A new Obama campaign ad is aimed at Mitt Romney’s past reign over Massachusetts as governor, targeting the state’s numbers for debt and job creation, and Romney’s supporters are saying it’s just an attempt by the president to cover up his own failures during his term.

“President Obama will do anything to distract from his abysmal economic record and – despite that record – the fact that he thinks the private sector is ‘doing fine,'” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said. “Mitt Romney knows our country can do better and, under his leadership, it will do better.”

The ad states that “Romney economics” didn’t work when he was governor, and it won’t work if he succeeds in the race to the White House.

“When Mitt Romney was governor, Massachusetts was number one. Number one in state debt. $18 billion in debt. More debt per person than any other state in the country. At the same time Massachusetts fell to 47th in job creation. One of the worst economic records in the country,” the ad says.

With the race heating up and Romney keeping the pace with Obama, the next few months are bound to be full of similar ads slung from both sides as the opponents try to gain more than a head-length of a lead. Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, who supports Romney, says he’s impressed that the race has come so close.

“If … we’re running against this huge machine and Mitt Romney is still tied, I think that’s pretty amazing,” he said. “Being tied at this stage, given what President Obama is doing and what Mitt Romney is up against as a challenger is pretty impressive,”

Despite Romney’s recent and very public gaffes–including a very embarrassing typo and an incident involving his dog–don’t seem to have affected his popularity all that much, a fact Obama hasn’t overlooked. He’s not backing down an inch, as evidenced by a statement by his deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter.

“Elections are about choices,” Cutter said. “I’m not projecting exactly what ads we’re going to have on the air, but we’re not going to shrink from ensuring that Mitt Romney’s record is accurate, accurately told out there, and he’s held to the positions that he’s taken.”