Ramaswamy Defends Ohio Campaign Ad Featuring Rival's Estranged Mother as Criticism Spreads Across Party Lines

Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech billionaire running for Ohio governor as a Republican, began a statewide bus tour with fellow party candidates on Friday. His campaign's ad featuring the estranged mother of Democratic rival Amy Acton has meanwhile opened growing divisions among Republicans.

With the support of U.S. Vice-President JD Vance and at the urging of President Donald Trump, Ramaswamy has continued a US$4 million campaign to run the ad on streaming platforms and television. At a stop in suburban Cleveland on Friday morning, he rejected the criticism and described it as invented by Democrats and the news media. "The irony is they're lying about an ad that is about lying," he told the crowd. He said critics were changing the subject because they did not want to answer for their own failures.

The 60-second spot features Donna Arthur, Acton's birth mother. She calls her daughter "a liar" who "needs help" because of "a serious problem" being honest about her past. Arthur has not seen her daughter in nearly 50 years. She lost custody of her children after her husband, their stepfather, was indicted for raping Acton when she was 12. Acton, Ohio's former state health director, says she has not seen her mother since 1978.

By Friday, every living full-term governor of Ohio, two Democrats and three Republicans, had spoken out against the ad. Former Republican governor Bob Taft told Marion radio host Scott Spears that his great-grandfather, president William Howard Taft, "is probably rolling over in his grave" at the negativity of this year's elections. Taft urged Ramaswamy to stop airing the ad, as Republican Gov. Mike DeWine had done a day earlier. "It really exceeds the bounds of human decency," he said.

U.S. Sen. Jon Husted is in an unexpectedly tight race against Democratic former senator Sherrod Brown, much like Ramaswamy's contest. Husted shared a stage with Vance on Wednesday without raising the ad, then issued a statement shortly afterward saying he would not have run it. Other statewide candidates have drawn the same careful line, avoiding the subject when appearing alongside Ramaswamy. Husted's name is on the side of the tour bus with those of the other statewide candidates, but he did not take part in the first two stops on Friday. His campaign said he had scheduling conflicts.

Trump, speaking at a campaign rally in Iowa on Thursday, said Ramaswamy had phoned him for advice about the ad. "You've got to ride with it," Trump recalled telling Ramaswamy, who ran for president in 2024. Trump said he was jealous that he never had such a strong ad in his own campaigns, comparing it to "hitting pay dirt."

Acton has been open about experiencing homelessness and abuse as a child, and she has condemned Ramaswamy over the ad. "I won't normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is just something I'm complaining about," she told Spectrum News.

Police and court documents obtained by The Associated Press show that Cledith Arthur was arrested and charged with raping his then 12-year-old stepdaughter in July 1978, after Acton's biological father reported him to authorities. The abuse allegedly took place from December 1976 to April 1978. Arthur pleaded not guilty and was indicted by a grand jury that September. He failed to appear at a court hearing and remained a fugitive until at least 1981. He has since died.