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By Hugh Cameron
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With the balance of Congress at stake and many races—particularly in the Senate—fiercely competitive, candidates have pulled out all the stops in their campaigns while their parties turn to ad spending at historic levels.
According to the analytics firm AdImpact, this election cycle is now the most expensive in history. With $11.2 billion on ads and future reservations, 2025-2026 has now overtaken all other cycles, including 2023-2024, despite the latter involving a presidential race. Spending is predictably higher in this year’s battlegrounds, peaking at half a billion dollars in Texas, the majority of which is pro-Republican. AdImpact initially expected only $124 million to be spent on this seat, though it revised this up to what still proved an underestimate of $446 million in June.
And beyond the scale of spending, the content of certain midterm ads themselves has also appeared—to some—unprecedented.
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Worst Attack Ads
Whether due to poor taste, poor timing or evidently poor political instincts, this election cycle has witnessed a number of ads roundly seen as hurting the candidate who approved them while giving a boost to their opponents.
Here are five of the most prominent examples, ranked by how roundly each was criticized, how poorly it communicated the intended message and by how much the resulting backlash could be seen as damaging the candidate's chances.
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5. Ohio: Amy Acton’s Mother Calls Her a Liar
The Ohio gubernatorial contest between the democratic candidate Amy Acton and the Republican Vivek Ramaswamy was blown open in mid-October, when the latter pushed an attack ad featuring the former’s estranged mother.
In the one-minute video—which Ramaswamy’s team said it would that it will spend $4 million airing it statewide—Donna Arthur calls her daughter a "liar" with a "serious problem.”
The context surrounding the pair’s relationship quickly surfaced, however. Acton has publicly accused her stepfather—Cledith Arthur, her mother’s now-deceased husband—of raping her as a child, for which he was arrested and charged. Her mother lost custody of the children as a result of this, stayed with the accused until his death, and has since been estranged from Acton.
This resulted in widespread and bipartisan criticism of Ramaswamy, with a number of Republicans expressing their discomfort. The campaign’s response—that regardless of Acton and her mother’s past, the Democrat remains “a serial fabulist who has some serious problems with the truth”—invited nearly as much backlash as the ad itself.
Acton's odds on prediction markets have climbed around 10 percent since the ad first surfaced.
4. Michigan: Israeli Inflation
A one-minute spot supporting Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed saw the Michigan Democrat come under fire for a claim that U.S. aid to Israel is a central reason behind America’s cost of living crisis. The ad—which came from an outside PAC and not El-Sayed’s campaign—features a couple shopping in a grocery store. The man is told to put a carton of eggs back on the shelf, asking whether his kids “don’t like eggs anymore?”
“We have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians,” the woman responds, before adding that “apparently it’s costing us a lot of money to drop bombs on Gaza.”
The ad was not broadcast but was shared widely on social media by the political commentator Cenk Uygur, and repurposes material from his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2024.
A spokesperson for his Republican opponent Mike Rogers accused El-Sayed’s allies of “anti-Israel hate,” while the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called the ad a “case study in antisemitism.”
El-Sayed did not produce or approve the ad, however, and has distanced himself from it.
“Abdul is focused on pushing back against Trump’s agenda that is raising prices for Michiganders. No one speaks for Abdul but himself and his campaign,” a spokesperson told Newsweek.
3. Maine: Troy Jackson is a ‘Creep’
The tastefulness of attack ads had already emerged as a major issue in the Maine Senate race. The Democratic candidate Troy Jackson has on several occasions called his opponent "corrupt" and accused her of profiting from her political office. The incumbent Senator Susan Collins, meanwhile, has made mention of reports that Jackson’s partner, Lana Pelletier, is his cousin.
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And the latter claim has been seized on by a number of pro-Collins groups, including the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF). The GOP-linked super PAC ran a satirical song on Maine radio calling Jackson a “creep” and a “freak” who has “two kids with his cousin.”
Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine, told CNN he had “never seen anything like” the radio ad and that it “does definitely represent something different” in the state’s politics.
Last week, however, Collins said that she had “nothing to do with” the attack ad and called for it to be taken off the airwaves.
2. Iowa: Josh Turek is ‘Full of S***’
In an attack ad approved by and paid for by Republican Ashley Hinson’s Senate campaign, her opponent—Josh Turek—is accused of “making s*** up” when criticizing her.
“Josh Turek says Ashley Hinson is getting rich trading stocks,” a woman in the ad said, before another added: “Well, f*** him.”
“That makes Turek full of s***,” says one of the actresses who features in the 30-second spot.
Hinson’s ad quickly gathered steam online, particularly with supporters of Turek. One account suggested that Hinson had used out-of-state actresses.
“Ashley Hinson couldn't get any Iowans to appear in her new ad, so she hired a bunch of Florida actresses,” it wrote on X. “Now who's full of ****?”
1. Maine: ‘Troy Doesn't Have the Tools’
A newly released ad campaign from the Collins campaign features Bill Green, the retired News Center Maine sportscaster. He says that Maine politics has gone into "the gutter," before endorsing Senator Collins as "one of the most decent and honest people I know."
"I also know Troy Jackson, but we’re not talking about buying a cord of wood here," Green says. "We're sending someone to the U.S. Senate, and Troy doesn't have the tools he needs to be effective."
The ad was seen by many within Maine as belittling its blue-collar workers, and criticized for failing to appreciate Jackson’s two-decade tenure in the state legislature.
"Susan Collins has spent the last 30 years trying to convince us that every Mainer has a cold and she's the only one with a tissue," said Jason Shedlock, an organizer and Democratic candidate for Maine House District 120.
"We're not buying it," he told Newsweek. "And with the price of that cord of wood or gallon of oil, we couldn't afford to anyway."
"Susan Collins has spent so much time in Washington she thinks working-class Mainers are beneath her," the labor union federation Maine AFL-CIO wrote on X. "We don’t need anymore millionaires in Congress."
However, Collins has faced her own set of personal attacks during the race, and complained that the contest has been “unique in Maine’s history” given “the number of personal attacks.”
During their debate on October 8, Jackson accused Collins of profiting off the Iran war. His campaign and the Maine Democratic Party has also brought up Collins’s husband, Thomas Daffron, in their criticisms—several times noting his past ties to and work for AI-linked firms and defense contractors.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Daniel Orton, Gray R. Thomas
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