Ramaswamy ad in Ohio governor campaign has side-effect of highlighting adversity Acton overcame

One side effect of the attack ad being promoted by Ohio Republican candidate for governor Vivek Ramaswamy is that it’s now bringing attention to the inspirational American success story embodied by his opponent Dr. Amy Acton and the adversity she overcame.

By now, nearly everyone in the country has seen or heard about the Ramaswamy campaign ad that platforms Acton’s estranged mother calling her daughter a liar. Nearly everyone also now knows the sad and shocking story behind the ad.

According to court records, Acton’s stepfather was indicted for raping her during her pre-teen years, allegations that Acton has talked about publicly in the past and that her younger brother, Phil Stearns, corroborated in a public statement on Oct. 20. Acton and Stearns both say they suffered other forms of abuse, hunger and neglect at the hands of Acton’s mother and stepfather during their childhood. 

At the time of the indictment of Acton’s stepfather, Acton and her brother were removed from the home, while her mother — the woman featured in Ramaswamy’s campaign ad — stuck with Acton’s stepfather when he fled Ohio to escape those criminal charges in the late 1970s. He died in Pennsylvania in 2004. Acton says she hasn’t seen or talked to her mother in nearly 50 years.

Rightly so, the Ramaswamy ad has received intense condemnation even from many Republicans, including Dr. Acton’s former boss, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. In the two or three days after the story broke last week, one couldn’t watch or read the news, or scroll through social media or YouTube, without seeing this story on multiple platforms, often with panels of politicians and media figures representing a wide range of political outlooks all having the same reaction: That Ramaswamy using Acton’s long-estranged mother to discredit her rape survivor daughter was the most despicable, sickest campaign ad they had ever seen.

One thing that the ad, in a backwards way, has put more of a spotlight on is how Amy Acton survived and transcended her abuse and mistreatment as a young girl, eventually graduating at the top of her high school class, working her way through college, and earning a medical degree and master’s in public health. She rose to the top echelons of Ohio state government, leading the Ohio Department of Health steadily and effectively during Ohio’s early response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

She has been the recipient of multiple prestigious honors and awards, including the Columbus Foundation’s Spirit of Columbus Award in 2020, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s Profile in COVID Courage Award in 2021 and the USA Today Woman of the Year for Ohio in 2022, among others. And as of Friday, Acton was the favored candidate for winning the governor’s race in both polling and prediction markets. Until last week, Ohio was considered a decidedly “red” state.

Acton’s perseverance and courage in rising so far above her tragic childhood is the epitome of the inspirational American success story. And the supreme irony? The nearly universal backlash against that rancid campaign ad (with the execrable exceptions of President Trump and Vice President Vance) may help put Dr. Acton over the top with Ohio’s voters on Nov. 3.

In fact, it’s in the running for the most effective political ad of this mid-term election year, just not in the way that Vivek Ramaswamy had hoped.