Ohio Should Punish Ramaswamy for the Ad Starring Amy Acton's Mother

Even Republican Rep. Nancy Mace says the $4 million spot featuring Acton's estranged mother is the most shameful ad this election season.

In a one-minute ad from Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign for Ohio governor, Donna Arthur asks voters not to elect her daughter, Democrat Amy Acton. "She is a liar. She lies about her past," Arthur says in audio of the ad that NPR aired.

Ramaswamy's campaign says it'll spend $4 million to put that minute in front of Ohioans, The Associated Press reported. I think it should cost him the race. Putting a rival's estranged parent in an attack ad is out of bounds, and this one tells voters far more about the man who paid for it than about the woman it goes after.

It isn't only Democrats who see it that way. Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, said the spot "is going to go down as the most shameful, disgusting, offensive ad this election season," The Guardian reported Thursday.

Look at what the ad calls a lie. Acton, Ohio's former public health director, has spent years describing a hard childhood that included living in a tent with her younger brother, her mother and her stepfather. Police and court documents obtained by the AP show that her stepfather was arrested in July 1978 and charged with raping Acton, then 12. Arthur lost custody of both children, the AP reported.

He pleaded not guilty, missed a court hearing and stayed a fugitive until at least 1981, according to the AP. He has since died. WOSU, the public radio station in Columbus, said it checked court records showing that the family had lived in a tent, NPR reported. The ad goes after a stretch of Acton's past that has a paper trail, and the paper trail backs her up.

Acton hasn't seen her mother since they were both in a courtroom in 1978, the AP reported. She condemned the ad Tuesday in an interview with Spectrum News and called Ramaswamy's personal attacks "a lifelong pattern," the AP reported. Speaking to voters Wednesday, Acton said Ramaswamy had no business putting her mother, who she said isn't well, in a campaign ad, according to The Guardian.

The best defense of the ad is that family history can say something about character. Sometimes it does, when it's the candidate's own conduct. Acton is asking for the job on the record she built running the state's health department, and the ad goes after her childhood instead.

Ramaswamy confirmed Tuesday that the ad came from his campaign. It had first surfaced online through an Ohio political blogger, without the "paid for" tag that TV ads legally need, the AP reported. "I would love for this race, in this election, to be about the substantive issues that impact Ohioans," he told reporters, according to NPR. Then he accused Acton of hiding from those issues.

Vice President JD Vance has his back. He told an Ohio rally Wednesday that Ramaswamy was right to run an ad calling Acton a liar, NPR reported. Others in his party haven't followed. Nikki Haley posted on X that Ramaswamy is a "bad guy." Casey Putsch, who ran against Ramaswamy for the Republican nomination, said he'd vote for Acton, the AP reported. Ohio's Republican governor, Mike DeWine, who still endorses Ramaswamy, called the ad "deeply, deeply troubling" and asked the campaign to take it down, The Guardian reported.

An ad like this one could actually decide the race. Ohio hasn't elected a Democratic governor since 2006, but the Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up, NPR reported. More than 676,000 people in Ohio had already cast ballots by Wednesday, according to the AP.

Robert Alexander, a Bowling Green State University political scientist on Ohio's debate commission, wants a debate. Even so, he said on WOSU that after this ad, he can understand why Acton turned one down. "The kinds of things that can be said, you can't unsay those things," he said, according to NPR.

He's right, and Ramaswamy can't unsay this ad either. He's paying $4 million to say it louder. Ohio's answer on Nov. 3 should be just as loud.

Source: The Guardian, retrieved October 22, 2026. Other sources: NPR, pbs.org, NBC News.