Two weeks before Election Day, an attack ad started circulating online in Ohio's race for governor. It stars Donna Arthur, the estranged mother of Democrat Amy Acton. She looks into the camera and calls her own daughter a liar.
"Amy has a serious problem," Arthur says in the ad. "She is a liar. She lies about her past."
The ad carried no "paid for by" line. When reporters first asked, Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign would not say whether it made the ad. Then, after the story aired, Ramaswamy confirmed it was his ad.
So here is what Vivek Ramaswamy chose to do to win: he found the woman whose husband was charged with raping his opponent as a child, and put her on camera to call that child a liar about her past.
What the court records say
Acton has talked openly for years about a hard childhood: poverty, homelessness and sexual abuse by her stepfather. The ad calls that story a lie. It never mentions the abuse; it goes after the homelessness instead. "She says she grew up living in a tent," Arthur says. "None of that is true."
The records say otherwise. Reporter Morgan Trau of News 5 Cleveland pulled the Mahoning County court file. It shows that Acton's stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was arrested and charged with sexually abusing Acton when she was 12. Acton says the abuse lasted from age 10 to 12.
And the tent? Police found the stepfather living in a tent when Acton was a child, according to the same court records.
He pleaded not guilty, posted bond and ran. He stayed a fugitive until he died in 2004. Records show he and Acton's mother moved to Pennsylvania together.
As The Independent reported, Acton told The Vindicator in 2019 that she was abused from age 9 to 12, and that her stepfather was charged with rape and indicted by a grand jury in 1978. In a 2020 interview, her mother denied the abuse — but admitted she backed her husband during the case, borrowed money to pay his lawyer, and then left town with him after he was indicted.
That is the witness Ramaswamy picked.
Her brother: "a pathetic excuse for a man"
Acton's younger brother, Phil Stearns, lived through the same house. He said their mother lost custody of both children and "stayed married to Amy's rapist until he died."
"It's not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at 12 years old from our birth mother's husband into a political talking point," Stearns said in a statement.
"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," he said.
Acton put it simply: "My birth mother did nothing to protect me. I've always known that she was deeply sick and unwell, and it's sad to see Vivek Ramaswamy exploit her all for his own political gain."
Even Republicans said it went too far
This was not just Democrats.
Lydia Mihalik runs the Ohio Department of Development. She is one of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine's top cabinet members. She said:
"I don't have to agree with Amy Acton's politics to believe that exploiting someone's childhood trauma is wrong… There is a difference between fighting for your principles and abandoning them to win."
Mark Pukita, a Republican, said the ad goes too far, and that months of attack ads and campaigning like this had cost Ramaswamy his vote. "I don't know a good mother who would ever do that to her child, so she's clearly an unfit mother," he said. "Why would I take advice from an unfit mother? That would be like taking child-rearing advice from a child abuser."
Democrats were appalled too. Jessica Miranda, a former Democratic state lawmaker who is now the Hamilton County Auditor and a survivor of sexual abuse herself, called the ad "quite atrocious and vile."
What Ramaswamy's campaign said
Before owning the ad, Ramaswamy's spokesperson, Connie Luck, sent a long statement. "We don't know what happened between Amy and her mother," it said, "but we know that Amy Acton is a serial fabulist who has some serious problems with the truth."
Read that again. The campaign says it doesn't know what happened between Acton and her mother. It ran the ad anyway.
Reporters asked follow-up questions, including how much Acton's mother was paid to appear. The campaign did not answer.
This is a pattern, not a slip
Acton has said before that Ramaswamy mocks what happened to her. She quotes him saying that she was "a frequent flyer in children's services" and that she is just "complaining about something done to me" in her childhood.
It is also not the first time his side has put a person on camera to call Acton a liar — and been caught out. Earlier this fall, Ramaswamy ran an ad with a cancer patient calling Acton a liar, and Cleveland.com found three false claims in Ramaswamy's own ad. The billionaire-funded super PAC backing him mailed a flyer calling Acton "incompetent," and its own spokesman later admitted nobody had ever said it.
Each time the charge is the same: Acton is lying. Each time the record says the opposite.
What the record shows
Vivek Ramaswamy ran an ad in which Amy Acton's estranged mother calls Acton a liar about her childhood. Mahoning County court records show the mother's husband was charged with sexually abusing Acton at age 12, fled, and lived as a fugitive until he died, and that police found him living in a tent. Ramaswamy's campaign said it doesn't know what happened between Acton and her mother, did not answer when asked what the mother was paid, and confirmed the ad was theirs only after the story aired.
