Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor whose childhood sexual abuse became fodder for an attack ad by her Republican rival, Vivek Ramaswamy, directly addressed the widely-criticized video on Saturday.

“As you’ve probably heard by now, as a young child, my brother and I experienced a lot of child abuse and neglect. We moved countless times as kids, and even wound up living in a tent in the middle of the winter,” Acton said at a rally in Cleveland, alongside former President Barack Obama and former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is making a comeback bid to oust Republican Sen. Jon Husted.

“And now, my opponent has chosen to exploit, intentionally, my childhood to save to save his struggling campaign, but it’s not going to work,” Acton said to cheers from the crowd. “It’s not going to work because compassion and decency still matter.”

The former president took his star power to Cleveland to help carry his party across the finish line just 10 days before Election Day. He criticized Ramaswamy by name.

“There’s a decency we should expect from our public officials where the standards of behavior have gotten so low that somebody can run an ad like that,” Obama said. “There’s got to be something inside you where you just say, ‘You know, no office is worth stooping that low.’ Because you know what, character matters.”

Acton and Obama’s comments referred to a 60-second video released by Ramaswamy’s campaign last week that featured her estranged mother, Donna Arthur. In the clip, Arthur calls her daughter a “liar.”

“She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true,” Arthur says in the ad.

Acton has spoken about her and her brother’s difficult shared childhood even before entering politics. She said they were homeless for a time and lived in a tent one winter. She accused her mother’s husband of sexual abuse, and court records obtained by news outlets show Acton’s stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her when she was 12, before he fled the state and later died.

Arthur disputed Acton’s allegations against her husband in a interview with a conservative website in 2020, but said she stood by her husband. She and Acton have separately said they have not spoken since a last encounter in court over Arthur’s husband’s charges.

Ramaswamy’s ad was met with a wave of condemnation from Democrats and some Republicans almost as soon as it began circulating on the internet. The Ohio governor’s race is very tight, according to MS NOW polling. On Friday, the Cook Political Report moved the race from “toss up” to “lean Democrat,” pointing to the ad negative’s consequences of “perhaps creating some collateral damage.”

But Ramaswamy has stood by the video, saying it “had nothing to do with childhood abuse.” President Donald Trump also backed the Republican candidate and accused the media of engaging in a “well-coordinated attack” to get the ad taken down.

In her remarks Saturday, Acton said her difficult childhood experiences shaped who she is today.

“I know that I am not the only one in this room who saw a thing or two in their childhood, but our stories, Ohio’s stories, is one of resilience, of grit, of grace, and, yes, of hope,” she said.

“Hope is a very powerful thing. It’s what got me through living in a cold, dark basement when I wasn’t sure where my next meal was coming from,” Acton continued. “Hope is what got me through sexual abuse, living through cold nights, where all I could think about was how to keep my brother safe and warm.”

She called Ramaswamy “out of touch” and “a danger to my state.”

“Apparently, there is no low to which you won’t stoop,” she said. “But look, I am a scrappy kid from Youngstown. Scrappy kids from Youngstown, we never back down from a fight.”

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Alaska Senate Democratic nominee Mary Peltola and national Democrats have filed a legal motion to fight the Trump administration’s lawsuit over the Alaska Senate race, asking a judge to grant a motion to intervene and ultimately dismiss the case.

Marc Elias, the lawyer representing both Peltola’s campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Saturday that his firm “has filed to fight DOJ’s lawsuit to rig the Alaska Senate election.”

BREAKING: On behalf of Mary Peltola's campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Elias Law Group has filed to fight DOJ's lawsuit to rig the Alaska Senate election.

We will win this case, Mary will win this election, she will be certified and seated.

— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) October 24, 2026

Filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for Alaska, Peltola’s Senate campaign committee and the DSCC asked the court to grant their motion to intervene “to defend against the Justice Department’s extraordinary assault.”

“This case directly threatens both Proposed Intervenors’ interests by demanding that defendants refuse to certify the election if, and only if, Peltola wins,” the motion states. “It is part of a nationwide attack on free elections by the federal government, which the DSCC has fought at every turn.”

At President Donald Trump’s behest, the Justice Department on Friday filed a lawsuit to block the certification of Alaska’s Senate election results if Peltola narrowly beats Republican incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan. The DOJ argued that another candidate on the ballot, a retired teacher named Daniel J. Sullivan, could confuse voters — despite the ballots clearly stating the senator’s title and his status as an incumbent.

The lawsuit was met with outrage from Democrats and some Republicans. In an exclusive interview with MS NOW’s Nicole Wallace, Peltola described it as a “desperate attempt to cling to power” on Trump’s part, as Republicans brace for a blow to their majority in Congress.

The Friday motion to intervene argued similarly.

“Alaskans, apparently, must elect Senator Dan S. Sullivan or the President will not let them elect anyone at all,” the motion states, later adding, “And the Department of Justice’s assumption that every voter who casts a vote for Daniel J. Sullivan really meant to vote for Senator Sullivan is insulting to voters and irreconcilable with Alaska’s ranked-choice voting procedures and the ballot’s clear differentiation between the two candidates.”

The Alaska Senate race is rated a toss-up. Peltola has proven herself capable of flipping a Republican-controlled seat when she won the 2022 special election for the U.S. House. Voters in Alaska appear to have soured on Trump — who won the state in 2024 by double digits — but the Republican senator has continued to align himself with the president and his unpopular policies.

Alaskan Republicans had tried to boot Daniel J. Sullivan from the ballot during the primary race, accusing him of being in cahoots with Democrats to sabotage the senator’s chances. In June, the Alaska Supreme Court ordered the state’s Division of Elections to include his name on the primary ballot after election officials removed him.

The retired teacher has said he is running a genuine campaign for Senate.

“My intention is not to trick people,” he told The New York Times in August. “I would hope people are informed enough to know the difference between an incumbent senator and a teacher.”

Lisa Rubin contributed to this report.

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