“My name is Abdul; it means servant.” So begins the most compelling ad of this year’s election cycle. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed speaks, simply and directly, to the camera. Seated in a brown leather armchair while holding a coffee mug, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee lays claim to his Muslim faith in straightforward, affecting terms. 

“I pray everyday,” he says. “I reflect on my role in this life, on this earth, how we leave it better than we found it, to serve God, to serve our neighbors.”

A cloud of suspicion, much of it tangled up in his ethnicity and religion, has hovered over El-Sayed’s candidacy. The othering has been both blatant and subtle. In August, I spoke with Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., as he made his way from the Capitol subway to his Senate office the day after El-Sayed’s primary win. Tuberville told me the Michigan Democrat was “a cheerleader for 9/11” and “basically” a terrorist. A pair of debates has seen El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, accusing him of being “bought” by and “pledg[ing] his support” to the Muslim Brotherhood, claims that are unfounded. Others, including wavering centrist Democrats such as party strategist James Carville, who recently gave El-Sayed a reluctant endorsement, have pointed to the nominee’s attacks on Israel over the Gaza war as evidence that he is hostile to Jews and Judaism. More broadly, anti-Muslim rhetoric and attacks are becoming a defining feature of the GOP.

El-Sayed’s ad, released last Sunday, is entitled “Prayer” and marks an obvious attempt to refute those accusations and change the conversation — to persuade hesitant voters in the final days of this tight race to pull the lever for him. As El-Sayed speaks, snapshots roll. He stands with a voter, who points across the river, a subtle message of an aspirational future. There is El-Sayed standing and holding hands in prayer with a group of Black churchgoers. A menorah and a humble church flash on the screen. And then there’s the candidate himself, standing alone in prayer, his head bowed. 

El-Sayed connects his belief to a national crisis of faith embodied in Washington: “We don’t have faith in our future; we don’t have faith that we can actually fix things.” Then he returns to his own candidacy. “I’m Abdul El-Sayed,” he says at the end. “A man of faith — and that’s a good thing.”

A good election spot offers an appeal to voters by telling a story, and “Prayer” certainly does that. But there are other ingredients that can boost a political ad to the realm of greatness. In a positive ad, voters are offered an intimate look into the candidate’s reason for running. “Prayer” also does that, and therein lies its true power. It shows a different side to El-Sayed, whose refusal to back down from a fight and ability to cut through the noise, as Salon’s Amanda Marcotte recently wrote, “terrifies MAGA.” The ad offers a reason for his candidacy and life of public service, and ends what has been a tumultuous campaign on a grace note — and with an implicit promise. Everyone is welcome in my coalition, El-Sayed is saying, I’ll protect you. 

Even though “Prayer” is targeted to Michigan voters, it cannot be divorced from what’s happening nationally. It adds El-Sayed to an emerging list of Democrats who, as unabashed members of the religious left, are comfortable talking about their faith openly. Most, such as Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, Kansas U.S. Senate nominee Adam Hamilton, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, are Christian. Others, such as Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, are Jewish. By attaching his name to those ranks, El-Sayed is staking out important space for Muslims in public life.

But there’s more to it than just his religious and ethnic identity. The ad’s message serves as a proxy for the stark choice facing voters across the country, and just south of the Wolverine State’s border. In Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor, funded and produced an ad attacking Dr. Amy Acton, his Democratic opponent, and featuring her own mother.

The spot, released only 24 hours after El-Sayed’s, carries a message that is the direct inverse of the Michigan candidate’s. Rooted in cruelty and scripted with a lashing of DARVO, a tactic easily recognizable to victims of abuse — Deny, Attack and Reverse Victim Offender order — the ad is uncomfortable to watch, and vile. 

Viewers see an elderly woman looking into the camera and identifying herself as Donna Arthur. “It’s not easy for a mother to say this,” she says, “but Amy has a serious problem: she is a liar.” Arthur goes on to attack her daughter’s credibility, but without producing any evidence beyond her own testimony, which is severely imperiled by a documented history of her own actions.

Arthur has been estranged from her daughter since 1978, when the 12-year-old Acton accused her stepfather of raping her. According to court records, Cledith Arthur was arrested and charged with the crime, but fled the state before being tried. When his wife supported him, branding young Amy Acton a liar, both the girl and her younger brother were removed from Donna Arthur’s custody and raised by their biological father. In a statement released by her campaign, Acton’s brother stood by his sister’s account and branded Ramaswamy’s campaign “despicable” for turning the abuse Acton says she suffered “into a political talking point.”

In the ad, Arthur does not mince words. “My daughter needs help,” she says, “and she can’t help you if she can’t help herself . . . Don’t vote for people who lie; don’t let her become your governor.”

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Setting aside Arthur’s agency and the willing role she played in the ad, Ramaswamy has chosen to retraumatize his opponent before the eyes of millions of voters. By platforming a woman who is, at the very least, an enabler and accomplice to the alleged sexual assault of a minor, if perhaps only in the aftermath, he is sending a chilling signal to victims of abuse in Ohio and throughout the U.S.: There are consequences to speaking up.

But if Ramaswamy’s behavior wasn’t bad enough, Donald Trump and JD Vance had to get in on the act. Vance, who as an Ohioan has particular skin in the game, positioned himself alongside Ramaswamy as a truth-teller, saying he “wasn’t even supposed to talk about” the ad but “couldn’t help himself.” The vice president went on to praise the candidate for having the “audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar.”

On Thursday, the president was even more crass, calling the ad an example of “hitting pay dirt.” Ramaswamy, he wrote on Truth Social, “should keep it up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals! I only wish the mothers of my opponents would be so brave.”

A handful of other Republicans, including outgoing Gov. Mike DeWine and former Ohio Rep. John Kasich, decried the commercial and said it should be taken down.

There is no other word for the behavior of Ramaswamy and MAGA leaders: It is personally and publicly cruel, and the message it sends acts as a reveals far too much about Republican policies and the political leaders who advance and implement them. In their world, victims are treated with disdain and abusers defended while the American people are subjected to severe economic and psychological mistreatment. 

The cost-of-living crisis is ignored, all because a vainglorious president decides to wage an unnecessary war in Iran. The healthcare of millions is stripped away to line the pockets of the wealthiest. The rights of women, people of color, immigrants and LGBTQ+ Americans are under assault because of leaders and voters who want to hoard their privilege. 

Against this backdrop, El-Sayed’s ad stands as a balm for voters who long not just for a fighter, as he has well demonstrated he is, but also for a leader who is unafraid to lead with compassion and humility. It’s too early to know if his appeal will result in success at the polls. But the ad, in contrast to Ramaswamy’s, nonetheless underscores what’s at stake in the midterms: a choice between faithful service and abject cruelty.

The post A tale of two election ads offering different visions for America appeared first on Salon.com.

As soon as Vivek Ramaswamy released an ad celebrating a woman accused of backing a fugitive rapist, the widespread assumption among the pundit class was that it would backfire on him. Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial candidate is falling behind in the polls against his Democratic opponent, Dr. Amy Acton, in a race that threatens to turn long-red Ohio blue.

In a move reeking of desperation, Ramaswamy’s campaign ran a spot featuring Acton’s elderly mother, Donna Arthur, calling her daughter a “liar” and suggesting she suffers from severe mental illness. But it took almost no time at all before the record was widely corrected, with extensive media reports showing the facts in black-and-white: In 1978, Arthur sided with her husband, Cledith, when he was charged with raping his 12-year-old stepdaughter Amy. 

Acton has not seen her mother since the Arthurs fled Ohio in an effort to evade justice nearly five decades ago. Her brother confirmed what both Acton and court records show, calling the Ramaswamy campaign “despicable.” The news that the GOP nominee was championing an abusive mother over her daughter quickly became the media narrative, leading to multiple predictions that the ad would backfire on Ramaswamy.

And yet MAGA leaders, including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, are doubling down on the ad. At a Wednesday campaign event in Cincinnati, Vance praised Ramaswamy for his “audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is,” despite there being no evidence that Acton lied about her rape and ample evidence — such as fleeing the state — that the Arthurs did. On Wednesday, Trump defended the ad, saying, “It’s very unusual for a mother to hate her daughter, but I don’t think that has anything to do with Vivek.”

The president escalated his rhetoric on Thursday, posting on Truth Social, “let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate.” In Iowa on Thursday, Trump went further, calling Ramaswamy “lucky” to have this situation to exploit, and that he should thank “God” for the favor. 

MAGA media figures like the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, Trump’s traveling companion Laura Loomer and Newsmax’s Greg Kelly have also defended the ad. Podcaster Megyn Kelly praised Arthur for trying to expose her daughter’s “sketchy history,” citing an interview Arthur did with a woman convicted of attempting to bomb an abortion clinic. In that conversation, Arthur complained that the last time she saw her daughter, in 1978, the 12-year-old was wearing clothes she deemed immodest.

Ramaswamy’s campaign has pledged to spend $4 million airing the ad. The reason is grim political strategy. With Trump’s approval ratings hitting record new lows by the day, Republicans feel their only hope to eke out victories in close midterm races is to juice MAGA turnout. Demonizing an adolescent rape victim is a likely two-fold play; it could energize the same people who are currently attacking Jane Doe, the Cornell gang rape accuser.

But the framing of Ramaswamy’s ad also suggests there is another audience his campaign has in mind: aging MAGA voters who are obsessively angry about the phenomenon of parental estrangement.  

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As I documented in an extensive 2024 report, right-wing media frequently runs scare stories about adult children who cut off their parents, a phenomenon that gets blamed on therapists, progressive ideology and social decay supposedly producing selfish children — but never the parents themselves. Just this year alone, Fox News has run multiple stories blaming “cutoff culture,” “social contagion,” “social media” and “ungrateful” children for parental estrangement. Earlier this month, the conservative National Review castigated children who go no-contact for being too poisoned by left-wing ideology to return their parents’ allegedly unconditional love. In September, the Wall Street Journal called it an “epidemic” and quoted supposed experts who claim children suffer from “self-delusion,” “diminished skill for tough conversations” and “a focus on identity over family,” which is often a euphemism for LGBTQ+ adults who refuse to stay in the closet to placate their family. 

“No one is reckoning with the question of what is happening in a lot of families that makes kids feel like they would be better off going low- or no-contact,” explained Joshua Stein, a political researcher who has spent years tracking parental estrangement forums. Instead, there’s an “online ecosystem of estrangement experts,” who often work through right-wing media, “selling services and stories appeal to that audience by first assuring them that it’s not their fault.”

“This is the same underlying politics of grievance at the heart of the American right,” he told me, noting that the Acton situation, while an extreme example, is not unusual. 

“Donna Arthur is a symptom of the moral psychology of right-wing reactionary politics,” Stein said, noting that for the “reactionary right,” the concept of respect “is one-directional.” In this view, “authority figures are entitled to respect, regardless of conduct,” and that “respect includes deferring to the authority,” which all too often results in making excuses for child abuse. 

While none of the estranged adult children who spoke to Salon in 2024 had endured sexual violence, many described how right-wing politics were deeply intertwined with parents being controlling, cruel and abusive. Some spoke of being severely beaten. Others had parents who wanted to dictate their romantic lives. One woman was pushed into a bad marriage at an early age. Another man described how his parents ran off girlfriends for being the “wrong” race or religion. A woman reported being denied medical care for religious reasons. Another woman, who is biracial, said her white mother made racist comments to her. 

In online forums for estranged parents, which tend to lean conservative, Stein found that children’s stories of mistreatment were regularly dismissed. “The driving narrative of children exaggerating trauma is central to reactionary politics of estrangement,” he explained, noting that Ramaswamy’s ad featuring Acton’s mother is “a manifestation” of this “reasoning under its worst conditions.” 

Ramaswamy, Trump, Vance and their advisers are all notorious for being constantly online, and they are almost certainly aware that the topic of parental estrangement is a driving concern with many MAGA voters, some of whom have experienced estrangement or distancing from their own children, family members or friends, and are outraged at the thought of facing social consequences for their reactionary views. Much of the online response in right-wing spaces suggests this read on the GOP base is accurate enough. On social media, plenty of GOP voters have defended Arthur and denounced Acton. Many of them appear to be elderly.

“Because of the estrangement factor,” one Daily Wire commenter wrote, “I believe the mom.” Many concurred.

“So telling the truth is a horrible thing. Mothers know their kids better than anybody,” one person posted on Facebook in response to a local news post about the ad. “NOT all daughters are good daughters EITHER,” agreed one. “Our mothers know us best!!” added another. 

To be clear, these attitudes are not the norm among Americans generally, and pollsters haven’t had a chance to gauge if Ramaswamy’s ad has boomeranged. But if the goal is to energize Republican voters who may feel demoralized this cycle, the strategy makes more sense. There’s a widespread sense of grievance on the right over feeling rejected for their political views, which manifests in everything from Republicans complaining that liberals won’t date them to a woman at a rally for Byron Donalds, Florida’s GOP nominee for governor, demanding that the law force her “petty” daughter to stay in contact.

The Donna Arthur ad was designed to stoke that very sense of entitlement and persuade conservatives to use their vote to punish liberal family members and neighbors for shunning them. It may not be enough to overcome the disgust that Ramaswamy stirred up in voters who have a healthier attitude about family and boundaries. Still, from the party that gave us “Haitians eat pets” and “LGBTQ kids poop in litter boxes,” there really is no move too morally depraved, if they think they can get votes with it. 

The post Ramaswamy’s ad exposes MAGA’s obsession with parental estrangement appeared first on Salon.com.

The Ramaswamy campaign’s new ad featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s mother, in which she repeatedly denounces her daughter as a liar, is making Republicans squirm even in this era of Trump-inflected gutter politics. Acton and her mother have been estranged for decades since her mother’s husband — her stepfather — was indicted for raping Acton when she was a child. 

This story was originally reported by Amanda Becker of The 19th. Meet Amanda and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Republican Vivek Ramaswamy is closing out one of the nastiest races of the 2026 cycle by suggesting that Democrat Amy Acton, his opponent in the Ohio governor’s race, has lied about the well-documented childhood sexual abuse she experienced for political gain. 

In a contest marked by sharp personal attacks and partisan rancor, Ramaswamy’s latest attempt to paint Acton as unfit for office came in the form of a minute-long ad that began circulating Monday night featuring Donna Arthur, Acton’s estranged mother. It was widely condemned on both sides of the political aisle. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, however, both defended the ad as an appropriate one to run in the closing days of a campaign. 

Arthur lost custody of Acton and her younger brother in 1978 after her second husband, Cledith Arthur, was arrested, charged and indicted for raping then 12-year-old Acton. In the ad, Donna Arthur said her daughter has “lied her entire life.”

“Amy has a serious problem, she is a liar, she lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent, none of that is true. She’s lied her entire life. My daughter needs help. And she can’t help you if she needs help herself,” Arthur said. 

Acton, a pediatrician and former health director under Ohio’s current Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, has spoken openly during her campaign about facing abuse and neglect as a child, while in her mother’s custody. Acton has said that for a time the family lived in a tent before she and her brother moved in with their biological father. 

Court records and local media reports at the time confirm key details of Acton’s story and contradict Donna Arthur’s suggestion that her daughter lied about the abuse. 

“My birth mother did nothing to protect me. I’ve always known that she was deeply sick and unwell,” Acton wrote on Tuesday in a Facebook post responding to the ad. “It’s sad to see Vivek Ramaswamy exploit her all for his own political gain.”

Cledith Arthur did not show up for a court hearing following his 1978 indictment. He and Donna Arthur left the state, and there were warrants out for his arrest. The Arthurs remained married until Cledith Arthur’s 2004 death in Pennsylvania. 

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Acton has said the last time she saw her mother was in the courtroom after her stepfather was charged, when her mother rebuffed her kiss. “That was the last time I ever saw her,” Acton told the Vindicator, her hometown newspaper in Youngstown, when she was selected by DeWine as the state’s health director. 

Ohio’s gubernatorial race is one of the most competitive in the country despite the Midwestern state solidly backing Republican Trump in all three of his White House bids. Acton is vying to be the state’s first elected woman governor and the first Democrat elected to the office since 2006.

The most recent reliable nonpartisan polls show her with a  4-to-9 point lead over Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and failed Republican presidential candidate. 

The contest has been notably light on policy. Though Acton and Ramaswamy have staked out different positions on everything from reproductive rights to data centers, neither candidate faced a competitive primary that compelled them to outline their policies in detail. Acton has tightly controlled media access at her events and declined to debate Ramaswamy in the general election. 

The ads blanketing the battleground state have therefore largely been personal attacks. Acton has suggested Ramaswamy is an out-of-touch billionaire and a biotech fraud. Ramaswamy and others in his orbit have sought to portray Acton as unfit to lead Ohio, zeroing in on a 2019 incident when Acton’s daughter called police and said her mother and stepfather were arguing — and that Acton had been drinking. 

The disagreement had ended by the time police arrived. Acton’s husband has taken responsibility for starting the argument and said that his wife had a single drink. Ohio’s Republican Party nevertheless posted a computer-generated image of Acton’s Jeep with the license plate: “Drunk Mom.”

Previous Ramaswamy-aligned ads have suggested that the childhood abuse Acton experienced — and her response to it — should be disqualifying. 

Childhood abuse is common. At least one in seven children in the country experience abuse or neglect each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and rates of child abuse and neglect are higher among families experiencing poverty or economic insecurity.

Ramaswamy in April shared a video on the social media site X of a speech in which he said Acton had no positive vision to lead Ohio, “other than to complain about what someone else did to her,” seemingly referring to her childhood abuse.

Ads run by the Ramaswamy-aligned V-PAC — the name stands for Victors, not Victims — highlighted Acton’s disclosure on her medical licensing application that she sought therapy to process childhood abuse. V-PAC is funded by a group of out-of-state billionaires that includes Elon Musk, the owner of X, Tesla and SpaceX.

“I won’t normalize somebody who said my childhood is just something I’m complaining about,” Acton said in a Tuesday appearance on Spectrum News. 

Acton added that Ramaswamy has shown a “pattern” of using his opponents’ family dynamics for political attacks. She pointed to Ramaswamy’s comment directed at Nikki Haley in a 2016 Republican presidential primary debate that she should “take care of your family first” during an exchange over TikTok and her adult daughter’s use of the video-sharing platform.

When the video with Acton’s estranged mother initially surfaced on social media Monday night, it did not state who paid for it or which candidate it supported, as is legally required for a political ad to air on television. By Tuesday evening, Ramaswamy confirmed to an ABC affiliate in Columbus that his campaign was responsible for it and defended its contents. Axios reported early Wednesday that Ramaswamy’s campaign will drop $4 million to get the ad in front of Ohio voters in the final stretch before Election Day.

His Tuesday night campaign event was interrupted when an attendee attempted to confront him over the ad. Television personality Meghan McCain, the daughter of late GOP senator and Republican presidential nominee John McCain, wrote on X that the Ramaswamy spot was a “dastardly ad” that “never should have been created.” Democrat Sherrod Brown, who is vying to reclaim his former U.S. Senate seat representing Ohio, called the ad “disgusting.” The conservative National Review obtained court records that corroborated Acton’s account. A Republican member of DeWine’s cabinet denounced the advertisement. 

Trump told ABC News on Wednesday that he wasn’t aware of the ad’s specifics, but he didn’t “think that has anything to do with Vivek,” after being informed at least twice that the ad had been made by Ramaswamy’s campaign. Vance, campaigning in his hometown of Cincinnati on Wednesday, told reporters that Republicans should “stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race.” 

“Whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern,” Vance added.

Acton’s campaign released a response ad featuring her younger brother, Phil Stearns, who has said that Acton shares their childhood abuse not to complain but because it is “something that informs who she is and builds this core of strength that she has.”

“She was 11- and 12-years old, and to think that’s somehow a talking point? Shame on Vivek. It’s the contempt he has for Amy, it’s the contempt he has for Ohio. He’s not fit to lead,” Stearns said in the ad.

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The post Amy Acton survived childhood abuse. Her Republican opponent is using it to attack her appeared first on Salon.com.