I am quite serious, and the problems facing our nation are grave.”

Added Hanks: “Primary voters recognize I am the only conservative choice in this race.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee said the Democrats’ ad campaign “[j]ust goes to show you how vulnerable Michael Bennet is in a state that Joe Biden won by more than 13 points.”

After citing early campaign spending by some of Bennet’s fellow Democratic incumbents, NRSC spokesman T.W. Arrighi said in a statement: “The money tells the story. Republican primaries haven’t even concluded in so-called blue states like Colorado, Washington, and New Hampshire, yet Democrats are throwing millions upon millions of dollars early to stop the bleeding of incumbent senators. Democrat panic underscores their historic weakness, and at this point, no amount of money will save them.”

The spokeswoman for the group running ads about Hanks brushed off suggestions there is anything underhanded about the group’s motives and told Colorado Politics that the ads are “educating our voters.”

“The general election starts in three weeks,” Alvina Vasquez, a veteran Democratic operative and spokeswoman for Democratic Colorado, told Colorado Politics. “We want people to know what we think about the candidates now. The other side has gotten so out of step with Colorado, we can’t let this go any further. People need to know.”

Colorado GOP Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown said voters won’t fall for the Democrats’ “deceptive, dark money interference in our elections” and suggested the massive spending reveals how vulnerable Bennet and Polis are in what’s shaping up to be a Republican wave year.

Attempts to reach a representative of Colorado Information Network, the group running the ad featuring Lopez, were unsuccessful. A spokeswoman for Bennet declined to comment, and neither Lopez’s campaign nor Polis’ campaign responded to a request for comment.

Both parties have histories of trying to sway the outcome of the other’s primaries, usually by running ads attacking the less moderate candidates, who are considered easier to defeat in a general election.

Colorado Democrats helped pioneer the approach in the state’s 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary, when an outside group spent around $500,000 highlighting scandals that surrounded the frontrunner, former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, who lost the nomination narrowly to tea party-backed newcomer Dan Maes, whose campaign collapsed before the November election.

National Democrats tried something similar in 2014 by attacking former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo for his conservative positions, but former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez won the gubernatorial nomination after he blasted the “dishonest, negative attacks and underhanded tactics.”

The NRSC took the same tack in Colorado in the last election, albeit on a smaller scale, though it didn’t work. In a billboard campaign and targeted ads that drew national attention, the Republicans linked Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff and other more left-leaning primary candidates to popular progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman known as AOC. Former Gov. John Hickenlooper won the nomination and went on to deny Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner a second term.