V-PAC exists to make Vivek Ramaswamy governor of Ohio. Its money comes mostly from a few billionaires. And its latest mailer to Ohio voters is, by the account of the reporter who checked it, wrong from top to bottom.
Who's paying
Popular Information reports that most of V-PAC's $42 million has come from a handful of billionaires: Jeff Yass ($20 million), Ross Stevens ($6 million), Elon Musk ($5 million), Ratmir Timashev ($5 million) and Bill Ackman ($1 million). As we've reported, those big checks come from men who don't live in Ohio.
The mailer
An Ohio voter sent Popular Information a V-PAC flyer attacking Ramaswamy's Democratic opponent, Amy Acton. The outlet's verdict: "Every claim on V-PAC's mailer is either flatly false or deeply misleading."
The lead claim: Acton "was called 'incompetent' to the Ohio State Medical Board." It's false. V-PAC's source is Acton's 1994 application for a medical license, a 23-page document that never calls her "incompetent." One doctor who supervised her for four months at the start of her residency in 1990 described her medical knowledge then as "insufficient." Another, who supervised her for a full year later on, called it "excellent."
Asked about it, V-PAC spokesman Conor McGuinness admitted Acton was never described as "incompetent" to the board. "This was simply a typo that appeared on one piece of mail — our copy editor missed it," he said.
A typo doesn't put quotation marks around a word nobody said, and make it the headline.
The second claim: Acton said "illegals who took jobs from American workers have a right to be here." She never said that, Popular Information found. On the podcast V-PAC cites, Acton was talking about the legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio — the ones Trump falsely accused of "eating pets" — and said businesses were benefiting from "people who had a right to be here and were here." She was drawing the line between immigrants with legal status and those without. V-PAC didn't respond on this one.
The third: Acton is "a proud supporter of socialist Zohran Mamdani and backs his agenda." What she actually said, asked the day after Mamdani's primary win what lessons she took from it, was that he "was very successful at bringing joy and reminding us his main focus was on costs and everyday issues."
The fourth: Acton is "UNHINGED" and lied about drinking. The flyer points to a question on her 1994 license application asking whether she had ever been addicted to or excessively used alcohol or drugs. She answered no. V-PAC tries to prove that was a lie with a police call to her home — in 2019, 25 years later. Police found "no evidence of any physical violence" and a "verbal dispute only." Acton's husband has said publicly that he was the one who had too much to drink that night.
A pattern
This isn't the first time V-PAC has gone after Acton this way. Popular Information notes that in TV ads it has suggested, without evidence, that she's an alcoholic. And V-PAC's COVID attacks on Acton, as we've reported, leave out Ramaswamy's own COVID record.
What the record shows
V-PAC, a super PAC funded mostly by five billionaires to elect Vivek Ramaswamy, mailed Ohio voters a flyer saying Amy Acton "was called 'incompetent' to the Ohio State Medical Board." Its spokesman admits she never was, and called it a typo. The flyer's other claims — that she defended "illegals" taking American jobs, backs Zohran Mamdani's agenda, and lied about drinking — were also false or misleading, according to Popular Information's review of the sources V-PAC itself cited.
Source
The falsehoods billionaires are mailing to Ohio voters — Popular Information
