Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign for Ohio governor has released an attack ad starring the mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, who says Acton's tale of growing up in a tent is a lie. Acton's brother says that mother stayed married to the man who sexually abused Amy at age 12, even after his arrest and after the kids were taken away. This is the face the Ramaswamy campaign picked to stand in for credibility.
The Ad And The Star Witness
The spot, which has been bouncing around conservative social media, features Donna Arthur, Acton's estranged mother. Her line: "She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She's lied her entire life."
That is the whole pitch. Not a policy. Not a record. A mother, a camera, and an accusation of lifelong lying aimed at a woman who ran Ohio's public health department during the first months of the Covid pandemic.
The race is a coin flip in a right-leaning state, according to the polling cited by The Guardian. Both sides know one ugly ad could tip a close contest. Ramaswamy's team clearly decided this was the ad.
What Acton's Brother Says Happened
In a Tuesday statement released by the Acton campaign, her brother, Philip Stearns, laid out the family history that the ad conveniently skips. Their mother married a man who sexually abused Amy when she was 12. He was arrested. Amy and Stearns were removed from the home.
And then, according to Stearns, their mother stayed married to Amy's rapist until he died. Let that sink in for a second. The woman Ramaswamy's team chose as its messenger on Amy Acton's honesty is, by her own son's account, someone who stuck with the man who abused her daughter.
Stearns called the ad "a despicable low" and said it turns "the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old" into "a political talking point." He did not stop there, calling Ramaswamy "a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants." Hard to argue he was holding back.
The Campaign's Non-Denial Denial
Ramaswamy spokesperson Connie Luck responded with a statement that deserves a slow read. "We don't know what happened between Amy and her mother," she said. Then, in the very next breath, she called Acton "a serial fabulist."
So the campaign doesn't know what happened, but it knows who is lying. Fascinating epistemology. Luck added that "everyone who knows her best" is warning Ohioans off Acton, including "her own mother." That is a lot of weight to put on a woman whose own son says she stayed married to the abuser.
Here is the part the ad can't wish away. Acton told the Youngstown Vindicator that her stepfather had a history of molestation and was arrested over what he did to her. She also described living in a tent outside the northeast Ohio city. And in a 2020 interview with the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, Arthur herself described being present at grand jury proceedings tied to Acton's abuse allegations. A grand jury, in a case the mother says she attended, about abuse the ad treats as a fairy tale.
Democrats Are Not Subtle About This
Reaction from Democrats was swift and furious. Rep. Greg Landsman of the Cincinnati area called it "one of the most despicable things I've ever seen in politics." The Democratic Governors Association said Ramaswamy "has shown that there is no depth he will not sink to if it serves his own ambitions."
Yes, partisan groups say partisan things about the other party's candidate. That is Tuesday. But in this case the outrage is attached to an actual fact pattern: a campaign weaponizing a child abuse survivor's trauma and then shrugging that it doesn't know what really happened.
This is also not an isolated stunt. Acton has criticized Ramaswamy for airing a separate ad featuring a woman married to a registered sex offender, which The Bulwark first reported. The pattern is a campaign that keeps reaching for the grimmest material available.
An Ugly Race Gets Uglier
This contest is already regarded as one of the nastiest of the November 3 midterms. Acton has refused to debate Ramaswamy and calls him a "chronic liar." Last month, an armed man lunged at her during a campaign stop at a county fair, injuring several attendees before he was arrested. Acton was not hurt.
That is the temperature of this race. A candidate who dodged an armed man at a county fair is now being told by a rival's ad that her childhood is a fabrication, delivered by the mother she is estranged from for reasons her brother has now spelled out in public.
Voters in Ohio get to decide what to make of all this. They deserve to decide it knowing exactly what the ad left out.
The Dingo Take
Ramaswamy's campaign picked the worst possible messenger and the worst possible message, and then called it voter education.
Look at the sequence of choices here. Somebody sat in a room and decided that the best way to question a woman's honesty was to hand the microphone to the mother who, per her son, stayed married to the man who abused that woman as a child. Somebody else approved it. A spokesperson then admitted the campaign doesn't know what happened between them while insisting Acton is a serial fabulist. That is not a strategy. That is a confession that the goal was damage, and the truth was optional.
Acton's account of her childhood has been stated publicly, backed by an arrest, a removal from the home, and a grand jury her own mother says she attended. Ramaswamy is free to run on his record and his ideas. Instead he ran on a stranger's version of a child abuse survivor's worst years. Ohio voters should remember that on November 3.
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