Vance Tells Republicans to 'Stop Whining' About Rape Victim Ad

The Ad Nobody Asked For

Here is what happened. Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, released a video featuring Donna Arthur, the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. "She's lied her entire life," Arthur says, and she urges Ohioans not to vote for her daughter, according to the BBC.

The ad dropped on social media Monday evening with no disclosure of who paid for it or authorized it. Ramaswamy confirmed Tuesday that it came from his campaign. Then he pledged to put $4 million behind it, a statewide advertising push to make sure as many Ohioans as possible see a mother attack her daughter.

That's not a gaffe. That's a budget line.

What the Ad Leaves Out

Now for the part the ad skips. Acton has said publicly that her mother's husband, Cledith Arthur, sexually abused her as a child. Acton alleged he raped her 40 years ago, when she was 12.

In 1978, Acton and her brother were removed from their mother's custody when Arthur was arrested and charged. The couple fled Ohio. He was never prosecuted on the rape charge, and he died in 2004. Acton told The Youngstown Vindicator in a 2019 interview that the last time she saw her mother was at a hearing in that 1978 case.

Her brother, Philip Stearns, put the rest of it plainly on Tuesday: their "birth mother stayed married to Amy's rapist until he died." So the star witness against Amy Acton's honesty is a woman who stayed married to the man Acton says assaulted her. That detail did not make the cut in the 30-second spot.

Even Ramaswamy's Own Camp Blinked

A Ramaswamy campaign spokesman gave CBS News a statement doubling down on the claim that Acton is untruthful. Then he conceded, "We don't know what happened between Amy and her mother."

Read that again. The campaign is spending $4 million to broadcast a mother's accusation of dishonesty while admitting it has no idea what happened between the two women. That's an attack ad built on a shrug.

The backlash was not limited to Democrats. Conservative commentator Meghan McCain called the ad "dastardly" and said it "never should have been created." An aide to Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Dan Hauser, deleted his post sharing the video and apologized, saying he pulled it "after researching it, and the disturbing allegations." Nikki Haley, who ran against Ramaswamy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said, "He's a bad guy. It's a shame he continues to get away with it."

Stop Whining, Says the Vice President

Enter Vance. Speaking to reporters in Cincinnati on Wednesday, he told his fellow Republicans: "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."

Asked whether the ad was appropriate, he declined to say. "Whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern," he told reporters. He added that he was "a little bit disgusted" by Republicans "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."

At an Ohio rally that afternoon, he said he "wasn't even supposed to talk about" the controversy, "but I cannot help myself." He accused the media and Ohio Democrats of obsessing over it because Ramaswamy "had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar."

Audacity. That's the word he picked.

The Family Business

It's worth knowing that Vance and Ramaswamy are not strangers. NBC News previously reported that several members of Ramaswamy's campaign previously worked on Vance's political team. So when the vice president defends this ad, he is not defending a stranger's work. He is defending something that grew in his own garden.

Democrats responded with fury. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called it "an abhorrent attack." Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a 2028 presidential hopeful, said Ramaswamy "has reached a new low by launching these vile and false attacks." Acton's team fired back with its own spot on Tuesday featuring her brother recounting their childhood abuse and saying "Amy always got the worst of it." His closing line: "Shame on Vivek. It's the contempt he has for Amy. It's the contempt he has for Ohio."

Will It Work?

Experts told the BBC this will probably backfire. David Lublin, a professor at American University, noted that using relatives against a candidate is not new, pointing to family members who testified against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before his confirmation as health secretary. "But this is of a different order," he said. "They're estranged not over policy but over a rape allegation."

Lublin said the real aim of most attack ads is to depress the other side's turnout, not convert voters. He also read the move as a sign of desperation. Cook Political Report has shifted the Ohio governor's race from "leans Republican" to "toss up," in a state where a Democrat hasn't won the governorship in over two decades.

Lublin also pointed to Donald Trump's rhetoric as a catalyst for the coarsening of American politics, citing the time Trump appeared to mock a reporter in Ohio who had a disability. The ad didn't come from nowhere. It came from a party that has spent a decade teaching itself that cruelty is a feature.