Late in the campaign Lazio criticised Clinton for accepting campaign donations from various Arab groups in the wake of the USS "Cole" bombing. The Lazio campaign orchestrated a wave of telephone calls to voters using this attack. This issue caused former New York Mayor Ed Koch to take out ads telling Lazio to "stop with the sleaze already," and did not change the dynamic of the race. Some of Lazio's campaign strategists would later say that the "Cole"-based attack had backfired and became the campaign's biggest blunder.