On Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance found himself defending a pretty tasteless political advertisement produced by Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign for Ohio governor.
The commercial features the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, accusing her daughter of lying about her childhood. Acton has said she was sexually abused by her stepfather, who faced criminal charges, and that her mother failed to protect her. She has not seen her mother since she was 12.
Ramaswamy apparently considers this material worth spending $4 million to broadcast across Ohio. Vance—confronted with Republican criticism of the advertisement—suggested his GOP colleagues should stop complaining and concentrate on winning elections. But is Ramaswamy actually making the business of winning more difficult?
And we’re not just talking about Ohio, where Republicans are facing unexpectedly competitive races for governor and the U.S. Senate. Turns out, Vance’s own political future may be on the line.
As the vice president positions himself as a possible successor to Donald Trump in 2028, he has now attached himself to a politician who seems increasingly incapable of distinguishing between a clever provocation and a spectacular political mistake, to say the least. As of this morning, current Republican Governor Mike DeWine has called on Ramaswamy to take down the controversial advertisement.
To make matters worse, Ramaswamy is not merely an ally Vance happens to support. The two are longtime friends, Yale Law School contemporaries and products of southwestern Ohio. Vance has repeatedly campaigned for him and endorsed his gubernatorial ambitions. Their association is sufficiently established—enough so that Ramaswamy's failures invite questions about Vance's own political instincts.
And, thanks to Ramaswamy's latest exercise in political self-sabotage, Vance has acquired the dubious distinction of being the only man in Ohio who appears to think the governor's race needed more Vivek Ramaswamy.
There is something almost touching about the consensus Ramaswamy has managed to manufacture. Republicans who ordinarily struggle to agree on the time of day have discovered a common cause in questioning his latest political maneuver.
GOP Senator Jon Husted, who holds Vance's former Senate seat and is fighting an intense midterm battle to retain it against Democrat Sherrod Brown, said he would not have aired the advertisement. Former presidential candidate Nikki Haley dispensed with the usual diplomatic niceties and called Ramaswamy "a bad guy." Vance, meanwhile, had a different take, saying he was "disgusted" by Republicans criticizing the commercial.
There is a time for party loyalty, JD, and then there is the rather elementary matter of knowing when to keep quiet.
The entire situation represents a remarkable inversion of political priorities. Husted, who has an actual election to win in less than two weeks, appears to understand that publicly humiliating a woman over her childhood abuse might not constitute an especially seductive proposition to undecided voters. How novel. Vance, on the other hand, seems more preoccupied with protecting Ramaswamy from the indignity of Republican disapproval than with considering whether that disapproval might be warranted.
The controversy exposes the fundamental weakness in Ramaswamy's political approach. He seems to regard the ability to command attention as conclusive evidence of the ability to persuade. We shall resist the temptation to blame Trump, who has done more than perhaps any politician in modern American history to revolutionize the boundaries of acceptable electoral behavior. One does wonder whether the president himself could have aired precisely this advertisement and emerged unscathed. But the peculiar, apparently indestructible mythology of Donald Trump deserves its own treatise.
Ramaswamy, alas, is not Donald Trump.
During the 2024 Republican presidential primaries, he demonstrated a formidable talent for dominating debates without winning elections. His confrontations with Haley and other candidates generated considerable publicity, but his presidential campaign ended after the Iowa caucuses, where he finished fourth. He emerged a political celebrity without having established the more consequential ability to assemble a winning electoral coalition.
Ohio is now testing whether he has learned the difference. The available evidence suggests the lesson has not entirely taken.
An October Marist poll found Acton leading Ramaswamy 50 percent to 43 percent among likely voters. Among independents, her advantage was a remarkable 53 percent to 34 percent. In the Senate race, Brown led Husted 48 percent to 44 percent. Polls are not election results, of course, and Trump's unpopularity presents Ohio Republicans with difficulties that extend beyond Ramaswamy's personal deficiencies. Still, the figures suggest that being perpetually discussed is not necessarily the same as being particularly liked.
There was likely some elaborate political calculation behind the advertisement. The campaign, for what it is worth, claims it tested well among persuadable voters. But focus group approval and electoral wisdom are hardly interchangeable concepts, particularly when the resulting spectacle permits one's opponent to assume the dignified position of injured party while one's fellow Republicans publicly debate the morality of the whole enterprise.
And then there is Vance.
His appeal as a prospective presidential nominee rests partly on the proposition that he can translate Trump's political instincts into something more disciplined. Vance can be combative without appearing quite so improvisational and he understands the language of populist resentment while possessing the intellectual credentials and institutional experience to present himself as a serious national leader. All rather useful qualifications for a man contemplating the presidency, until his conspicuous devotion to Ramaswamy begins to call that very discernment into question.
It is understandable why Vance might be reluctant to condemn a campaign tactic employed by a Republican friend whose victory he desperately wants. But there is a considerable distance between refusing to criticize an ally and volunteering to defend his worst impulses. Wednesday presented Vance with an opportunity to demonstrate that personal loyalty had not entirely displaced independent judgment. Instead, he attacked the Republicans who had apparently decided to exercise theirs.
Perhaps Ramaswamy will win in November. Ohio remains a Republican-leaning state, after all, and two weeks constitute an eternity in American politics. Victory, however, would not retrospectively confer wisdom upon every decision that preceded it, nor would it necessarily settle the considerably more complicated question of Vance's viability on the national stage in 2028.
Trump himself offers a useful lesson here. His political career is littered with allies whose usefulness eventually expired, from Mike Pence, whose refusal to overturn the 2020 election made him a target of Trump's fury, to Ron DeSantis, whose presidential ambitions transformed a former protégé into an object of relentless ridicule. Trump has demonstrated an almost preternatural willingness to discard political relationships when they cease to serve his interests. Vance, who has studied the president's ascent more closely than most, might consider that particular aspect of his education. Remember, JD, presidential candidates are judged by the company they keep, but more importantly by the judgments they make when that company embarrasses them.
The irony is that Vance has spent years preparing to inherit Trump's political empire, apparently without appreciating that its founder regards political loyalty as a decidedly revocable privilege. If Vance hopes to inherit the throne, he might first have to master the distinctly Trumpian art of throwing an old friend overboard before the friend sinks the ship.