Ad notes that her opponent, Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott, uses a wheelchair

FORT WORTH, Texas (CFP) — Texas State Senator Wendy Davis is defending a controversial new television ad noting that her Republican opponent in the governor’s race, Attorney General Greg Abbott, uses a wheelchair and accusing him of being unsympathetic to other accident victims.

State Senator Wendy Davis

Abbott was paralyzed after a 1984 accident in which a tree fell on him while jogging. He received a reported $10 million settlement.

During a campaign appearance in Fort Worth on October 13, Davis, the Democratic nominee for Texas’s top job, insisted that the ad points out Abbott’s “hypocrisy” in opposing efforts by other accident victims to seek redress in the courts, as he did.

“Greg Abbot has built a career kicking the ladder down behind him and denying to others the very same justice that he both deserved,” Davis said.

The Abbott campaign has dismissed Davis’s ad as “disgusting.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott

“Senator Davis’s decision to double down on her severe error in judgment is shameful and shows that she is unfit to be governor,” the campaign said in a statement.

Davis, who trails Abbott by double digits in most polls, has faced an avalanche of media criticism — from both the left and the right — since the ad began airing October 10.

The ad begins, “A tree fell on Greg Abbott, who sued and got millions. Since then, he’s spent his career working against other victims.”

The ad goes to criticize Abbott for arguing in court that an amputee wasn’t disabled because she had an artificial limb and for opposing a suit by a rape victim against a company that failed to do a background check on a sex offender.

The ad ends, “Greg Abbott. He’s not for us.”

Abbott has talked about his disability during the course of his campaign and even ran an ad showing voters how he rehabilitated himself by wheeling his chair up and down a parking garage.

View the Davis ad: