The race to be Ohio’s next governor just reached a new low. Just two weeks ahead of the election on November 3, Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is under fire for an attack ad featuring his opponent’s estranged mother.
The Ramaswamy campaign’s ad features Donna Arthur, the mother of Democratic candidate Amy Acton.
“It’s not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar,” Arthur says in the ad , alleging that Acton has lied about being homeless as a child. “Don’t let her become your governor. If you think she’ll make your life better, you’re fooling yourself.”
The ad immediately drew backlash, particularly given Arthur and Acton’s strained relationship. Acton and Arthur say they have not seen each other since Acton was 12 years old, when they went to court in 1978, as Arthur’s husband, who was Acton’s stepfather, was charged with sexually abusing Acton as a child for years. Arthur did not address the charges in the ad.
Now, both civilians and public figures are weighing in on the discourse, with most decrying Ramaswamy’s ad as a bridge too far—and potentially as the final nail in the coffin for his campaign.
Acton and Ramaswamy respond
Representatives for both campaigns have since responded to the discourse around the ad.
Acton’s brother, Phillip Stearns, defended her in a statement , saying it’s unsurprising that Ramaswamy “stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at 12 years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point.”
“After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died,” Stearns continued. “This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core—a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants.”
Acton herself addressed the ad in an interview with Spectrum News , saying it exemplifies why she won’t participate in a debate with Ramaswamy.
“I won’t normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is ‘something I’m just complaining about,’” Acton said. “The words our leaders use matter and I think it’s gonna take courage right now from all of us to stop normalizing this sort of rhetoric.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Ramaswamy’s campaign, Connie Luck, continued to defend the ad’s content.
“We don’t know what happened between Amy and her mother, who first spoke out about Amy in 2020, but we know that Amy Acton is a serial fabulist who has some serious problems with the truth,” Luck said in a statement.
‘Unbelievably evil’: Social media and public figures weigh in
The ad quickly became a trending topic on social media, with viral post after viral post denouncing Ramaswamy’s campaign for bringing Acton’s childhood into the election.
“Somehow they always come up with new ways to be unbelievably evil,” reads one response to the ad.
“‘My opponent was molested as a child’ is possibly the most despicable political attack I’ve ever heard,” reads another post with nearly a million views.
Another user commented on the ad alongside Ramaswamy’s latest odds to win the election as predicted by Polymarket, which currently sit at an all-time low of 22% . “Imagine being so desperate to win an election that your supporters start digging through your opponent’s childhood trauma,” the user wrote . “And you’re still losing.”
Political consultant and CNN analyst David Axelrod also condemned the ad in a post that’s garnered more than 186,000 views. “I’ve been around politics longer than [Vivek’s] been alive, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything uglier,” Axelrod wrote. “The ad and Vivek’s failure to repudiate it tells us so much more about him than his opponent.”
Meghan McCain, television personality and daughter of Sen. John McCain, called the ad “dastardly” and said “it never should have been created.”
But not all public figures took Acton’s side. Vice President JD Vance dismissed criticism of the ad at a press conference , saying he’s “a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America.”
“Politics is a tough business,” Vance said. “And my message to my fellow elected Republicans is if you actually believe in the things you say you believe in, stop whining about an advertisement and go win the race in 13 days.”
