For six years, Marina Lacerda was known publicly only as “Minor Victim 1,” the name federal prosecutors gave her in their 2019 sex-trafficking indictment of Jeffrey Epstein. Last year, she stepped out from behind it on Capitol Hill, joining fellow survivors in demanding that the government release the Epstein files.
Now, just over a year later, Lacerda is the central figure in a new political ad against Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who once voted against forcing the files into public view. It launches online Monday and hits Kansas TV on Tuesday.
Hers is one of three new ads featuring Epstein survivors. In another, Jena-Lisa Jones takes aim at Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss. Lacerda also appears in the third, which targets Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., which is expected to air Wednesday.
The ads mark the first time Epstein survivors themselves have campaigned in a congressional race. The family of one survivor got there first: Sky and Amanda Roberts, the brother and sister-in-law of the late Virginia Giuffre, recently appeared in an ad opposing their own congressman, Colorado Republican Rep. Jeff Crank, who they say refused to meet with them.
The new ads are sponsored by New Deal for All, a political action committee registered just this month and launched by Steve Pajcic, a Florida lawyer and former Democratic state legislator. Pajcic and his children “are spending at least $7 million for a blitz of ads in Florida, Kansas, Mississippi and South Carolina,” The New York Times reported last week in a profile of him.
To date, the PAC has spent roughly $4.55 million on ads and ad reservations through Election Day, according to AdImpact data reviewed by MS NOW. A Democratic strategist close to the project who was granted anonymity to discuss internal plans told MS NOW that the group had put roughly $2 million behind the Epstein-related ads targeting Marshall, Hyde-Smith and Moody, at least to start.
In the Kansas ad, Lacerda says she was 13 when she first met Epstein and was abused by him. “I expected our leaders to listen to our stories and hold our abusers accountable,” she says as a photo of Marshall appears alongside text faulting him for voting to block the release of the Epstein files.
The ad also features audio of Marshall saying, “It’s just not of much interest to me right now.” MS NOW was not able to independently verify the origin of the audio or whether he was referring to the Epstein files, but it appeared to come from footage by KSN, a Kansas NBC affiliate.
In the Mississippi spot, Jones, who says she was also in her early teens when Epstein first abused her, accuses Hyde-Smith of “voting to protect the sex trafficker who abused me.”
Looking directly into the camera, she says, “I want true change. I want our children to be safe.” Then, as a photo of Hyde-Smith appears: “If you vote for pedophiles, it’s time for Mississippi to pick a new senator.”
Both ads center on the same vote. In September 2025, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tried to attach the Epstein Files Transparency Act, legislation requiring the Justice Department to release its files on Epstein, to the annual defense policy bill. Marshall and Hyde-Smith were among 51 Republicans who voted to table the amendment, effectively killing it. Two months later, after the bill passed the House nearly unanimously, the Senate approved it by unanimous consent. That means no senator objected, but also that there was no recorded vote.
In response to a request for comment, a representative for Hyde-Smith pushed back on the ad’s depiction of the senator.
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“Sen. Hyde-Smith has consistently stood with victims of human trafficking. As the lead co-sponsor of the bipartisan Trafficking Survivors Relief Act, signed into law in January 2026, she helped ensure survivors can clear nonviolent federal offenses they were forced to commit by their traffickers and have a real opportunity to rebuild their lives,” said Jake Monssen, Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager. “This ad is nothing more than partisan propaganda paid for by people aligned with George Soros and national Democrats.”
Representatives for Marshall and Moody did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A representative for Crank previously told The New York Times that “it is deeply unfortunate that Washington lobbyist Jessica Killin is preying on a grieving family with the help of the Washington Democrats.” (Killin is Crank’s opponent in the Colorado race.)
Lacerda, who became a U.S. citizen in her 20s, and Jones both told MS NOW that they are registered to vote in Florida. Both also said that until the past year, neither was particularly invested in, or knowledgeable about, national politics or Congress. Jones said she is a registered Republican.
Asked earlier this month whether they too would be getting involved in upcoming congressional races, several other Epstein survivors demurred.
One, Shauntae Smith, said that for her, “It’s not a political issue; it’s a human rights issue. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. It matters whether or not you agree with child rape and child trafficking, that’s the problem.”
Yet when pressed on why they decided their voices were needed in Kansas and Mississippi, Lacerda and Jones gave reasons for entering the fray that echoed Smith’s rationale for staying out of it.
“If you can’t stand with us, then you are not willing to protect us or our future kids,” Lacerda said.
Jones agreed, stating that no matter which side of the aisle a member sits on, “Anyone who isn’t behind protecting our children or future generations I want no part of.”
CORRECTION (OCt. 19, 2026 at 2:33 p.m.): An earlier version of this newsletter misidentified the state Rep. Crank is from. He represents Colorado, not Texas.
Lisa Rubin is MS NOW's senior legal reporter and a former litigator.
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