Vance Defends Ramaswamy’s Ad as Backlash Threatens Ohio Campaign
Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday defended an ad featuring the estranged mother of the Democrat running for Ohio governor, Amy Acton, dismissing condemnation of it from even fellow Republicans as “whining.”
In the ad from Vivek Ramaswamy, Dr. Acton’s Republican opponent, the mother said her daughter had lied and exaggerated about her childhood struggles. The ad was met with outrage, given that the mother’s longtime husband, Dr. Acton’s stepfather, was charged with raping the candidate when she was 12, according to records produced by the Acton campaign.
Mr. Ramaswamy is putting $4 million behind the spot. Mr. Vance lauded it, saying it “calls it out like it is, and calls Amy Acton a liar.”
Child sexual abuse has been a surprisingly prevalent issue in the 2026 midterms. It has surfaced in Texas, where Democrats accused Attorney General Ken Paxton of treating a convicted abuser leniently; in Kansas, where Republicans said the Democratic candidate for Senate, Adam Hamilton, failed to respond to abuse accusations by a volunteer at his church; and in multiple races where Republican votes against releasing the Epstein files have become political fodder.
Even though Mr. Ramaswamy’s ad does not directly mention sexual abuse, it has brought it to the forefront of the Ohio governor’s race and whipped up national attention. In the ad, Donna Arthur, Dr. Acton’s mother, accused her daughter of lying about details she has relayed about a troubled childhood in which she was homeless for a time. During that period, Dr. Acton has said, she was sexually abused by her stepfather. She has said she and her mother have not spoken since she was 12, when Ms. Arthur lost custody of both her daughter and her son.
Documents provided by the Acton campaign this week show that a grand jury had indicted the candidate’s stepfather on charges of raping Dr. Acton in 1978, the year Ms. Arthur lost custody. The stepfather, Cledith Arthur, pleaded not guilty, and then fled the state before trial. He died in Pennsylvania in 2004.
This week, Dr. Acton’s campaign decried the ad and quickly responded with one of its own, in which her brother, Philip Stearns, says that she had for years been the victim of their stepfather’s physical and sexual abuse.
Asked Wednesday evening about the ad, President Trump tried three approaches. He first claimed not to know anything about it. Then he cited its contents at length, saying, “It’s a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much.” Finally, he absolved Mr. Ramaswamy of responsibility for it, concluding, “I don’t think that has anything to do with Vivek.”
Mr. Vance, at a Wednesday morning campaign rally in the state, lauded Mr. Ramaswamy for the spot even as the backlash threatened to engulf the candidate’s campaign.
“I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America,” Mr. Vance told reporters. “So I would say to Ohio Republicans, do you actually think that Amy Acton is unfit to serve as governor of the state of Ohio? I do.”
The downplaying of the ad’s significance by the president and vice president did little to stem the criticism.
MK Pritzker, the wife of Illinois’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, announced on Wednesday that she would put half a million dollars behind Dr. Acton’s campaign, accusing Mr. Ramaswamy of exploiting “a highly qualified woman’s pain for political gain.”
The editorial board of The Columbus Dispatch announced its backing for Dr. Acton for governor on Wednesday morning, describing the ad in its endorsement as “revolting and unsettling.”
Multiple well-known figures in the Ohio Republican establishment either criticized the ad or distanced themselves from it. They include Frank LaRose, the Ohio secretary of state; Lydia Mihalik, director of the Ohio Department of Development; Ryan Smith, the Republican former speaker of the Ohio House; and Senator Jon Husted. In a statement, Mr. Husted, who is in the middle of a tight battle for his Senate seat, said, “I would not have run that ad.”
But denunciations also came from people far outside of establishment circles. Casey Putsch, a car designer who ran against Mr. Ramaswamy from the hard right in the Republican primary, slammed the ad on social media and said that he would vote for Dr. Acton. Mr. Ramaswamy and his campaign, he wrote, are “attacking Amy Acton over the abuse she endured as a child.”
With Election Day less than two weeks away, erosion of support from the Republicans’ Ohio establishment and its far right could spell trouble for Mr. Ramaswamy.
Kathy Barnette, a conservative radio host who advised Mr. Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign, said that the stakes of the election could not be higher and that she could vouch “100 percent” for Mr. Ramaswamy’s character and vision. At the same time, Ms. Barnette, who said her mother was raped at a young age, called the ad a “very personal thing” for her.
“It is a very fine line that the Ramaswamy campaign are walking in sharing this information,” she said. “They’re taking a huge bet.”
Did she think it was a bet worth taking? “No comment,” she said.
AdImpact, a political ad-watching firm, said Wednesday that the Ramaswamy campaign added $2.8 million in advertising reservations to the nearly $15 million already in place.
Some Republicans said the angry reaction to the ad was more political than genuine, much of it coming from people who did not support Mr. Ramaswamy in the first place.
“This was a bold and raw move, but many of the critics of this ad have strong political motivations to launch their criticism,” said Mark R. Weaver, a Republican political consultant in Ohio.
At a rally at a convention center near Cincinnati that was headlined by Mr. Vance, at which Mr. Ramaswamy briefly spoke, attendees brushed off the criticism. Some said that Dr. Acton’s mother was entitled to give her side of the story, while others downplayed the whole controversy.
“We are not voting for ads, we are voting for people,” said Greg Garland, who was attending with a group of people supporting the Republican ticket.
On Tuesday night, after being heckled about the ad, Mr. Ramaswamy told reporters, “I would love for this race, this election, to be about the substantive issues that impact Ohioans. Unfortunately, Amy Acton has been hiding from those issues.”
Kevin Williams contributed reporting from Cincinnati.
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
Bayliss Wagner is a political reporter and a member of the 2026-27 Times Fellowship, a program for journalists early in their careers.
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 22, 2026, Section A, Page 16 of the New York edition with the headline: Vance Defends Ramaswamy After ‘Revolting’ Ad Against Abused Rival
