The worst ad of the 2014 campaign Good TV ads -- like this one from Iowa Sen.-elect Joni Ernst -- can catapult a candidate into contention. Bad ones can sidetrack a campaign, forcing a candidate to deal with the negative reaction engendered by the commercial and often losing the thread of his or her message in the process. Today, I tackle those sorts of ads -- the just plain bad. First, the nominees for the worst ad of 2014 -- listed in alphabetical order by candidate or group. Mark Begich, "Jerry Active" College Republican National Committee, "Say Yes to Rick Scott" Wendy Davis, "Justice" Terri Lynn Land, "Really" Michigan GOP, "Gary Peters Loan Sharknado" NARAL, "Sweetpea" Michigan Republicans didn't have a very good year making ads. The "Sharknado" ad was an attempt to go viral that instead flopped -- the victim of terrible production values and a just plain dumb idea. Lynn Land's attempt to rebut the "war on women" attack probably seemed like a good idea in the planning meeting -- "Here's what we'll do...you'll just sit on camera for 10 seconds and drink tea while music plays in the background!" -- but it didn't work at all. She was not even close to comfortable enough on camera to pull it off. The NARAL "Sweetpea" ad, which ran against Sen.-elect Cory Gardner, was so, so tone deaf that the only thing you could do was mock it. In similarly awkward territory was the "Say Yes to the Dress" ad, which cast Florida Gov. Rick Scott as an awesome wedding dress. Okey doke. Then there was state Sen. Wendy Davis' ad, which ran late in her hopeless Texas gubernatorial campaign, and began with these now-infamous words: "A tree fell on Greg Abbott. He sued and got millions. And, did I mention the opening image of the commercial was an empty wheelchair? The Davis campaign insisted the ad was fair game because it wasn't about Abbott's paralysis but his hypocrisy. The problem was that no one not on the Davis for governor payroll believed that for a second. The ad reeked of Hail Mary-ism. It was a desperate ploy that badly backfired. But, Davis wasn't going to win before this ad and she definitely didn't win after it. While running the ad may have cost her a point or two -- and lost her some credibility with political insiders -- it didn't materially affect the outcome of the race. And so, it didn't win my worst ad of the year award. That honor goes to Begich's ad on a murderer named Jerry Active -- a commercial that fundamentally swung the momentum in one of the most critical Senate races in the country. Here's the ad. (And thanks to Charlie Spiering of Breitbart for archiving it on You Tube. It has been erased almost everywhere else on the web.) In it, Begich attempt to hit former state Attorney General Dan Sullivan (R) for an allegedly lax record on sentencing sex offenders. The ad focuses on one instance in which two grandparents were killed and their two-year-old granddaughter raped by a man named Jerry Active who had been let out of prison on a plea bargain deal for a previous crime. Active should not have been eligible for probation. The ad quickly became very controversial. A lawyer involved in the prosecution of Active insisted that Begich take his ad (and Sullivan's response) down. "The family [of the murder victims] directly and without question has told your campaign they want no part of this," Collins wrote to Begich, adding a quote from his client: "the reason why I want the ad down is because we do not want it to interfere with the trial." Begich pulled the ad -- but the damage was very much done. Up until that point -- early September -- Begich had been the candidate with the momentum, maintaining a steady polling edge over Sullivan despite the conservative nature of the state. The Active ad ended that momentum. From that point onward, Begich's numbers tumbled while Sullivan's soared. The Associated Press called the race for Sullivan -- the 8th Republican pickup of the cycle -- earlier this week. Begich might not have won the race anyway; this was a bad year to be a Democrat in any Republican-leaning state. But, by running the Active ad, he wrote his own political epitaph.