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Dr. Nirav Shah is the former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and a candidate in the Democratic primary for Maine governor.

We knew the positivity could not last forever.

Still, it is disappointing when the attacks finally come. Not because they are aimed at me, but because they are exactly the kind of politics Mainers reject wholeheartedly.

For months, I’ve traveled across Maine, holding town halls, answering unscreened questions, visiting communities large and small and talking with thousands of Mainers about what keeps them up at night. Housing. Healthcare. Energy bills. Rural hospitals. Reproductive freedom. The cost of simply staying in the state we love.

Again and again, people have said how grateful they are that this has been a primary of civility and ideas among colleagues who may disagree, but who respect one another and the voters enough to tell the truth.

Now, in the final days, an outside PAC from New York is trying to buy this election with dirty tricks. Funded by dark money and urged on by my opponents’ allies, they are seeking to drag this race into politics that divide people, distort the truth and hope fear beats facts.

Their ad opens by attacking me for having worked for a Republican governor. In reality, I was appointed to a nonpartisan public health position, confirmed by a Democratic Illinois State Senate, and charged with protecting the health and safety of every person: Democrat, Republican and everyone in between. Public health is not partisan.

The attack says I worked for a “union-busting firm.” They are referring to Sidley Austin, the same law firm where President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama met and practiced. In my time there, I never worked on a single case opposite a union, let alone tried to “bust” one. I later left that firm to dedicate my career to public service.

They say I have accepted donations from big pharma companies and private equity firms. Both claims are outright false and easily disproven by simply looking at my campaign finance records.

The ad is being run by a group called the Working Families Party; yet in their ad, they do not demonstrate how my policies would hurt working families. They offer innuendo. They offer guilt by association. They offer the same tired political playbook that treats voters like they cannot tell the difference between a record and a smear.

Here is my record: I have released nine detailed policy plans in this campaign, each built around improving the lives of all Maine families. Plans to build more homes, cap out-of-control healthcare costs, protect rural hospitals, strengthen public schools, defend reproductive freedom, lower energy costs, support older Mainers and protect Maine from federal overreach.

So when politicians and their outside dark money allies lead with lies instead of their own platforms, voters should ask: why? Why mislead rather than rely on the strength of their own policies?

Mainers have always known me as someone who gives it to them straight. Someone who
shows up in extraordinarily tough times, stays calm, follows the evidence and delivers results. With me, you will never get anything else.

So I will not stoop as low as others have here. I will not let dark money attack ads define this race, because Mainers deserve better. I will stay focused on you: your problems, your family, your bills, your future and the future of our state. That is the campaign I have run from the beginning. And that is the kind of governor I will be, for every working family in Maine.