Republican Richard Tisei, who is challenging eight-term Rep. John Tierney (D), launched his first television ad of the campaign today, Roll Call has learned.

Titled “The District,” the spot is biography-based and backed by upbeat music and a $43,000 weeklong buy on targeted cable stations in the district, which is likely to be expanded.

“I’ve met thousands of people throughout this district,” the former state Senator and 2010 GOP nominee for lieutenant governor narrates over images of him campaigning. “I went to school in this district. I own a small business in this district.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iW7In13GRg

“They want people who are willing to go to Washington, work hard on a bipartisan basis, be independent and get the job done,” he says to b-roll of him campaigning. “A different type of Congressman than we’ve had. And I’m going to work really hard to be that Congressman.”

The not-so-subtle dig is at Tierney, who Tisei has criticized for voting in lock step with Democrats.

According to Congressional Quarterly’s vote study, Tierney voted with Democrats 97 percent of the time in 2011 in votes where a majority of Democrats voted against a majority of Republicans.

But it’s not Tierney’s partisanship that has made him vulnerable to a challenge from a Republican in the Democratic-leaning district. It is Massachusetts, after all, a state that hasn’t elected a Republican to the House of Representatives since 1994.

The Congressman has been politically damaged by revelations about his in-laws’ gambling operation, including accusations by one of his brothers-in-law that Tierney “knew everything.”

Tierney, an attorney, has not been directly accused of any wrongdoing, and there is no evidence that he ever broke any law. But sometimes innuendo is enough to make a politician vulnerable. Roll Call rates the race as a Tossup.