Vivek Ramaswamy stands by ad featuring Amy Acton's mother despite bipartisan criticism in Ohio - CBC
Demonstrators hold up signs as a 2026 Ohio Republican Bus Tour passes by after a campaign event with Ohio gubernatorial Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in Strongsville, Ohio, on Friday. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)Social SharingBiotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy embarked on a statewide bus tour across Ohio with fellow Republicans on Friday, even as his gubernatorial campaign's ad featuring the estranged mother of Democratic rival Amy Acton was sowing growing divisions within his party.
With the backing of U.S. Vice-President JD Vance and at U.S. President Donald Trump's urging, Ramaswamy has continued a $4 million US campaign to air the ad on streaming platforms and TV. During stops on the tour Friday, he defended it against criticism that he characterized as concocted by Democrats and the news media.
"The irony is they're lying about an ad that is about lying," he told a crowd in suburban Cleveland Friday morning. "They're changing the subject because they don't want to answer for their own failures."
The 60-second spot features Acton's birth mother, Donna Arthur, calling her daughter "a liar" who "needs help" due to a "a serious problem" being honest about her past.
But Arthur hasn't seen her daughter in nearly 50 years. She lost custody of her children after her husband, the children's stepfather, was indicted for raping Acton when she was 12. Acton, Ohio's former state health director, says she hasn't seen her mother since 1978.
By Friday, every living full-term governor of Ohio β two Democrats and three Republicans β had spoken out against the ad.
Former governor Bob Taft, a Republican, told Marion, Ohio, radio show host Scott Spears that his great-grandfather, president William Howard Taft, "is probably rolling over in his grave" at the negativity of this year's elections.
He urged Ramaswamy to cease airing the ad, as another fellow Republican, Gov. Mike DeWine, had done a day earlier. "It really exceeds the bounds of human decency," he said.
U.S. Sen. Jon Husted β who, like Ramaswamy, is locked in an unexpectedly tight race in Ohio against his Democratic opponent, former senator Sherrod Brown β shared a stage with Vance on Wednesday without mentioning the controversial ad, then issued a statement shortly afterward saying he would not have run it.
Other statewide candidates have drawn the same careful line, without raising the issue when on the same stage with Ramaswamy.
Husted, whose name is emblazoned on the side of the bus along with all the other statewide candidates, did not participate in the first two stops of the tour Friday. His campaign said he had scheduling conflicts.
At a campaign rally in Iowa on Thursday, Trump told the crowd Ramaswamy called him to ask for advice about the ad.
"You've got to ride with it," Trump recalled telling Ramaswamy, a former 2024 presidential candidate. Trump expressed jealousy that he didn't have such a strong ad to run during his own campaigns.
He said it was like "hitting pay dirt."
Acton has made no secret of facing homelessness and abuse as a child. She has condemned Ramaswamy for the ad.
"I won't normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is just something I'm complaining about," she told Spectrum News.
According to police and court documents obtained by The Associated Press, Cledith Arthur was arrested and charged with the rape of his stepdaughter, then 12, in July 1978, after Acton's biological father reported him to authorities. The abuse allegedly happened from December 1976 to April 1978.
Cledith Arthur pleaded not guilty. He was indicted by a grand jury that September, but failed to show at a court hearing and remained a fugitive until at least 1981. He has since died.
