WASHINGTON, D.C. — A conservative political organization with ties to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Friday it is bankrolling a mysterious PAC running ads in North Carolina’s Democratic Senate primary.

In response, the Democratic candidate whose campaign the ads appear to attempt to undermine, Cal Cunningham, accused the Kentucky Republican of meddling in the election. 

The first 30-second ad surfaced earlier this month. It touts Democratic Senate candidate Erica Smith as a supporter of the Green New Deal and Medicare-for-all. 

A second ad, which rolled out earlier this week, takes aim at Cunningham, painting him as too moderate compared to Smith on different issues.

“Who will vote for the Green New Deal? Erica Smith. Not Cal Cunningham ... Who will stand up to the gun lobby? Not NRA A-rated Cal Cunningham,” the announcer says in the television spot.

Both Cunningham and Smith are competing in the March 3 primary for the chance to try to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.

The ads are produced by a group called “Faith and Power PAC,” a political action committee that was created just recently. 

On Friday, the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), a group affiliated with McConnell, admitted they have funded the Faith and Power PAC to the tune of roughly $3 million. The SLF is designed to help the GOP maintain control of the upper chamber.

In a statement, Steven Law, the president of SLF, called the ad campaign “more successful than we could have imagined.”

“Democrats are burning cash in a $13 million rescue mission for Cal Cunningham, who has proven to be a lackluster candidate with less money in the bank today than the beginning of the year,” he said in a statement.

Cunningham, who has the backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, has led the Democratic field in several recent polls.

In a statement, Cunningham insisted the ads prove Republicans are intimidated by the prospect of him being the Democratic nominee, writing, “Mitch McConnell meddled in our state’s election to try to mislead voters, and it’s clear why -- he knows Thom Tillis has failed North Carolinians by every measure, and he’s terrified to face me in November.”

The Cunningham campaign has also released its own ad, in which the candidate responds to the Faith and Power PAC television spots.

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A spokesman for Tillis’s campaign said they had “no knowledge of Faith and Power PAC and its structure other than what we have learned through news reports." The spokesman also said the PAC "appears to be a play out of the Democratic playbook from when they were spending millions of dollars trying to defeat Senator Tillis in the 2014 Republican Primary.”

When the first ad was released, Smith criticized it, saying in a statement that she rejects “the influence of special interest, corporate-PAC and dark money in politics.”