Vance tells Republicans to 'stop whining' over Ramaswamy's Ohio attack ad featuring Acton's estranged mother

On Monday evening, a video appeared on social media in which a woman named Donna Arthur says her daughter has "lied her entire life." The daughter is Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for governor of Ohio. The video carried no label saying who had paid for it or authorised it. On Tuesday, Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy confirmed it came from his own campaign.

What the ad leaves out is the reason the two women are estranged. In 1978, Acton's stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was arrested and charged with raping her when she was a child. She and her brother were removed from their mother's custody. Acton told The Vindicator, an Ohio news outlet, that this was the last time she spoke to her mother. The Arthurs fled Ohio, and Cledith Arthur was never prosecuted on the rape charge. He died in 2004.

Ramaswamy's campaign has claimed credit for the ad and has paid millions of dollars to run it around the state. He later pledged to spend $4m (£2.9m) to air it further. The decision has drawn criticism from both parties. Acton's brother, Philip Stearns, condemned it, saying that turning alleged sexual assault into "a political talking point" was a "despicable low." Acton's campaign released its own 30-second ad on Tuesday featuring him. He recounts childhood abuse and says "Amy always got the worst of it," then adds: "Shame on Vivek. It's the contempt he has for Amy. It's the contempt he has for Ohio."

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who ran against Ramaswamy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, said: "he's a bad guy. It's a shame he continues to get away with it." Senator John Husted, who is up for re-election, told the Associated Press he would not have run the ad. Secretary of State Frank LaRose, running for state auditor, told Columbus station WSYX-TV that candidates answer for their own ads, that he probably wouldn't run one like it, but that every candidate makes their own decision.

Vice-President JD Vance, a former Ohio senator, took a different line while campaigning for Ramaswamy. Asked by BBC News whether the ad was appropriate, he said: "It's not really my concern," and that his concern was who will govern the next generation of American government. He said he was "a little bit disgusted" with members of his own party who were whining more about the ad than about what congressional Democrats want to do to the country. At a later rally he defended it, saying the media and Ohio Democrats were obsessed because Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a commercial that "calls it out like it is" and calls Acton a liar.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said he knew nothing about the ad but had heard that the mother "went very rogue on the daughter." He called it an unusual situation for a mother to hate a daughter that much, and said he did not think it had anything to do with Ramaswamy.

David Lublin, a professor at American University's School of Public Affairs, told the BBC that attack ads have grown more intense and the boundaries of what is attacked have stretched. Using relatives against an opponent is not new, he said, pointing to family members who testified against Robert F Kennedy Jr before he was confirmed as health secretary. "But this is of a different order," he said. "They're estranged not over policy but over a rape allegation." He credited Trump's rhetoric and campaigns with helping coarsen American political discourse, citing the time Trump mocked a reporter in Ohio who had a disability. The main aim of attack ads, he said, is often less to convert an opponent's supporters than to depress their turnout.

Lublin expects this one to backfire, and sees it as a possible sign that Ramaswamy's campaign is desperate to shift momentum. The race has tightened: Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election tracker, has moved it from "leans Republican" to "toss up," even though Ohio has not elected a Democratic governor in more than two decades. With $4m more behind the ad, the coming weeks will show whether it moves voters or deepens the backlash.