Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra’s new ad slams Stabenow as the ‘worst senator Michigan’s ever had’

Republican Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra is launching a new online ad campaign branding Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., as “the worst senator Michigan’s ever had.”

The Hoekstra campaign unveiled a new website Saturday: www.worstsenator.com. The website features a comedic two-minute advertisement that shows a family arguing over the dinner table, which reasons prove Stabenow is “the worst senator.”

“She never met a tax increase she didn’t like,” one of the characters says.

The ad also criticizes Stabenow for voting for the Affordable Care Act, raising the debt ceiling and President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan and blames her for wasteful government spending.

The Stabenow campaign called the ad “silly and hypocritical.”

“Hoekstra is the one who voted for the Wall Street bailout and the Bush tax cuts for millionaires that sent the deficit skyrocketing,” Stabenow campaign spokesman Cullen Schwarz said in a statement.

Hoekstra revealed the website on Saturday in a speech at the Michigan Republican Party convention in Grand Rapids, where he blamed Stabenow for a tepid economic recovery.

“She has followed (U.S. Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid, she has followed Barack Obama, and they’re leading the worst economic recovery in U.S. history,” the former west Michigan congressman said.

Hoekstra campaign staffers said the new ad campaign will primarily be spread online through the website, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in the early stages. It will eventually expand to television.

Ad campaigns never come cheap nowadays, and Hoekstra’s new ads are no exception. Campaign staffers estimate that the “Worst Senator” campaign will cost up to $100,000.

Hoekstra’s Super Bowl ad featuring a young Asian woman speaking broken English and thanking Stabenow for borrowing money from China was widely criticized as racist and culturally insensitive.

The most recent Stabenow/Hoekstra poll, conducted by Democratic-leaning poll firm Public Policy Polling, gives Stabenow, seeking her third term as senator, a nine-point edge among likely voters, 50 percent to 41 percent. The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Stabenow with a nearly six-point lead, and she has trailed in only two polls dating back to December 2011.