That was an epic football game on Sunday, between the Ravens and Bengals, but it would have been more enjoyable without two of the more caustic campaign ads of 2024 — the Willie Horton throwback against Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and the cheesy tax-cheat spot against Angela Alsobrooks.

Alsobrooks, the Democrat running to succeed Ben Cardin in the U.S. Senate, has been hounded for a few weeks by a problem that stung previous Maryland politicians in the aft: Improperly using the state’s homestead property tax credit on houses that were not their primary residences.

Alsobrooks’ failure over the years to get it right with local tax collectors will now cost her close to $50,000. But that’s not a fine. It’s just a debt plus interest, freshly calculated by the tax office in the District of Columbia.

I’ve only met the woman once, and it’s impossible to know for sure, but Alsobrooks does not appear to have intentionally tried to evade paying taxes — I’ll tell you why I think that in a minute — and yet a political action committee funded by billionaires supporting Larry Hogan, the Republican Senate candidate, has portrayed her as a tax dodger.

If you were behind in the polls, you might do the same.

While some negative campaign ads merely state facts that attest to a candidate’s awfulness, almost all ads exaggerate. Many of them look and sound like trailers for horror movies.

Of late, we’ve heard cries of unfairness about abortion-related, anti-Hogan spots airing on behalf of Alsobrooks. (One such complaint appeared in this newspaper from Colin Pascal, a member of Veterans for Hogan; another came from Matt Bai, contributing columnist of The Washington Post, even as he said he had no intention of voting for Hogan and giving Republicans another seat in the Senate.)

By the same token, a person watching the “dishonest Alsobrooks” ads during breaks in the Ravens-Bengals drama would have concluded that the Democratic candidate had engaged in a criminal enterprise to avoid taxes when, in fact, she has plausible explanations for what happened.

In one instance, she hurt herself financially by not being more diligent about her tax arrangements.

Let’s go over this.

In Maryland, you’re allowed to take the homestead credit and get a tax break on the house you occupy, your primary residence — not a home you leave (or inherit) and convert to a rental. If you did not know about this, welcome to the Maryland Homestead Tax Credit Cluelessness Society. Until about 15 years ago, when some Baltimore politicians — two mayors, to be exact — were bit in the buttocks by the homestead mosquito, I didn’t know about it either. It struck me more as a curiosity than a scandal because the dollar amounts involved seemed relatively small. Reporters for the Sun found that it was not uncommon for people, including some elected officials who supposedly should have known better, to buy (or inherit) a second home, keep the tax credit on their first home and be unaware of a problem.

That’s what Alsobrooks did, as first reported by CNN; she took the homestead tax credit (plus a senior citizen credit) for 15 years on a D.C. domicile that had been her grandmother’s. Prior to the CNN report about this, Alsobrooks says she was unaware of the lingering tax credit on her grandma’s house.

Alsobrooks left the tax credit on a Prince George’s County townhouse she had converted to a rental after moving to a new home in 2015.

The latter matter gets to the question of intent.

Had Alsobrooks been paying attention, she would have packed up the homestead tax credit on the townhouse and taken it to her new home. By not doing so, she lost out on a credit that would have been larger because the new house was assessed at a higher rate. That should not strike anyone as the action — or, rather, inaction — of someone savvy to real estate taxes. That strikes me as an ordinary mistake made by a busy person or even a not-so-busy person. Or someone who needs an accountant.

Is any of this disqualifying for a candidate?

Not how I measure things. If there was evidence Alsobrooks received official warnings and ignored them, that might make a difference. If the Internal Revenue Service had slapped a lien on her for unpaid federal income taxes — as it did a certain former Baltimore power couple — that would prompt a serious sneer. Or, if you told me Alsobrooks had exploited a pandemic hardship law to buy a second home in Florida, then the mild aroma of a mistake becomes the stench of entitlement, and the candidate looks way less attractive and possibly indictable.

But we are nowhere near that with Alsobrooks.

She has pledged to fix this and pay what she owes.

Her big tax bill is in D.C., from the time she owned her grandma’s house. It’s an expense ($47,580) I’m sure she didn’t expect to have during a campaign critical to the balance of power in the next Senate. Public scrutiny has cost Alsobrooks some cash, but will it cost her votes? I could be wrong, but I doubt it.