CLEVELAND — In his runs for the White House Barack Obama was a frequent visitor to Ohio with the state at the time holding bellwether status.. He is the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state, with victories in 2008 and 2012.
See video of Obama's stop below:
On Saturday, he returned to Cleveland to rally support for Sherrod Brown in his bid to return to the U.S. Senate against Republican Jon Husted and Amy Acton in her bid for governor against Republican Vivek Ramaswamy. Obama told the packed house at Cleveland's Public Auditorium that this election reminds him of his own.
"When you have been campaigning as long as I have been campaigning and when you work as many elections as I have you can tell when an election comes along that just feels a little bit different," Obama said. "An election where people are so ready for something new, so hungry for something better, so sick and tired of being sick and tired that everywhere you go it feels like change is in the air."
It's a feeling Brown said he sees on the ground.
"I feel that enthusiasm in cities and suburbs, in small towns, in farm country. We see people showing up like today like never before. They're angry, they're frustrated, they demand change and we're fighting for it," Brown said.
It was a week in Ohio politics dominated by the Vivek Ramaswamy ad featuring the estranged mother of Amy Acton, who accuses her of lying about her past.
Acton says she has had no contact with her mother since she was 12 when records show Acton's stepfather was arrested and charged with raping her. Her mother stayed with the man, who was never convicted and fled the state. He was a fugitive until his death in 2004.
"Now my opponent has chosen to exploit intentionally my childhood to save his struggling campaign, but it's not going to work," she said. "Apparently there is no low to which he won't stoop, but look I am a scrappy kid from Youngstown, and scrappy kids from Youngstown we never back down from a fight."
Obama also weighed in on the controversy surrounding the ad.
"In recent days we have seen there is no line he will not cross, no low he will not sink to to try to get in the limelight. I mean, think about the latest ad he ran," Obama said. "There's a decency that we should expect out of our public officials, and I don't know what's happened where the standards of behavior have gotten so low that somebody could run an ad like that."
Ramaswamy told News 5 Friday that Democrats are lying about the ad that was only about lying.
"Our ad had nothing, nothing to do with childhood abuse, sexual abuse. We condemn that as forcefully as anyone. Our ad was about a consistent track record of Amy Acton telling lies," Ramaswamy said.
During the Saturday speech that lasted about 40 minutes, Obama was critical of President Donald Trump over his handling of affairs both foreign and domestic, and the hit to affordability caused by tariffs and the Iran war along with the threats to healthcare with Medicaid cuts.
"Does anybody really think this guy in the White House right now is spending all of that time thinking about these issues? I mean, I don't know if you noticed but he seems very focused on home renovations," Obama said. "The guy's building a ballroom that's bigger than the White House, paved over the Rose Garden, put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn and there's gold everywhere. What's up with the gold? He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory."
Where he is focused, Obama said, "and that is how to enrich himself and his family and his cronies."
"This culture is set at the top. We have never seen a president excel so wildly at just straight up grifting on your dime," he said. "This is someone who has become billions of dollars wealthier in office."
"You remember that whole thing about draining the swamp? The only thing that got drained was the reflecting pool in the National Mall after some no bid contract got it all messed up," he said.
In response to Obama's visit, the Republican Governors Association weighed in through a statement to News 5. “Democrats from across the country are swooping into Ohio because they know Amy Acton can’t stand on her own record,” said RGA Deputy Communications Director Anna Marian Block. “Ohioans haven’t forgotten her decisions that closed schools and suffocated businesses, or how she quit on Ohio and left hardworking families to clean up her mess.”
Jon Husted spokesperson Amy Natoce also told News 5 in a statement in part;
"The sight of Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama together again should send shivers down Ohioans' spines. The Brown-Obama duo gave us higher taxes, less jobs and wide-open borders."
