Vice President JD Vance told Republicans to “stop whining” about a viral attack ad produced by Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign that featured his opponent’s estranged mother.
Ramaswamy is facing a fierce and bipartisan backlash over the spot because of the woman’s backstory: Amy Acton, who is running for governor as a Democrat, has accused her now-deceased stepfather, Cledith Arthur, of sexually abusing her as a child. Donna Arthur, who cast her daughter as untrustworthy in the campaign advertisement, subsequently lost custody of Acton and stayed with her husband for years.
“Amy has a serious problem,” Donna Arthur says of her daughter in the ad, before telling Ohioans not to vote for her. “She is a liar. She lies about her past.”
Vance said Wednesday that he didn’t see a problem with the incredibly personal line of attack.
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“I’ll be honest with you, whether the ad was appropriate or not is not really my concern,” Vance said in response to a reporter’s question at an Ohio press conference. “What is my concern is, who is going to govern the next generation of American government?”
He also expressed deep frustration with Republicans who came out against the ad instead of focusing on winning midterm elections.
“I have to admit that I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America,” he said.
At a rally for Ramaswamy on Wednesday afternoon, Vance doubled down on the message.
“Now the media and the Democrats of the state of Ohio are obsessed, because guess what?” Vance said. “Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar.”
He also insinuated without providing evidence that her decision to step down as Ohio Department of Health director in 2020 may have been the result of alcohol abuse.
“She kind of disappeared for a little while,” Vance said, an apparent reference to her resignation.
“Somebody said alcohol,” Vance continued, pointing to someone in the audience. “You can say it, sir, I can‘t.”
The New Yorker reported in late 2020 that Acton had resigned during the COVID-19 pandemic because she feared she may be forced to sign health orders that violated her oath to “do no harm.”
But a separate series of attack ads funded by Ramaswamy-linked groups have accused Acton of being an alcoholic and drug addict — citing a 2019 domestic dispute between Acton and her husband, during which her daughter called 911 and said Acton had been drinking that evening, according to the Ohio Capitol Journal.
Local police subsequently reported that there was no evidence of violence, and officers did not list any evidence that Acton was intoxicated, the newspaper reported. No charges were ultimately filed.
“To blow it up, to bring family into it, to lie or to make the extrapolations — it’s just what you tend to expect in politics at this point,” Acton said of the ads last month.
In an interview with Spectrum News this week, Acton addressed the latest attacks against her, saying she was removed from her mother’s care at 12 years old for severe abuse and neglect. She hasn’t seen her mother in nearly 50 years.
When asked about her opponent, she said: “I won’t normalize somebody who has said that my childhood is something I’m just complaining about.”
Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, also spoke out against the commercial this week in a statement released by his sister’s campaign.
He criticized Ramaswamy’s “attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point.”
He added: “This desperate, disgusting attack reveals exactly who Vivek Ramaswamy is at his core — a pathetic excuse for a man who is willing to hurt anyone as long as it gets him what he wants.”
A spokesperson for Ramaswamy’s campaign addressed the controversy Tuesday in a statement to The Associated Press.
“We don’t know what happened between Amy and her mother, who first spoke out about Amy in 2020, but we know that Amy Acton is a serial fabulist who has some serious problems with the truth that the public needs to be aware of before deciding who to entrust as governor,” said Connie Luck.
Luck said Arthur was not paid to appear in the ad. The campaign is planning to spend $4 million promoting the spot.
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