Barack Obama opened his midterm campaign on Saturday at Cleveland Public Auditorium — his first rally of the cycle and his first visit to Ohio since 2018 — campaigning for Sherrod Brown, who is trying to unseat Republican Senator Jon Husted, and Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor against Vivek Ramaswamy. The hall, which holds more than 10,000, was near capacity; no official crowd count was released.
Obama went straight at President Donald Trump's White House renovations: "He's paved over the Rose Garden. Put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn and there's gold everywhere. What's up with the gold? Everything, more gold! He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere. So, he's clearly not focused on lowering prices for you." He added: "He should be on HGTV. Guy's building a ballroom that's bigger than the White House."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth got the same treatment: "He's very focused on important matters like the jaw lines and testosterone levels of our troops. How much time do you think this defense secretary spends looking at himself in the mirror in the morning? These are not serious people."
On prices, Obama said: "In this case, this administration's actions are directly responsible for rising costs. The current president chose to make a series of bad decisions. Most importantly, he decided to start an unnecessary war that nobody asked for, nobody voted for." He joked about tariffs on "that well-known evil empire Canada — the people who gave us maple syrup," and attacked the sight of masked federal agents on American streets.
He also waded into the ugliest fight of the Ohio governor's race — Ramaswamy's attack ad built around Acton's estranged mother. "We all know that guy — who is, like, thirsty," Obama said. "Just wants to get attention no matter what, willing to do anything. And in recent days we've seen there is no line he won't cross." Acton told the crowd her opponent "has chosen to exploit, intentionally, my childhood to save his struggling campaign, but it's not going to work." The Ramaswamy campaign has defended the ad, and a Husted spokesperson answered the rally by saying: "The sight of Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama together again should send shivers down Ohioans' spines."
Obama closed on the stakes: "After two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen in modern times, you get the chance to say, 'Enough's enough. We are going to change right here in Ohio.'" Brown's race could decide which party controls the Senate. Obama's office says he has helped raise more than $15 million for midterm races this fall; from Cleveland he went on to a second rally the same evening in Detroit.
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