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'We Now Deserve to Lose': Ramaswamy Ad Deepens GOP Panic in Ohio
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Published 10/21/2026 4:01:49 PM
Ramaswamy Ad Deepens GOP Panic in Ohio
The fierce and bipartisan backlash to gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's decision to feature his opponent's estranged mother in an ad left Republicans in Ohio and Washington reeling on Wednesday, as both Ramaswamy and Vice President J.D. Vance doubled down on the divisive strategy.
Publicly, Republicans were mounting a defense, led by Vance, who is from Ohio and was campaigning in Cincinnati on Wednesday, treating the ad as a game-changing October surprise. On Thursday, President Trump joined in, saying in a social media post that Ramaswamy should keep the ad running and "let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!"
But privately, old-guard Republicans were baffled that Ramaswamy would dare to deploy Democratic nominee Amy Acton’s own mother, who has not spoken to her daughter since 1978 when she defended Acton’s stepfather who was indicted for raping Acton as a child. Some predicted the ad was likely to draw more empathy and interest in Acton from voters, and turn them away from Ramaswamy.
“We’ve lost the plot,” says one Republican strategist. “We had a real good chance and then we do this two weeks out.”
Adds a second: “We now deserve to lose this race.”
The addition of this ad so close to Election Day roiled races in Ohio up and down the ballot. “I would not have run that ad,” Republican Sen. Jon Husted, running in a tight and expensive race for re-election against Sherrod Brown in Ohio, told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Other players in the state's Republican circles say the ad has all the pieces of a misfire, especially among women.
By Wednesday afternoon, it was clear Vance might be in a decided minority. “I don’t have to agree with Amy Acton’s politics to believe that exploiting someone’s childhood trauma is wrong,” wrote Republican Lydia Mihalik, a member of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s Cabinet. On Thursday morning, DeWine himself joined in the pile on, telling reporters at the Statehouse in Columbus that the ad was “deeply, deeply troubling" and urging Ramaswamy's campaign to take it down, The Associated Press reported.
Mike Murphy, a strategist who was in Sen. John McCain’s inner circle when he ran for President in 2000 and headed Gov. Jeb Bush’s super PAC in 2016, wrote a brutal assessment of the ad on social media, saying it “is looking more and more like political suicide.”
And former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who ran against Ramaswamy in the 2020 presidential primaries and was a frequent critic of him, was even more direct. “He’s a bad guy,” she said. “It’s a shame he continues to get away with it.”
In an editorial endorsement of Acton published Wednesday, The Columbus Dispatch roundly condemned the video: “It should go without saying that sexual violence against children should not be politicized or taken as lightly as Ramaswamy appears to take it.”
For its part, Acton’s campaign began an ad of its own calling out Ramaswamy’s effort to make her childhood a campaign issue after a half century in the past.
"I received a lot of abuse, but Amy always got the worst of it,” Acton’s brother, Phil Stearns, says in a new 30-second ad released Wednesday. “She continued to receive that abuse because she knew she had to protect me from that, and if she hadn't done that, who knows where I would have ended up.”
"She was 11- and 12-years-old, and to think that that's somehow a talking point—shame on Vivek,” Stearns continues. “The contempt he has for Amy is the contempt he has for Ohio. He's not fit to lead."
