Congressman John Yarmuth, Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo, Attorney General Jack Conway and Auditor Crit Luallen all signed the letter addressed to Fischer at his Louisville campaign headquarters. The five paragraph missive targets Fischer's ad that's critical of Lunsford's tenure as the CEO of Vencor, which ultimately filed for bankruptcy after a series of fraud and abuse allegations against a few of its nursing homes and changes in reimbursements from the Medicare program.

The letter from the top dems tells Fischer "your campaign has launched a personal attack against a fellow Democrats' character. By doing so, your campaign is playing right into Senator Mitch McConnell's hands and is endangering the opportunity for change this November. We urge you to remove your personal attack from the air immediately, take the high road, and spend the final weeks of the primary running a campaign focused on why you are right for the job, not divisive character attacks that are part or the reason Washington needs to change."

Fischer told me this afternoon that he wasn't running "negative ads, just truthful ones." He says voters have the right to know the backgrounds of all of the candidates for U.S. Senate. Fischer also had a woman on hand at his headquarters whose testimony helped drive Lunsford out of the 2003 governor's race. Jeri Stevens appeared in a Ben Chandler ad, claiming her mother was abused in a Vencor nursing home and Lunsford did nothing about it. Stevens wouldn't say whether she planned to appear in a Fischer ad this year, claiming she only showed up to support Dale Carter, the 90-year-old actress who appears in Fischer's current ad. Carter told me a Fischer campaign aide called her and asked her to appear in a TV ad bashing Lunsford. She says she agreed because she was aware, through media reports and other sources, of the problems with Lunsford's nursing homes. She says she wasn't paid for the ad.