Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for Ohio governor, confirmed on Thursday that his campaign is no longer airing the attack spot that sparked a wave of outrage. The ad depicted the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton.
Asked in Vandalia, Ohio, whether the campaign had stopped running the ad, Ramaswamy replied: "It did its job and we put out four other spots." His campaign had previously announced that it would spend $4 million on airing that ad.
The ad concerns Amy Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, who lost custody of her daughter in 1978. That year, her second husband, Cledith Arthur, was charged with raping her daughter, who was between 10 and 12 years old. Court records showed that Acton’s mother, who called her daughter a "liar", fled the state with her husband when the daughter accused him of rape. In a 2020 interview with the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, while Acton was leading Ohio’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Acton’s mother said she was aware that Cledith Arthur had been charged with raping his own daughter before the marriage.
Ramaswamy’s campaign originally filmed a 60-second spot, then cut it down to 30 seconds, a detail Ramaswamy referenced by mentioning "30-second spots". The claim by Acton’s mother that her daughter had lied about the family living in a tent with Arthur while she was a child was removed from the ad. However, court records from that time showed that Cledith Arthur did indeed live in a tent at the time of his arrest on the rape charges.
Donald Trump repeatedly defended the ad, including at a rally with Ramaswamy on Wednesday. Trump did not want to acknowledge that the serious allegation of child rape was relevant to the credibility of Acton’s mother. Reporting by NBC News and Zeta suggests that Acton’s mother had mental health issues and was found living in a car with dozens of cats. The situation disturbed some people involved in producing the ad for Ramaswamy’s campaign.
Acton’s campaign, in a new ad on the controversy released earlier on Thursday, asked: "How far will Vivek Ramaswamy go?" The ad warned Ohio voters that, in order to become governor, he would smear his opponent because her stepfather raped her when she was only 10 years old, exploiting child sexual abuse and spending millions on lies about it.
Acton addressed Ramaswamy’s attack spot at an event on Thursday. "You have probably all heard by now, if you didn’t know, something about my childhood," she told the crowd. "My brother and I went through a lot, a lot of abuse and a lot of neglect. We were frequent users of child services, we ended up living in a tent in the middle of winter," she said. "My opponent has now decided to deliberately exploit my childhood," she added. "He is doing it in a desperate attempt to save his failing campaign. But I tell you, Mr Ramaswamy, it will not work."
Ramaswamy said he would have liked the campaign to be dedicated to policy, before criticising his opponent for not wanting to debate him.
