At what point does a candidate actually become harmed by controversial advertising?

Are John Swallow and Jim Matheson being hurt by negative ad campaigns in Utah's 2nd Congressional District?

Utahns have, over the years, been less than receptive to tough, highly critical campaigning, says Dan Jones, who has polled in Utah for 30 years and teaches political science at the University of Utah.

The 2nd District race between Republican Swallow and incumbent Democratic Rep. Matheson is turning into one of the most negative in the state's history. Come Election Day, $4 million may have been spent by both candidates and their political parties, much of it in advertising criticizing the other guy.

It's generally assumed that Democrat Lily Eskelsen — an attractive, articulate candidate — was hurt in her 1998 effort to unseat then-GOP Rep. Merrill Cook when TV ads started running showing Cook with his hair all awry — criticizing him on a variety of fronts. Cook, who had had a checkered election career, coasted to a larger-than-expected victory.

"In my opinion, those ads cost Lily the race," said Jones, who that year was doing tracking polling for Cook. "I watched it daily. Before those ads hit, Lily was gaining" on Cook. "But not only did she stop" closing on Cook when the negative ads hit the airwaves, "she actually dropped," said Jones.

Now the Utah Republican Party, the National Republican Congressional Committee and Swallow's own campaign are mired in anti-Matheson ad blitzes — some of which are clearly backfiring on Republicans.

In an effort to stop the bleeding, state GOP officials say they will not mail out the final two anti-Matheson fliers now sitting in Salt Lake City warehouses. "Together, they are about 46,000 pieces of mail," says GOP executive director Spencer Jenkins, "a rather small mailing considering we've already sent out maybe half a million fliers" in the 2nd District alone.

The flier issue exploded this week when it became known that one flier criticized Matheson for supporting a bill that is actually sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Chris Cannon, both R-Utah. The state party sent out 76,000 of those to Salt Lake County voters.

Matheson's own campaign has been running anti-Swallow TV ads, although he says he only started them after Swallow ran negative ads against him first.

Both Matheson and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have new anti-Swallow ads accusing Swallow of hurting Utah children by voting against a number of "pro-child" bills while he was in the Utah Legislature.

Both sides "are nearing the line" of harming the candidates the ads are meant to help, says Brigham Young University political scientist Kelly Patterson. Patterson and colleagues are once again studying Utah's 2nd Congressional District campaign as part of a large project looking at close U.S. House races across the country.