A roughly 60-second ad featuring Amy Acton's estranged mother, Donna Arthur, began circulating in Ohio this week, with Arthur calling her daughter a liar and urging voters not to elect her governor. The ad surfaces in the final stretch of a closely watched, heavily financed race against Vivek Ramaswamy, and it has drawn swift condemnation from Acton's brother, who says it drags the candidate's childhood sexual abuse into the campaign for political gain.
The full video was exclusively reported Monday night by The Rooster, which obtained the clip as it spread online. In it, Arthur disputes Acton's account of a childhood spent partly homeless, including time in a tent, telling viewers, “She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She's lied her entire life,” according to The Hill. Arthur goes further in the ad, saying, “Don't let her become your governor,” as reported by Yahoo News.
It remains unclear who paid for the ad. The version obtained by The Rooster carried no paid-for disclaimer, and Yahoo News reports that as of Tuesday morning the spot did not appear to have aired on television, according to tracking by AdImpact. Neither Acton's campaign nor Ramaswamy's campaign immediately responded to a request for comment from The Hill about the ad's origins.
Brother Calls Out the Ad's Target
Acton's brother, Philip Stearns, issued a statement condemning the spot as an attempt to turn the sexual abuse his sister endured at age twelve into a political talking point, per the same Hill report. Stearns said that after their mother's husband was arrested, he and Acton were removed from their mother's custody, and that their birth mother stayed married to the man he described as Amy's rapist until he died, according to Cleveland 19 News.
Acton has said she and her mother have been estranged since she was a child, per Yahoo News. As detailed in The New York Times, Acton shared details of a troubled childhood, including a period of homelessness, during her campaign and her earlier tenure as Ohio's health director, and had previously disclosed the abuse in a 2019 interview with The Vindicator, a since-folded Youngstown daily, describing abuse by her stepfather between ages 9 and 12. The Times reports that Acton's stepfather was charged with rape and indicted by a grand jury in 1978, pleaded not guilty, and that Acton's biological father reported the matter to police that year; Acton testified against her stepfather in court, and she and her mother have not spoken since that court date, according to the Times.
A Race Already Defined by Attack Ads
The Arthur ad lands in a governor's race that has grown increasingly bitter in its final weeks. Local 12 reported that both campaigns rolled out attack ads as the contest intensified less than 60 days from Election Day, with Acton's campaign releasing a negative spot targeting Ramaswamy's business record around the same time a Ramaswamy-aligned ad featured a woman blaming Acton for her mother's death during the pandemic. Acton's campaign has separately cast Ramaswamy as a con man and an out-of-touch billionaire, while Republican-aligned messaging, including from the Republican Governors Association, has hit Acton over her refusal to debate, according to the Ohio Capital Journal.
Ramaswamy's campaign has also faced its own controversy over a separate ad. It previously featured Vernon Edwards, a registered sex offender, in a spot built around his wife, Patty Edwards, who grew emotional describing rising property taxes and fears of losing her family's farm, according to TiffinOhio.net. The ad showed Ramaswamy meeting Patty at a county fair while her husband stood beside her; the Times reports Edwards was identified by The Bulwark and was convicted in 2006 of gross sexual imposition involving a victim under age 13. Ramaswamy's campaign said it removed clips of Edwards from the ad, though TiffinOhio.net reported that version was still running unchanged according to AdImpact.
A Tight Contest Heading Into Election Day
The dueling attacks come as the race stays close despite a massive spending gap. CNN reports that Ramaswamy's campaign and allied groups have poured more than $120 million into advertising in Ohio, more than triple the spending on Acton's side, while the Ohio Capital Journal puts Republican-aligned ad spending at over $100 million compared with roughly $40 million from Democratic groups.
A Marist Poll released this week found Acton leading Ramaswamy 50% to 43% among likely Ohio voters, with an even wider edge among independents, 53% to 34%. Yet perception and polling diverge: nearly half of likely voters, 49%, still expect Ramaswamy to win, compared with 45% who expect Acton to come out on top. Whether the Arthur ad moves any of those numbers before voters head to the polls remains to be seen.
