Between your favorite television shows, prepare to see a lot of American flags for the next two weeks – and probably the next eight months.

On Wednesday, Maine became one of 17 battleground states to hear the first shots, so to speak, in the fight for the White House, as the Media Fund, a Democratic leaning nonprofit group, offered its response to a series of ads released last week by President Bush’s re-election campaign.

The Media Fund’s $5.1 million ad buy, running only in targeted states, is harshly critical of Bush’s handling of the economy, consistently listed as among voters’ top concerns for the 2004 election.

“Remember the American Dream?” the ad’s narrator asks amid images of children swinging and farmers throwing bales of hay into a barn.

“It’s about jobs at home, not tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. It’s about giving our children their chance, not our debt. It’s about providing health care for people, not just profits.”

Harold Ickes, a former deputy chief of staff to President Clinton and founder of the Media Fund, said the 30-second spot was reflective of an “increasing concern about the direction of the country.”

“It’s about a radical Republican agenda which favors the very rich at the expense of the middle class,” Ickes said during a Wednesday conference call.

Bush campaign officials were quick to counter the ads, which they characterized as more of the same pessimism heard during the Democratic primary.

“They’re intent on injecting negativity into the campaign,” said Bush campaign spokesman Kevin Madden, who predicted the ads would hurt, not help, the Democratic effort. “Voters don’t want to hear what you’re against. They want to hear what you’re for.”

While the ad has raised Republican hackles, the Media Fund itself has drawn fire from the GOP, which contends the group is circumventing new campaign finance laws by raising and spending “soft money” – large, loosely regulated contributions – on behalf of a presidential candidate.

The new campaign finance laws prohibit national party committees from using soft money. But the laws are silent on its use by nonprofit groups such as the Media Fund, which is part of a Democratic coalition set on defeating Bush in 2004.

Use of the so-called “527” nonprofit groups, shorthand for the section of the tax code regulating them, is already under legal challenge, with the Federal Election Commission set to meet this month to discuss new rules governing their campaign activities.

About $70,000 of the Media Fund’s $5.1 million ad buy was being spent in Maine, a state Bush lost by about 33,000 votes, or 5 percent, in 2000.

A poll released Wednesday by Portland-based Strategic Marketing Services suggested Bush would lose in Maine to likely Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry by a similar margin if the election were held today.

Maine’s four Electoral College votes hardly seem like the grand prize in a general election in which 270 are needed to win, say those who doubt Maine’s status as a true battleground state, a term often reserved for larger swing states such as Ohio and Michigan.

Regardless of Maine’s influence, or relative lack thereof, the early television ads here signaled the candidates would pay attention to the small state, said Christian Potholm, a Bowdoin College political science professor.

“We’re going to be very war-weary by the end,” he said.