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Attack ad featuring candidate's mother turns Ohio governor's race even uglier

Attack ad featuring candidate's mother turns Ohio governor's race even uglier A new attack ad in the Ohio governor’s race features the mother of the Democratic candidate, Amy Acton — estranged from her daughter over allegations of molestation by a stepfather — calling the candidate a liar. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor, confirmed to reporters Tuesday evening that the ad, which had not yet appeared on television, came from his campaign. Many Republicans hailed it as a bombshell after it began circulating on social media Monday night, while Democrats, and some Republicans, called it a new low by Ramaswamy in a campaign that was already one of the nation’s ugliest. Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, condemned it as “despicable.” But Axios reported Tuesday night that the Ramaswamy campaign was investing $4 million to air the advertisement statewide. In the ad, Donna Arthur, Acton’s mother, says, “Don’t let her become your governor. If you think she’ll make your life better, you’re fooling yourself.” On the campaign trail and during her time as the director of the Ohio Department of Health, Acton has shared details of a troubled childhood in which she was homeless for a time and was molested by her stepfather. In 2019, Acton gave an interview to The Vindicator, the since-folded daily newspaper of Youngstown, Ohio, in which she disclosed being sexually abused between the ages of 9 and 12. According to a newspaper report at the time, Acton’s stepfather was charged with raping her in 1978, after her biological father made a report to police. Asked for corroboration of that report, police and court officials in the Youngstown area could not immediately produce records from the 1970s. But the Acton campaign produced documents showing that Acton’s stepfather pleaded not guilty, was indicted by a grand jury and fled the state before trial. Although another warrant was issued for his arrest, he never appeared before a judge. He died in Pennsylvania in 2004. In 2020, Arthur came forward to a conservative website to say her daughter’s claims of homelessness were exaggerated. Arthur shared that after her husband was arrested, Acton testified against him in court. Arthur supported her husband, rather than her daughter. In the new ad, Arthur does not refer to the allegations of molestation. Instead, she dismisses Acton’s story that she lived in a tent as a child. Both women have said that they have not seen or spoken to each other since that day in court in 1978. Stearns said in a statement Tuesday that he and his sister were removed from their mother’s custody after the arrest. “Our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died,” Stearns said. “This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core — a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants.” Ramaswamy’s campaign did not respond to substantive questions about the ad, but at a campaign event Tuesday evening, he told The Columbus Dispatch that Arthur was not paid to participate. “We don’t know what happened between Amy and her mother, who first spoke out about Amy in 2020, but we know that Amy Acton is a serial fabulist who has some serious problems with the truth,” Connie Luck, a spokesperson for the Ramaswamy campaign, said in the statement. In a Tuesday afternoon interview with Spectrum News, Acton referenced the ad while explaining why she won’t appear on a debate stage with Ramaswamy. “I won’t normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is something I’m just complaining about,” she said, continuing to call out what she said was a pattern of lies and low blows by her opponent dating back to his 2024 presidential campaign. The Acton campaign quickly released its own ad featuring Acton’s brother saying that he was abused, but that his sister was abused far worse as she sought to protect him. By Tuesday night, the attack ad had generated considerable backlash. A heckler screamed at Ramaswamy at a campaign event in Columbus, and David Urban, a former Trump campaign adviser, admonished Ramaswamy on CNN. Democrats have attacked Ramaswamy for a separate ad that a political website pointed out shows a man convicted of child sexual abuse. The spot was focused on a woman named Patty, who was nearly in tears over increases in property taxes and said she was afraid that she would lose her home. It showed Ramaswamy meeting Patty at a county fair while her husband stood beside her. Last week, The Bulwark reported that her husband was Vernon Edwards, a registered sex offender convicted in 2006 of “gross sexual imposition” with a victim under the age of 13. Ramaswamy’s campaign later said it removed clips of Edwards from the ad, but according to AdImpact, the ad is still running unchanged. Family members, such as President Donald Trump’s niece Mary Trump; the siblings of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and the siblings of Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., have stepped forward in past campaigns to oppose their kin. But few cases have been so visceral as the anti-Acton ad. Republicans had already attacked Acton in starkly personal terms, presenting her as a violent drunk, inflating the events of a single night in the Columbus, Ohio, suburbs in late August 2019 when police were dispatched to Acton’s house, but no charges were filed. The Acton campaign has presented Ramaswamy as a con man and out-of-touch billionaire. Whether yet another attack ad will have a meaningful impact on the race is unclear, said Melissa K. Miller, a Bowling Green State University professor who has been closely watching the race. This late in October, she said, voters are quick to tune out the endless political commercials on their televisions, and many have already made up their mind about whom they want to be their next governor.

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