Yesterday, a particularly repulsive political ad appeared on the internet, courtesy of Ohio political blogger D.J. Byrnes, who got it through an Ohio Republican who took a screen recording of it when it was shown to them in a push poll. The ad featured Donna Arthur, the estranged mother of Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor of Ohio. In the ad, Arthur called Acton — whom Arthur hadn’t seen since Acton was 12-years-old — a pathological liar.
Within minutes, everyone on the Internet knew the story was much, much worse.
Donna Arthur lost custody of her children due to abuse and neglect, and because when Arthur’s then-boyfriend raped Amy, Arthur took his side, married him, fled the jurisdiction with him after he was charged with Amy’s rape, and stayed with him until he died in 2004.
We are grateful we can still be shocked in 2026, the Year of Our Trump.
At first, the Ramaswamy campaign declined to comment and confirm the ad was theirs, and because it came from a push poll and didn’t have any of the usual disclaimers about its provenance, outlets — including us! — hedged on whether it was actually from Ramaswamy or rather instead a “helpful” PAC. If Ramaswamy was smart, he would have left it at that, especially since his supporters were scrambling all over social media arguing that Occam’s Razor held that the video was probably a triple bank-shot reverse Uno produced by the Acton campaign to make him look bad.
Granted, it might have been a bit of a leap for anyone with any sense to believe that Amy Acton called up her birth mother like “Hey mom, I know we haven’t spoken in 48 years, but could you do me a solid and record a video about how I’m a liar?” but we’d have to assume that most Ramaswamy voters don’t have much of that.
Instead, after half a day’s worth of speculation, both the campaign and Ramaswamy himself came forward and took credit for the ad, with Ramaswamy proudly announcing his plan to spend $4 million to promote it all across Ohio.
He also tried to claim that he’d love to talk about substantive issues, but apparently is unable to do that unless Acton agrees to debate him. So he’s forced to run trashy ads featuring her terrible birth mother. Makes sense!
Asked if he thought it was perhaps a petty move, Ramaswamy shrugged it off and said it was between Acton and her mother, as if he were not the one funding this ad and proudly promoting it.
Because we’re dealing with only the finest human beings here, right-wing nut jobs immediately pivoted to accusing Acton of lying about having been sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend. At first it was a lie because there was no record of the charges, but then when there was a contemporaneous newspaper article and a record of the charges — obtained, no less, by noted lefty rag The National Review, among others — they switched it up and claimed that it was a lie because he had not been convicted of raping Acton. Why? Because he and Donna Arthur skipped town and he was a wanted fugitive for years afterwards — which wasn’t actually all that hard to do in the 1970s.
The records and newspapers show that Cledith (yes, Cledith — like Cletus but with a lisp) Arthur was arrested in 1978 for raping a 12-year-old girl (that would be Amy), that a grand jury indicted him for this crime, and that a warrant was issued for his arrest after he went on the lam.
It’s worth noting again that this would be the second time that Cledith Arthur was accused of sexually assaulting a young girl, as he had previously been accused by his own daughter.
Dr. Acton’s younger brother, Phillip Stearns, also released a video yesterday talking about how she took on abuse from her mother and her mother’s boyfriend in order to protect him.
Instead of backing down like a normal person would, Laura Loomer wrote a poem about how Acton is a liar, just like the women who accused Brett Kavanaugh and Donald Trump — who she has decided, personally, were also lying.
Yeah, I don’t think that most of Trump’s supporters or Kavanaugh’s supporters actually thought those women were lying, I think they thought there wasn’t anything wrong with what they did.
Loomer also whinged about Acton’s work as Ohio’s Director of Health during the COVID pandemic, which is certainly an odd choice given that Ohio had one of the lowest rates of death from COVID in the entire country. (Which, sadly, by 2023, was still 42,000 people.)
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It seems unlikely that this is going to go particularly well for Ramaswamy, as giving a platform to someone who sided with their child’s rapist over their own child isn’t the kind of thing most people find especially endearing. Even many of those who originally posted the ad in support of Ramaswamy — like Dan Hauser, Republican strategist for Utah Rep. Mike Lee — backed down quite quickly after hearing the real story. The only people who are trying to make it work are extremists, like Laura Loomer, who were never going to vote for Acton anyway (partly because they do not actually live in Ohio).
It is deeply fucked that Amy Acton is being put through this just for running for office, but hopefully this will alert Ohioans to the kind of vile character Vivek Ramaswamy is and prevent them from making a terrible mistake.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
One of the things I find most contemptible about the right-wing is the sneering dismissal of human empathy until they feel deserving of some, then they all become victims bleating about their pain and losses.
Why is he not in prison for financial crimes?