BANGOR – The final days in the race for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District seat have focused more on the Middle East than northern Maine, with Democratic Rep. Mike Michaud and his Republican challenger, Brian Hamel, battling on and off the airwaves over the war in Iraq.

Hamel, an Aroostook County business executive, this week stepped up his attack against Michaud’s opposition to an $87 billion supplemental budget to help fund operations in Iraq, launching a radio and television campaign featuring the mother of a soldier headed back to the U.S.-occupied country.

“He voted against our troops to make a political point,” Maureen Door of Dover-Foxcroft says in the ads, which are playing in the district’s three media markets. “Because Mike Michaud refuses to support our soldiers, there’s no way we can support Mike Michaud.”

Michaud, favored in the race and rarely on the defensive, fired back Wednesday with a response featuring a military family of its own.

“Mike voted to give troops like our Todd everything they need to get the job done and get home safe,” Sheila Desgrosseilliers of Auburn, whose son left for Iraq last month, says in the ad, which is also running districtwide.

Ed Desgrosseilliers, Sheila’s husband who spent 22 years in the U.S. Navy, adds, “We know military. That’s why we support Mike Michaud.”

Although Michaud has traditionally received the endorsements of veterans groups, the Hamel campaign – seemingly taking a page from the Bush play book against Democrat John Kerry – senses weakness on his vote against the $87 billion supplemental budget.

Watching the Hamel ad before a Monday event in Bangor featuring House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, one Hamel campaign aide called it a “knockout punch,” in the race.

Michaud spokeswoman Monica Castellanos not surprisingly has a different take.

“It’s playing politics with people’s lives, and it’s a last-ditch effort from a desperate campaign,” she said.

While the only public polls in the race show Michaud with a formidable lead, they are nearly three weeks old. Hamel aides say they believe the race has tightened since then.

The rhetoric has intensified in the campaign’s final days, as the candidates crisscross the district, geographically the largest east of the Mississippi River.

Michaud, during the contest’s four debates, has defended his vote, saying the spending package did little for soldiers and offered no exit strategy from the conflict. Michaud also notes he did vote for the initial funding for the war effort.

Michaud has said he opposes Bush’s handling of the war, and it was a mistake to invade the country without more allied support. Hamel, in explaining his position, is more vague, and often prefaces his answer by saying he wouldn’t be a “Monday morning quarterback.”

He does, however, say he believes the world is safer without Saddam Hussein in power, and regardless of one’s feelings about the war, he said there was an obligation to vote for the $87 billion.

The war on terrorism will undoubtedly be among the topics at today’s forum in Brewer with Hamel and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, one of several high profile politicos to visit the state in the campaign’s waning days.

As an incumbent, Michaud, too, has made fewer joint appearances with high-profile Democrats who have visited the state. Today, however, he will appear with former Sen. George Mitchell in Waterville.