GOP Doubles Down on Ad Exploiting Ohio Democrat’s Childhood Rape and Abuse

The last time Dr. Amy Acton—a physician and Ohio’s Democratic nominee for governor—says she saw her mom in person was the day her stepfather Cledith “Bud” Arthur was charged for raping her as a minor.

Arthur pleaded not guilty and fled the state before he could be convicted. Despite warrants for his arrest, Acton’s mom, Donna Arthur, took her husband’s side and stayed married to him.

Now, Donna Arthur is starring in a new ad condemning her estranged daughter as a someone who has “lied her entire life.”

The ad, first reported by progressive Ohio blogger D.J. Byrne, was being surveyed among Ohio voters when it began circulating online this week. At the time, the proposed advertisement did not state who paid for or approved the messaging. But late Tuesday, Acton’s GOP opponent, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, came clean: “It is an ad from our campaign. And the thing that I want to say is that I would love for this race and this election to be about the substantive issues that impact Ohioans. And unfortunately, Amy Acton has been hiding from those issues,” he said. His campaign also said it planned to spend $4 million to air the ad in the final stretch before Election Day.

After Ramaswamy’s admission, Vice President JD Vance, a fellow Ohio Republican, came to his defense. “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. “The media and the Democrats in the state of Ohio are obsessed because, guess what? Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar.”

For her part, Acton has characterized her mother as “deeply sick and unwell.”

Her campaign also released a sharp rebuke from Acton’s brother. “It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point,” said Philip Stearns. “After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died.”

It’s not the first time that Ramaswamy has featured the wife of a man charged with sexually exploiting minors in an advertisement. A few weeks ago, his campaign released an advertisement of an Ohio farmer who said she was struggling to make ends meet in the current economy. The farmer’s husband, Vernon Edwards, also appeared in the advertisement. The campaign edited him out of the ad after they discovered—via public scrutiny—that Edwards had been convicted of molesting his minor nieces.