As candidates close in with less than two weeks to go before the Sept. 10 primary, the mostly calm and respectful races have given way to moments of mud-slinging followed by cries of foul.

The skirmishes landed Democrat Joyce Craig briefly in shaky legal territory due to a missing advertisement disclosure, according to an email from the attorney general’s office, which she corrected. Republican Kelly Ayotte also had to fix a television ad that hadn’t met all requirements of paid-for disclosures, as outlined in New Hampshire law.

Craig’s campaign, in an ad that criticized opponent Cinde Warmington’s record on the opioid crisis, initially used a visual disclaimer but no auditory identification of who’d paid for the ad. It accuses Warmington of profiting off the opioid crisis as a lobbyist for Purdue Pharma and says she called OxyContin a “miracle drug,” when she testified in 2002. By that time, warnings were already percolating about the drug’s potential for abuse.

“The truth is Joyce Craig is attacking me to deflect from her own failure to protect Manchester from being ravaged by the opioid epidemic during her tenure as mayor, and for the related explosion of homelessness in her city,” Warmington said.

Warmington put out her own ad saying her family has struggled with opioid use and that she’s spent years helping families whose lives were upended by opioid addiction. She also held a press conference Tuesday morning, in which several people spoke in favor of Warmington’s record on the issue.

In the same vein, an Ayotte ad smearing Craig originally left out the campaign treasurer’s address. In it, Ayotte goes after Craig’s record as mayor of Manchester and depicts New Hampshire’s biggest city as “Craigville,” a city run rampant with homelessness and violent crime.

Craig’s campaign complained that the ad was misleading and that the former mayor reduced violent crime by 40% and homeless encampments by 70%.

Gubernatorial candidates aren’t the only ones squabbling over ads – the Democratic primary for New Hampshire’s second congressional district is heating up as voters prepare to decide between Maggie Goodlander and Colin Van Ostern.

An ad put out last week by a political action committee backing Goodlander, a fourth-generation Granite Stater who’s banking on her federal experience, called her opponent a “perennial candidate” – Van Ostern served on New Hampshire’s executive council and lost his bids for governor and secretary of state. It went on to attack his business record and accused him of accepting corporate PAC donations after he’s made it a point in his campaign to steer clear of that.

Van Ostern sent a cease-and-desist letter to the PAC, and called the ad a “false and defamatory representation” of his candidacy, which is based on his community involvement and life in New Hampshire.

His campaign has for weeks lobbed attacks at Goodlander for being out of touch with the Granite State and drawing from a robust out-of-state fundraising pool – about 90% of the money she’s raised is from out of state. In the first weeks of her campaign, 88% of her individual contributions were from folks outside of the state, according to an analysis by The Intercept. That changed recently – in the most recent campaign finance filing, almost two-thirds of Goodlander’s donors were in New Hampshire.

Even Annie Kuster, whose seat they’re both vying for, joined the frenzy. Kuster endorsed Van Ostern months ago and appeared in one of his campaign ads earlier this week hammering those same points. In the ad, Kuster also says Goodlander donated thousands of dollars to anti-abortion Republicans. Goodlander donated $2,800 to Republican Dan Driscoll in his 2020 bid for Congress.

Emily’s List, a PAC that backs female candidates who support abortion rights, sent out a press release Monday blasting Van Ostern’s move of “shamefully attacking” Goodlander.

“Colin Van Ostern should be ashamed of himself,” said Yari Aquino, Emily’s List’s director of campaign communications. She referenced Goodlander’s personal story of losing an unborn child and her work starting the Reproductive Rights Task Force at the U.S. Department of Justice. “Her record is clear.”

The latest poll from St. Anselm College, released Aug. 16, shows Ayotte in a strong lead against her opponent, former state senate pre sident Chuck Morse, 59% to 29%. Craig is currently leading Warmington, 37% to 28%, and Goodlander has a hold on Van Ostern, 41% to 31%.

Charlotte Matherly is the statehouse reporter for the Concord Monitor and Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in partnership with Re port for America. Follow her on X a t @charmatherly, or send her an email at cmatherly@cmonitor.com.