It was bound to happen at some point.

With the election less than a week away in the 1st Congressional District race Democrat Chellie Pingree and Republican Charlie Summers seem to have decided to start swinging at each other.

Summers has released a new ad that claims Pingree voted to tax Social Security benefits as a member of the Maine Senate in 1999 and more recently supported increasing taxes.

Let's go to the tape:

Summers opened up the same line of attack at yesterday's 1st District Debate at the University of Southern Maine.

Pingree said she supported the legislation, which would have taxed some Social Security benefits to equalize state income taxes on public pensions, had the backing of the taxation committee. But Pingree said she also supported killing the bill after it was vetoed by then-Gov. Angus King.

This morning the Pingree campaign released a statement and fact checker on the ad and fired back at Summers for his statements supporting the privatization of Social Security.

The statement also said the charge that Pingree favors increasing taxes is a misleading representation of a recent Project Vote Smart survey where Pingree said she favors decreasing or keeping taxes stable for incomes under $180,000 and raising them for over $180,000.

"It's disappointing that Charlie Summers has resorted to false, negative attacks in this last week of the campaign," said Pingree spokesperson Willy Ritch. "Our country is facing some serious challenges right now and instead of promoting solutions Charlie has decided to attack Chellie Pingree. Charlie knows negative campaigning has no place Maine politics but he can't help but take this play from the national Republican playbook."

With six days till E-day, something tells me this may be just the beginning of the 1st District fire-fight.

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