(CLEVELAND, Ohio) — Every election season, our televisions, cellphones, and mailboxes are flooded with political advertisements. If it seems like there’s been an increase since the 2024 presidential election, that’s because there has been.

AdImpact projects that nationwide political advertising spending will reach $11.6 billion by Election Day, making this the most expensive election cycle on record. Nearly half of that spending (48%) has gone toward broadcast television advertising.

Not all political advertisements are designed to win over voters by promoting a candidate’s platform. Increasingly, campaigns are using them to highlight their opponents’ personal lives, past controversies, and political records. Campaigns for Ohio governor and the US Senate may have taken the trend to new lows with a series of ads concerning alleged abuse of minors.

The “Garbage” ad from Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton calls out her rival for running attack ads. [Credit: Ohioans for Amy Acton/YouTube]

In the gubernatorial race, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy has faced backlash for funding an advertisement attacking Democratic opponent Dr. Amy Acton and her family. In the advertisement, Donna Arthur, Acton’s estranged mother, calls her daughter a liar and urges people not to vote for her.

In an interview with Cincinnati’s Local 12, Acton said that she hasn’t seen her mother since she was 12-years-old. At the time, her stepfather was charged with child rape for allegedly abusing Acton. Arthur then lost custody of her children and one month later, her parents fled the state. Her stepfather remained a fugitive until he died in 2004.

Acton told the CBS affiliate that she wasn’t surprised by the advertisement, but rather by her mother’s condition. Around the time of filming, Arthur was living in her car and seemed “far gone,” a source told the news site Zeteo.

Ramaswamy has faced criticism from both parties, including current Ohio governor Mike DeWine, over his decision to bring Acton’s childhood trauma into the campaign, Newsweek reported. News 5 Cleveland reported that Ramaswamy pulled the ad last week.

As of October 28, Suffolk University/USA Today reported that Acton led Ramaswamy 48% to 44%, and in the Senate race, Brown led Jon Husted 47% to 44%.

Only 72% of voters they surveyed were aware of Ramaswamy’s controversial advertisement, but fewer than 1% of those voters said it changed their support from Acton to Ramaswamy.

Curse words and false claims

Republicans were not the only ones accused of lowering the bar of decency in their Ohio campaign ads. In September, Acton said that  Ramaswamy “pushed an Alzheimer’s drug that he knew didn’t work. He made hundreds of millions of dollars scamming people.” Politifact rated the claim “mostly false,” finding that Ramaswamy invested in the dementia drug, intepirdine, before it failed to pass a critical trial ending the drug’s path to market.

An ad from Democratic Senate candidate Sherrod Brown shows voters using vulgar language after watching a video in which Republican Sen. John Husted says, “People living in poverty are not very experienced at navigating the real world.”  “Listen to this shit,” says a man after watching the video. “Fuck that,” says a woman followed by Brown saying he approved the ad.

Meanwhile the Senate Leadership Fund created ads accusing Brown of “forcing childhood sex-change surgery,” the Ohio Capital Journal reported.

The ads feature social media influencer Soren Aldaco, who says at 15, a doctor told her parents she was transgender. This led to hormone replacement therapy, “surgery without my parents’ consent”  “a botched double mastectomy, and years of trauma.”

The ads appear to be misleading. According to the Ohio Capital Journal, Aldaco was a legal adult (19-years-old) and living in Texas when she received treatment. It is illegal to perform gender-affirming care surgeries on minors in the state of Ohio.

PolitiFact reached out to the Senate Leadership Fund for an explanation of the ad. The super PAC cited an interview with WSYX-TV in Columbus, where Brown said medical decisions should be made between families and their doctors, not politicians.

This election season, Republicans have spent an estimated $183 million on television advertisements focused on transgender issues, ABC News reported. That’s 217,000 television spots nationwide.

Yet, only 12% of voters said transgender issues were a top priority, the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research reported.The controversial ads on both sides have drawn a lot of attention, but they failed to address the issues voters are most concerned about: the economy and cost of living.

Despite attention surrounding the controversial ads their impact on the election remains uncertain.