(CNN) – Groups on both sides of the political aisle launched new ads in Wisconsin Wednesday morning, after a Democratic challenger was picked to face incumbent Republican Gov. Scott Walker in the recall election.
The Republican Governors Association aimed their fire at Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who won the Democratic nomination on Tuesday. The 30-second spot criticized Barrett's record as mayor, charging him with increasing taxes, government spending and unemployment, a consistent line of attack from Republican groups in the state.
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"Job losses under Tom Barrett are so devastating that Milwaukee became one of America's ten worst cities for unemployment. Now Barrett wants to be governor of Wisconsin?" the narrator in the spot said. "No thanks, Mr. Barrett, you've done enough damage in Milwaukee."
Meanwhile, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee unveiled its own ad Wednesday morning that featured first-person accounts from those who said they were negatively impacted by the Republican and Walker-backed budget proposals.
"As a Republican my entire life, I'm appalled at what Scott Walker and the Republicans did," one man said in the commercial.
"This is Republican class warfare, an attack on the middle class," one woman said. "This is a battle we need to win."
The accounts were told from outside the state's capitol, where protests spent weeks in opposition to Republican budget proposals.
Adam Green, co-founder of PCCC, said the spot is a "reminder of how that fight started – and it encourages folks across Wisconsin to finish the job." The ad, backed by $30,000, will run on broadcast and cable television in Madison as well as on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" and Sunday morning talk shows, according to the group.
The Badger State race has received consistent national attention since February of 2011 when a bill, supported by Walker, passed to curtail the collective bargaining rights of state employees. Republicans in Wisconsin insisted the move was necessary to control the skyrocketing costs of public employee benefits and close the budget shortfall. Democrats argued it was an attempt to gut public-sector labor unions, one of their core constituencies.
Ads have since bombarded the state ahead of Tuesday's Democratic Primary and the June 5th recall election.