A staggering act of bad taste
Throughout the electoral chaos of this 2026 midterm cycle, I have consciously neglected my duty to pay attention to the Democratic wave threatening to hit Ohio. Part of the reason for that is it would require me to revisit the single most painfully, memorably incorrect prediction I have ever made in the pages of National Review, back in August of 2025, concerning Sherrod Brown’s potential competitiveness as a 2026 Senate candidate. (Seriously, reading it now is like visiting my younger self as a Dickensian wraith; I want to scream, You have no idea what’s coming, you fool! across time to that author.)
But the other reason I’ve avoided Ohio is that my gag reflex kicks in at the thought of having to write about Vivek Ramaswamy. What can I say? The man just makes my gorge rise, and not without reason. Readers may have forgotten Ramaswamy’s farcical presidential campaign in 2024, where he ran as a kamikaze pilot fish attached to Donald Trump (in hopes of an administration gig) — but I was professionally obligated to watch it all. Allow me to recall the impression Vivek made upon me (and America as well) back during those days:
As for Vivek Ramaswamy, what is there left to say about this egregious muppet? The entire Vivek “trip” through these debates has been akin to sitting through a forced rewatch of Sibyl, the Sally Field “multiple-personality disorder” TV movie from the late Seventies. For the first debate, “Bad Vivek” showed up, calling everyone bought-and-paid-for frauds and grandstanding. Then for debate two, “Bad Vivek” was stuffed in a closet and instead we got “Nice Vivek.”
Nice Vivek didn’t play so hot either, so Bad Vivek was back with a vengeance tonight, and his performance was easily his most unhinged yet. The absolute confidence and overenunciated conviction he brings to even the most spurious, wildly nutty statements marks him out as either deeply weird or as a man who simply has decided to forfeit his dignity for profit. He called January 6 a conspiracy theory, said the 2020 election was stolen, called Haley corrupt, a fraud, a “puppet for the puppet masters,” said that she would send your children to die in Iran so that she could buy a larger house, and — there was a lot of cross talk — he might also have anathematized her in medieval Latin somewhere in the middle of it all. It was hard to keep up with his serial ridiculousness.
It should therefore not surprise you that I was uninterested in writing about Ohio’s gubernatorial race, or even thinking about it beyond the hope that Ramaswamy — already the inevitable, Trump-blessed candidate to replace Mike DeWine in office as a very different sort of Republican — wouldn’t blow it and break the streak of 16 consecutive years of GOP governance. But even before Trump’s mad moves shook up the 2026 map in unpredictable ways, Ramaswamy already had the stench of born-loserdom wafting off him.
Recall that Ramaswamy actually expected to be spending the last two years in Washington, D.C., as part of Trump’s administration in one form or another. But the administration cut him loose quickly; this, as he weighed in on the H-1B visa controversy in favor of Indian immigrants. Whether you agree with his position, it is a notably unpopular one among Ohio Republicans and many in Trump’s Washington.
But that was at least a difference of principle. What Ohioans are learning about now is the real reason Vivek Ramaswamy is a mismatch for the very idea of electoral politics: He’s an insincere and unlikable weasel.
Ramaswamy currently trails Democratic opponent Amy Acton in the polls by anywhere from three to five points, and yesterday he released an ad so revolting that it barely deserves recounting here. Acton and her brother are estranged from their mother, Donna Arthur, who — and this has long been a matter of public record — is credibly accused of allowing her to be sexually abused by her stepfather. This week, Ramaswamy’s campaign rounded up Arthur to record an embittered rant denouncing her daughter as a liar and telling voters not to trust her.
It was a staggering act of bad taste, a move made for absolutely no gain whatsoever — are voters supposed to hold Acton’s sexual molestation by a family member against her? — and Ramaswamy only made things worse by doubling down on it yesterday:
It is an ad from our campaign. I would love for this race and this election to be about the substantive issues that impact Ohioans. Unfortunately, Amy Acton has been hiding from those issues. She won’t debate me. She doesn’t allow cameras at her events.
And I think her record of continuously—certainly during this campaign—I would say spreading some defamatory, disparaging lies about me and my family that does deserve to be scrutinized, and this is part of a broader pattern.
If Ramaswamy thinks that people will watch this ad, and take this disgruntled woman at her word — who, it must be noted, willingly chose to stay with her daughter’s alleged sexual abuser — without looking up further details, he is both deluded and deeply cynical. His oleaginous response that “this is justified because she won’t debate me” is only going to disgust voters further.
And the simple fact that this ad even exists tells you everything you need to know about how dire the governor’s race in Ohio is for Vivek Ramaswamy. Candidates on the path to victory don’t take desperate swings like this. Only candidates certain that they’re going down in flames and have nothing left to lose reach that deep down into the gutter.