TOI Correspondent from Washington: American political campaigns have long operated on the principle that if you cannot convince voters that you are the best person for the job, you must at least persuade them that your opponent is a terrible human being.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the Indian-American running for governor of Ohio, has presented a particularly grim illustration of that practice.The Republican Trump surrogate has embraced a $4 million campaign ad featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, calling her daughter a liar. The ad, widely panned as distasteful, drags Acton’s deeply painful childhood that included neglect and sexual abuse by her stepfather -- resulting in her removal from her mother’s custody -- into a race where Ramaswamy is trailing in most polls.While Acton’s brother and a raft of supporters have publicly defended her and condemned Ramaswamy for exploiting her childhood trauma, even Republicans are aghast by the ad, which pundits say illustrates desperation on part of Ramaswamy. “How low can Vivek go? Even lower than we thought,” conservative commentator Bill Kristol said. Pro-Trump talking head Scott Jennings described it as an extremely risky strategy while conceding that “to throw out a piece like this at the end of a race is not confidence-inspiring.
.."Ramaswamy however has doubled down on the attack ad after initially distancing himself from it, living up to the election’s billing as one of the ugliest in this midterm election cycle. The local Columbus Dispatch newspaper on Wednesday announced it was endorsing Acton, saying Ramaswamy’s “reckless behavior…can’t be ignored.” MAGA bosses, including President Trump and veep JD Vance, who was born and raised in Ohio and was elected Senator from the state, have backed Ramaswamy but have not commented on the controversial ad.While it is hardly an American invention to turn politics into character assassination, the U.S political echo system has now perfected the art, complete with television production values, ominous music and enough selective editing to make an ordinary candidate appear capable of anything short of eating the family pet. Trump himself is on a tear on the campaign trail, demonizing immigrants while referring to developments in France and warning “that is what the radical Democrats wanna do to America," with echoes of his 2024 “they are eating the dogs, they are eating the cats” vilification of immigrants.Both Acton and Ramaswamy are accomplished local Ohioans with very different backgrounds. Acton is from the rust belt town of Youngstown who overcame poverty and childhood sexual abuse to earn a medical degree from Northeastern Ohio University College of Medicine and a master's degree in public health from Ohio State University. Ramaswamy is the Cincinnati-born son of Indian immigrants, whose father was a General Electric engineer and whose mother was a geriatric psychiatrist.
He earned billions in biotech after graduating from Jesuit-run St. Xavier High School and earning degrees from Harvard University and Yale Law School.Ohio has only ever elected white Christian men as governor, and either Acton or Ramaswamy would make history if elected. Acton would be the first woman and the first Jewish person elected to the role and Ramaswamy would be the state's first Indian-American governor who is also a self-professed Hindu-American.
Previous governors of Indian origin were Nikki Haley (South Carolina 2011-2017), a Sikh who converted to Christianity, and Bobby Jindal (Louisiana 2008-2016), a Hindu who converted to Christianity.Louisiana also demonstrated that voters can cut a lot of slack for campaigns suffused with sleaze. Long before voters became so forgiving of Trump’s peccadilloes, Edwin Edwards, the state's flamboyant governor, famously boasted during his 1983 re-election campaign that the only way he could lose was “if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.” He won.