Vivek Ramaswamy is a Yale Law grad, a biotech multimillionaire, and the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio. He has now reached a new low in a race where he’d already had plenty of them. His campaign is spending $4 million on an ad in which the estranged mother of his opponent, Democrat Dr. Amy Acton, attacks her daughter.
In the minute-long spot, Donna Arthur says her daughter lies about her childhood and tells Ohioans not to vote for her. “She lies about her past,” Arthur says. “She’s lied her entire life.”
The ad leaves out why mother and daughter are estranged. Acton has spoken publicly about being abused as a child and about her difficult relationship with her mother. She says they have not spoken since she was 12 when her stepfather was charged with abuse, and Acton testified against him. Court records show the stepfather was arrested for raping her as a child and that her mother lost custody. In a statement, Acton said that “between the ages of 10 and 12, I was sexually abused by her husband, while my birth mother did nothing to protect me.”
So Ramaswamy’s closing argument, two weeks before Election Day, is a woman who lost custody of her kids over sexual abuse calling Acton a liar on statewide television.
Gross.
At first Ramaswamy’s campaign wouldn’t confirm it was behind the ad. The spot started circulating online without any disclaimer saying who paid for it. Once Ramaswamy owned it, he explained himself this way, “I would love for this race and this election to be about the substantive issues that impact Ohioans, and unfortunately, Amy Acton has been hiding from those issues.” His campaign manager, Jonathan Ewing, went further, “This is a campaign-ending moment for Amy Acton. The people who know her best keep warning Ohioans about her.”
It may well be a campaign-ending moment. Just not for Acton.
Beyond the morality of running the ad, there are practical concerns because the ad is landing like a turd in a pool. Nearly everyone except Ramaswamy and his law school buddy JD Vance can see it’s a political problem. Senator Jon Husted, who is in a toss-up race for reelection, said flatly, “I would not have run that ad.” Ohio Governor Mike DeWine endorsed Ramaswamy, and still called the ad “deeply, deeply troubling” and said, “It’s wrong to run this ad.” (Though he has not withdrawn the endorsement.) Nikki Haley said the ad was more proof that Ramaswamy is “a bad guy.” Then there’s CNN’s Scott Jennings, who has made a career of defending the indefensible on cable news. He drew the line here:
“This is not whining. From what I’ve heard from my people in Ohio, it’s warning that this may have actually been a backfire. It’s gonna blow up in their face.”
The “whining” Jennings is rejecting, is a response to Vice President JD Vance — Ramaswamy’s Yale Law buddy — who told Republicans to “stop whining” about the ad. At a Cincinnati rally, he praised Ramaswamy for having “the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar.” Then he added, “I think that a person who is more worried about whether somebody says something mean about them, that person — that person could never serve in the governor’s mansion of the great state of Ohio.”
“Something mean” is certainly one way to describe recruiting a child sexual abuse survivor’s estranged mother for a $4 million ad buy.
President Donald Trump said he knew “nothing about it,” and then offered, “it’s a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much, but I don’t think that has anything to do with Vivek.”
It has about $4 million to do with Vivek.
Sources close to the campaign say the ad tested well with “persuadable” voters. Jennings has a theory about that: he thinks it was tested in a focus group and got loose, and, “What you can’t test in those settings is the rebuttal, and when people actually find out the story.” Really? The campaign never thought about the pretty obvious rebuttal, backed by public records, that Acton’s biological mother chose to stay with the man accused of sexually molesting her daughter? And never considered how poorly that would play? Stunning, and not in a good way.
Before the ad debacle Ramaswamy was already behind in polling — a Marist poll from mid-October had Acton ahead 50% to 43% among likely voters. This is what a desperate campaign looks like.
Ramaswamy left New Haven with a J.D., a lifelong friendship with a future vice president (another JD, if you will), and millions already in the bank. But this week he proved there are some things even Yale Law School can’t get you.
Earlier: JD Vance’s Surprisingly Non-Weird Law School Habit
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
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