After the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent almost $400,000 in recent weeks on independent expenditures that hammered state Rep. Jay Love (R) and supported Montgomery Mayor Bobby Bright (D) in the battleground 2nd district, the National Republican Congressional Committee fired back this week with more than $300,000 in independent expenditures on a new television ad and mailers.

The NRCC’s first ad in the contest was released Tuesday. Along with taking shots at Bright for his record on issues such as immigration, the ad pans the Montgomery mayor for claiming he’s an independent while “taking big campaign bucks from liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi.”

The new NRCC mailers that were released Wednesday follow up on several themes and images from the television commercial and claim Bright is “keeping voters in the dark about his record.”

The uptick in spending from the NRCC comes after Freedom’s Watch, the conservative 501(c)(4) that is seeking to boost Republican candidates, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in September on ads attacking Bright.

The DCCC ran its first ad in the race in early September. The committee has now run three ads in the contest and has reserved more than three-quarters of a million dollars in the 2nd district leading up to Election Day.