An attack advertisement released by Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy targeting his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, has drawn criticism from members of his own party less than two weeks before the November 3 midterm elections in the United States.
The campaign video, which began circulating online on Monday, features Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur, calling her daughter a liar and suggesting she suffers from mental illness. In the advertisement, Arthur disputed Acton’s statements about facing childhood homelessness and living in a tent, urging voters not to support her daughter.
“It’s not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past,” Arthur said in the video.
On Tuesday, Ramaswamy’s campaign confirmed its involvement in the spot and announced plans to spend $4 million to promote it. Ramaswamy has declined to pull the video from the airwaves despite calls from senior Republicans to remove it.
However, the commercial omits that Acton and Arthur have been estranged since 1978, when Acton was 12 years old and was taken from her mother’s custody after her stepfather was charged with raping her. While the stepfather pleaded not guilty, he failed to appear in court and was never tried. Arthur remained married to him until his death. Both Acton and her brother have previously spoken publicly about childhood abuse.
Historical court documents and news coverage corroborate key aspects of Acton’s accounts. Additionally, FactCheck.org identified records connecting her stepfather to a campground where Acton said her family resided in a tent, contradicting Arthur’s assertions that the family had never lived there.
In response to the ad, Acton’s campaign issued a statement on Tuesday outlining her childhood background alongside a counter-advertisement featuring her brother, Phil Stearns.
“I received a lot of abuse, but Amy always got the worst of it,” Stearns said in the response ad. “She continued to receive that abuse because she knew she had to protect me.”
The decision to leverage a candidate's personal family history has prompted debate regarding campaign tactics. David Niven, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati, noted that while relatives have appeared in political advertising in the past, the deeply personal nature of this attack is highly unusual.
“We’ve seen family members used before but not in such a deeply personal way,” Niven told Al Jazeera. “So we occasionally see a family member who’s talking about disagreements, you know, talking about a different kind of political outlook, but not this degree of just personal destruction. That’s what’s unprecedented here.”
The advertisement has drawn mixed reactions across the Republican Party. President Donald Trump praised the ad on Thursday, describing it as “very powerful” and encouraging Ramaswamy to keep running it. Vice President JD Vance similarly advised Republicans to “stop whining” about the matter and concentrate on winning.
In contrast, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who supports Ramaswamy's bid, called the ad “deeply, deeply troubling” and urged that it be withdrawn, though he maintained his endorsement. Ohio Senator Jon Husted also distanced himself from the advertisement.
Niven stated that the divide highlights broader tensions within the party structure.
“So there’s a real divide between the Republican Party as it kind of traditionally was, that had something of a standard, and the Republican Party of Trump and Vance that will say anything at any time, regardless of the, you know, propriety of it,” Niven said.
Neither candidate has previously held elected office. Ramaswamy, a 41-year-old businessman and former biotechnology executive raised in Ohio, ran for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination before endorsing Trump. Acton, 60, is a physician and former director of the Ohio Department of Health who gained national attention directing the state's COVID-19 pandemic response under DeWine. Raised in Youngstown, Acton has publicly detailed her early life experiences with poverty, abuse, and homelessness.
Analysts suggest the aggressive nature of the advertisement carries operational risks. Jerry Miller, a professor of communication studies and political advertising expert at Ohio University, explained that while high-friction ads can energize core partisans, they can also backfire.
“Every negative attack carries the risk of backfiring,” Miller told Al Jazeera. “I do believe that this ad will generate a degree of empathy, particularly from sexual assault survivors and their families who have had to confront these issues.”
Niven noted that while Trump frequently moves past political controversies due to the rapid pace of news cycles, Ramaswamy may struggle to replicate that dynamic.
“The thing that Trump has mastered is he’s always involved in a hundred controversies at a time,” Niven said. “So you kind of lose track of one controversy because it’s replaced by another one so quickly after.”
Niven added: “The problem for Ramaswamy is this is the only thing people are going to be seeing and
English (US) ·