Estranged Mother of Democrat Running for Ohio Governor Labels Her a ‘Liar’ With a ‘Serious Problem’

The estranged mother of the Democrat running for governor in Ohio is calling her daughter, Amy Acton, a “liar” in a new campaign ad released two weeks before the election, but the decision to feature mom Donna Arthur in the attack is drawing backlash across the political spectrum.The state director of the Conservative Caucus’s Ohio chapter, Walter Curt, shared a video on X late Monday, in which the speaker who identifies herself as Dr. Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, says she loves her daughter, but the Democratic hopeful “has a serious problem: she is a liar.” “She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true,” Ms. Arthur said, briefly speaking about her work establishing programs aimed at addressing sexual abuse before attacking her daughter’s credibility. “She’s lied her entire life. My daughter needs help, and she can’t help you if she needs help herself.”The ad ends with Ms. Arthur warning viewers, “If you think she’ll make your life better, you’re fooling yourself. It will only get worse.”A biography on Dr. Acton’s campaign website states that she “overcame periods of abuse, hunger, and neglect” during her childhood, including “living in a tent in the middle of winter.”A Youngstown-based news outlet, the Vindicator, reported in 2019 that Dr. Acton’s birth parents separated when she was three and while still with her mother, Dr. Acton lived in “more than a dozen places in as many years.” The opinion piece added that after Ms. Arthur’s second husband allegedly sexually abused Dr. Acton, her biological father was granted full custody and she never saw Ms. Arthur again. Dr. Acton’s campaign released a statement condemning the ad. Her brother, Philip Stearns, called it a “desperate, disgusting attack” that “reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core.”He accused the Ramaswamy campaign of trying to “turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point.”In April, Mr. Ramaswamy said he would be a governor who would lay out a “positive vision for our state,” while Dr. Acton would be a governor who only “complain[s] about what someone else did to her.” The Ramaswamy campaign has not claimed credit for the ad as of Tuesday morning. Representatives for the campaign did not respond to The New York Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication. The decision to put Dr. Acton’s mother in an attack ad has drawn criticism. A libertarian journalist, Robby Soave, wrote on X, “This is sick stuff. Amy Acton’s enemies are trotting out her estranged and allegedly abusive mother to malign her. If anything, I feel more sympathetic to Amy Acton after watching this. I suspect I’m not alone!”“It seems crazy to me [that] one would assume this would work and not backfire. An estranged mom from a rough childhood going straight to camera to trash her daughter as a trustworthy messenger?” wrote conservative commentator Mary Katherine Ham. A senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Tim Carney, suggested that backlash to the ad “could sink Vivek.”The controversial ad comes as several polls have found Dr. Acton leading Mr. Ramaswamy with just two weeks until the November 3 election. RealClearPolitics’ average of polls shows Dr. Acton holds a 3.7-percentage-point lead over her Republican opponent. The last time Ohio elected a Democratic governor was in 2006. In 2019, Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, appointed Dr. Acton to run the state’s Department of Health. She was involved in Ohio’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, serving in that role until June 2020, when she resigned and became governor’s health adviser. Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign has tried to cast Dr. Acton as the state’s villainous architect of school and business closures during the pandemic. However, last December, Mr. DeWine sought to shift some of the blame to himself, telling reporters, “They were my decisions, so no one should blame someone else if they don’t like it. The buck stops with me.”Despite the governor’s past working relationship with Dr. Acton, Mr. DeWine endorsed Mr. Ramaswamy last January, months ahead of the primary.

Estranged Mother of Democrat Running for Ohio Governor Labels Her a ‘Liar’ With a ‘Serious Problem’

Estranged Mother of Democrat Running for Ohio Governor Labels Her a ‘Liar’ With a ‘Serious Problem’

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