The civility that has marked the past year may soon be a quaint memory. | AP Photos Brown-Warren civility begins to crack

For the better part of a year, the Massachusetts Senate race between Sen. Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren has been a paragon of positivity: Two candidates making their case to voters, not a single ugly attack ad. Even super PACs — the masters of doing candidates’ dirty work — have stayed away.

If that all sounds too good to keep up — well, it probably is.


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With control of the Senate hanging in the balance and Democrat Warren at risk of losing in the deep blue state, the civility that has marked the past year may soon be a quaint memory.

Warren took the first shot last week with a spot criticizing Brown for “siding with the big money guys” — mild by negative ad standards, but a departure still. The ad may well be a sign of a distinctly harsher tone to come.

Warren acted under acute pressure from Democratic leaders — in Washington and Massachusetts — who are fretting that one of their best Senate pickup opportunities could be slipping away.

Their anxiety is well-founded.

The latest public poll had Warren down by only a percentage point but recent surveys show her trailing by double digits among critical independent voters. And Brown, a rare Republican in Congress who bucks his party at times, is peeling away as many as one in five Democrats.

Enter New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the messaging chief for Senate Democrats. He personally urged Warren to take a tougher line against Brown, as did Guy Cecil, the executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, according to sources familiar with the talks. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shared those concerns, sources said.

The consumer advocate’s earlier ads showed her looking straight into the camera, lamenting the country’s failure to create public infrastructure jobs and promote women’s rights.

“Preachy, professorial and petulant” was how some strategists in her own party described the Harvard Law professor’s dozen ads since November.

One Massachusetts Democrat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the discontent over Warren’s media strategy boiled over at delegate meetings at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.

“The repeated refrain was, ‘The ads suck,’” quipped the Democrat.

Message received. Warren’s commercial this week features a boxing trainer with a thick Boston accent, praising Warren as a “real fighter” and knocking Brown as a tool of “big corporations” and backer of tax cuts for the wealthy.

While Warren has attacked Brown as a partisan in her stump speeches, Democrats say she needs to make that same case in TV ads to voters who may just be tuning in to the race.

The idea is to undercut Brown’s image as an independent, go-his-own-way Republican. Top Democrats and party officials say Warren’s tougher ad campaign against Brown is aimed at voters who are likely to vote for President Barack Obama but remain unsure about the Senate race.

“I’ve never seen him give us a vote when we really needed it,” Schumer said of Brown. “He’ll always give us a vote when the votes are 62-38 or even 55-45. But he never gives us a vote.”

Neither Schumer nor his staff would comment on the senator’s recent conversations with the Warren campaign.

Brown and his allies say Warren’s new tack is a sign of desperation.

“The people of Massachusetts deserve and expect better, especially from a first time candidate who initially claimed not to like attack ads,” Brown said in a statement.

Brown won his seat in a stunning upset in 2010, in a low-turnout special election triggered by the death of Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy. Turnout is expected to be much higher in November with Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on the ballot — a scenario that should favor Warren in the Democratic-leaning state.

Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), who plans to attend a Boston rally with Warren on Saturday, said if Brown is reelected, he’ll simply be pushed “aside” by a conservative GOP majority.

“He’s got this moderate persona going, people accept it to some extent,” Capuano said. “He’s a good candidate, he’s had great ads as far as I’m concerned … but they don’t tell the whole story.”

A race of mudslinging and negativity isn’t what either camp professed to have in mind at the outset. In January, Brown and Warren signed a pledge to keep what certainly would have been a barrage of super PAC ads off the airwaves.

To some surprise, the accord, the only one of its kind in the country, has held.

But since the race could determine which party controls the Senate next year, it seemed only a matter of time before one of the candidates went negative.

Many observers assumed it would be Brown whose hand was forced. But in the great Bay State ad war parlor game, Warren blinked first.

“In a close race, it’s a game of chicken. There are some risks for both of them to go negative,” said Boston-based Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh. “The fact that the campaign to date, including the advertising, has been the tamest in the nation, just reinforces that belief.”

Marsh said Warren has undoubtedly connected with voters on the stump. But the Democratic strategist said Warren’s personal story hasn’t been conveyed thoroughly enough in her air campaign.

“The Elizabeth Warren on the stump is the one we need to see in the ads,” Marsh said. “She can connect by telling her story as an unmarried young mother working her way through school. I think by telling that story again and again in ads … that’s compelling.

“She needs to keep connecting with people personally. Because if people like you personally, they’re going to believe you,” Marsh added.

John Bresnahan contributed to this report.