When you stand with vile, you reveal yourself. A political ad that ran in Ohio last week sparked nationwide revulsion as perhaps the vilest in American history. It is that bad.
Republican Vivek Ramaswamy’s morally incomprehensible hit piece against Democrat Dr. Amy Acton in the Ohio race for governor will be studied and deconstructed (in all its atrociousness) long after the 2026 midterm elections are over. You know why.
The decision to platform a mother complicit in the rape of her daughter — as an obscene strategy to blindside a political opponent — went way beyond the pale of personal attacks in the heat of a campaign. It was a sick act by a struggling candidate to capture voter attention that few saw coming.
The ad featured the estranged mom of Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial rival. Donna Arthur fled Youngstown 48 years ago with Acton’s alleged rapist after the then 12-year-old victim testified against him in court.
The 80-something woman in Ramaswamy’s toxic ad chose to live on the lam with Acton’s fugitive stepfather, Cledith Arthur, until he died in 2004. Neither Acton nor her younger brother saw or spoke to their mother since she skipped town in 1978 with the man arrested, charged, and indicted by a grand jury for raping Acton.
It was this troubled character, who abandoned her daughter and son as children, that Team Ramaswamy brought directly to camera with scripted venom. Arthur delivered. The performance was staged in a cozy, softly lit kitchen to exude warmth in a chilling scene from a twisted story.
Acton, whom Arthur rejected as a shattered tween in a courtroom, called her now 60-year-old daughter a serial liar with mental health issues who needed help. She warned Ohio voters, “Don’t let her become your governor.” The message was meant to stop people cold. It did. But after the bombshell went viral, so did the backstory.
The tables turned. So did stomachs as viewers (across the political spectrum) realized how next-level despicable the ad was in elevating an aging abusive mother with a checkered past who ditched a traumatized daughter to run off with the child rapist who assaulted her.
The Ramaswamy obscenity, thrown on the air less than two weeks before the election, has been widely vilified as the re-victimization of young Acton to win power at any cost.
Imagine the buried pain it must have triggered. The ad is still running in a shortened version — as if that sanitizes reprehensibility. Tellingly, not only does Ramaswamy stand by his viral outrage, but vows to promote it with more than $4 million in bought airtime across the state.
As disgust grew (and grows by the day) over the exploitation of a tortured childhood for political sport, Ohio’s finger-in-the-wind Republicans responded on a scale from minimal to militant.
“I would not have run the ad” was the mealy-mouthed comeback from Ohio U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, running in a tight race with former Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown to keep his seat, and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, running for a placeholder spot as state auditor against Annette Blackwell, a third-term Cleveland-area mayor.
“I hope the ad will be taken down,” said an equally mincing former Ohio U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, who added the rising incivility in politics “should concern us all.”
It took Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine a full day to denounce the weaponization of childhood sexual abuse that gut-punched his former state health director, who was instrumental in helping Ohioans navigate a frightening and fatal pandemic.
“It’s just plain wrong,” he said. Finally. “Deeply, deeply troubling.” DeWine also said he stood by his endorsement of Ramaswamy despite the vileness manifested in his contemptible ad for the ages. Ever the profile in cowardice.
Notably, all the Ohio Republicans who had something to say about the appalling Ramaswamy ad that revictimized the girl who grew up to become the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor — still stand with the GOP nominee for governor who launched the unconscionable clickbait and has never stopped defending it.
Ramaswamy blames backlash to the ad, which has generated massive national and local attention, on (wait for it) a “flawed and failed media” that is “lying about an ad that is about lying.”
JD Vance, a confessed liar who admitted creating stories out of thin air to command similar exposure, piled on by declaring his disgust not with the vicious strike against a child rape survivor but with Republicans “whining” about it.
The ad is “not really my concern,” sniffed the smug, amoral veep from Middletown. Couldn’t care less about whether resurfacing Acton’s MIA mother to score political points was appropriate or abhorrent.
Vance, who also survived an abusive childhood, summoned no compassion or moral clarity about the depravity that drove Team Ramaswamy to malign yesterday’s abused and neglected child for political sport. With JD, power trumps principle. Winning is paramount. Decency is an indulgence. Republicans can’t get hung up on humane if they want control.
Vance’s boss doubled down on defense of the indefensible. Trump embraced the Ramaswamy ad as a gift from heaven and urged the candidate to leave it up.
He was thrilled the ad blowing up on social media “was hitting pay dirt” and insisted his party own it. But when you stand with vile — smearing a child rape victim to win dirty — you reveal much about yourself.
Which Ohio Republican will stand with Trump when he returns to Ohio Wednesday? The president welcomes vileness as a means to an end. He demands supporters follow suit or be branded as “disloyal to the Republican Party. Watch who joins him on the stage at the Chillicothe rally. Always revealing.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.