By Patrick Svitek, David Wright, CNN
(CNN) — Candidates are trading accusations of being beholden to big donors, debating who wants to restrict congressional stock trading more and running ads in which they stand in literal swamps.
Fighting corruption has emerged as one of the biggest issues of the midterms, shaping battleground races from coast to coast, bolstering Democrats’ focus on lowering the cost of living and extending to other hot-button issues, such as data centers and Jeffrey Epstein.
More than $275 million has been spent on ads about corruption this election cycle, according to AdImpact, with Democrats accounting for about $173 million and Republicans for roughly $93 million.
“I think it’s as big of an anti-corruption election as we have seen, at least since 2006,” said Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, a Democratic group that supports campaign finance reform. She added she has been struck by the “size and scale and scope of the anti-corruption messaging we’re seeing.”
Democrats are optimistic they can win the House majority — and even control of the Senate — with an anti-corruption message. But Republicans are also responding to voter concerns about corruption, zeroing in on candidate-specific scandals, welfare fraud controversies and touting their support for limiting congressional stock trading, even as Democrats criticize their proposal as inadequate.
“I just think that fraud, waste and corruption are bigger issues today than at any point in my life, and I think there are some reasons behind it,” said Shad White, the Republican state auditor of Mississippi and a potential candidate for governor next year. “One is that the government is massive and spends more money than ever before.”
In polling, corruption has become one of the top issues for voters after the cost of living, sometimes leapfrogging economic issues altogether. And while voters strongly disapprove of President Donald Trump’s handling of the issue, they’re more divided on which party they trust to root out corruption, creating an opening for both sides in the final days of the midterms.
Campaign operatives acknowledge that many voters see all politicians as corrupt, so they need to give them more of a reason to be concerned. In a Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week, voters were divided when asked which party was stronger on the issue of corruption, with 31% picking Democrats and 26% saying Republicans. Thirty percent said they did not know.
To that end, a number of high-profile Democratic candidates have worked to directly tie corruption to the high cost of living, another leading issue for voters.
“This corruption is why nothing works for ordinary people,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) said at a recent rally in the Atlanta area. “It’s why you pay a fortune for prescriptions. It’s why your insurance company gets away with denying your cancer treatment.”
The focus on corruption has also given Democrats an opportunity to compete for voters who were swayed a decade ago by Trump’s promise to “drain the swamp.” An array of colorful ads help illustrate the strategy.
“They call Washington, DC, a swamp. I like ours better. It’s a lot cleaner than the mess in Washington,” says Paige Cognetti, the Democrat in Pennsylvania’s battleground 8th District, in an ad where she stands ankle-deep in Lackawanna County’s Corby Swamp. Democrat Annie Andrews, running in South Carolina’s unexpectedly competitive Senate race against incumbent Sen. Darline Graham, has her own standing-in-a-swamp ad as well.
In a Fox News poll conducted earlier this month, 60% of voters said they were “extremely” concerned about corruption, more than those who said the same about inflation (58%) and gas prices (50%).
Presenting lawmakers with new polling in September, Groundwork Action, a progressive organization, walked lawmakers through two national surveys from the spring in which participants agreed that tackling corruption was key to making life more affordable.
“Rising on the list was corruption, and honestly, it was talked about even in a way that I haven’t heard members of Congress talking about it. So, the public seems to be a little ahead on this,” Rep. Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat who was in the meeting, told CNN. “People are plugged into it but also plugging into that it impacts them directly.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was already picking up on the potency of the issue as he prepared a speech to mark 100 days out from the election.
“Tackling the affordability crisis alone will not be enough,” Jeffries said in the Pennsylvania speech. Democrats, he added, also would “hold the crooks accountable.”
Now, End Citizens United is ending the cycle with more than 300 candidates signed on to its anti-corruption platform. That’s about more than double the backers the platform had in previous cycles, Muller said.
In the Texas Senate race, Democrat James Talarico has had an especially high bar to clear to galvanize voters around corruption. His Republican opponent, Ken Paxton, has persevered politically despite over a decade of scandals. While Talarico brands Paxton as the “most corrupt politician in Texas,” he also connects it to affordability, saying Texans “cannot afford Ken Paxton’s corruption.”
In one ad, Talarico walks through a data center construction site while arguing how Paxton paved the way for it through his votes in the state legislature and campaign contributions he’s received.
“Data centers bankroll Paxton, they get tax breaks and you get stuck with the bill,” Talarico says.
Former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, attempting a comeback against Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio, has also made data center deals a focal point of his campaign. He and his allies have run multiple ads calling Husted the “face of data centers” in Ohio, the attacks so persistent that the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm released a memo describing them as an “anchor hanging around Husted’s neck.”
Democratic anti-corruption arguments have been made through the lens of other issues, including the release of the Epstein files. In another competitive Senate race in Iowa, GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson has been criticized for campaign contributions from individuals mentioned in the Epstein files – a frequent attack line in campaign ads this year.
By far, though, stock trading has fueled the fiercest fights over corruption in the midterms.
Despite widespread support for an outright ban on congressional stock trading, Republicans sidelined a bipartisan prohibition to instead pass a narrower restrictions bill in July tied to a partisan election overhaul. Now they’re using it as a wedge against Democrats in the midterms.
“It figures that Shomari voted to continue allowing his Washington friends to buy stocks,” goes an ad from a Trump-linked super PAC targeting Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures in a contentious Alabama congressional race.
In New Jersey’s 7th District, Democrat Rebecca Bennett has long staked her campaign on criticism of GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr.’s stock trading, especially because he originally won his seat in 2022 by scrutinizing then-Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski’s transactions.
Kean promised in 2022 to put his assets in a blind trust if elected, though he says he had to opt for an alternative “blind structure” after the House Ethics Committee balked at limits he wanted to place on managers’ trades. He has touted that as evidence of his integrity, noting he did not want managers to invest in companies with ties to the United States’ foreign enemies.
“It’s something I’ve heard from the very beginning of the campaign,” Bennett told CNN. “For me, when I started running, I got rid of all my individual stocks because I just want people to know I mean what I say, practice what I preach.”
The issue fueled a heated exchange during a recent debate. An audience member loudly laughed when Kean claimed he has not traded stocks as a lawmaker, and when Bennett sought to rebut him, another audience member yelled out, “You’re a liar!”
Republicans argue they have stayed competitive with Democrats on the issue, even if their emphasis is not as intense.
“Corruption is usually a supporting argument,” Republican strategist Drew Nirenberg said. “It can work if there’s an actual victim, or if it ties into a bigger case against the candidate. But folks mostly vote on stuff they feel day to day, and they’re generally pretty jaded about politicians anyway.”
Some Republicans have had to play defense on corruption, perhaps most notably Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins. Collins has strenuously denied a September report from ProPublica that outlined an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving her office and a defense contractor. Her allies have fired back with claims of corruption against her Democratic opponent Troy Jackson, citing his son’s job as a lobbyist. He’s denied any wrongdoing.
Other Republicans have been proactive, seizing on their opponents’ unique perceived vulnerabilities.
According to AdImpact, the most-aired Republican ad mentioning corruption this cycle is from Rick Jackson, who is running for Georgia governor. The spot accuses his Democratic opponent, Keisha Lance Bottoms, of using her time as Atlanta mayor to enrich her political allies, citing a city contractor and Bottoms donor who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2023 for bribing city officials.
“Sky-high corruption, fleecing taxpayers at the bottom,” a narrator concludes in the spot. “If Bottoms is governor, she’ll do it again.”
In Texas’ 15th District, Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz is running an ad that seeks to address concerns about corruption by railing against the “compadre system” of patronage in South Texas, saying she’s fighting a form of it in Washington.
The ad does not even mention her Democratic opponent, Tejano music star Bobby Pulido, but flashes the word “corruption” across the screen three times.
CNN’s Annie Grayer contributed to this story.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
The post Getting in the (literal) swamp: Corruption becomes a $275 million fight in the midterm ad wars appeared first on KRDO.
