Republican Vivek Ramaswamy confirmed Thursday that his gubernatorial campaign had finished airing a disputed advertisement featuring his opponent’s long-estranged mother. "It ran to completion," Ramaswamy told reporters in Vandalia, Ohio, when asked if his campaign had stopped running the ad. Its removal signals the end of a deeply divisive campaign message during the closing days of a contest in which Democrat Dr.
Amy Acton holds a narrow, statistically inconclusive polling lead. The advertisement featured Donna Arthur, Acton’s birth mother, calling her daughter a liar and disputing parts of her account of an unstable upbringing. It was especially controversial because Acton says she suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her mother’s partner when she was a child.
"Vivek Ramaswamy should never have run his despicable ad in the first place, and it’s totally unsurprising that he took it off the air in the most cowardly way possible, without even the hint of an apology to Dr. Acton, her family, or to the people of Ohio," an Acton campaign spokesperson said in a statement, WKBN reported. Ramaswamy confirmed that Ohio voters will now see four replacement commercials from his campaign as both nominees compete to succeed term-limited Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who publicly opposed his own party’s candidate over the contentious spot.
Newsweek emailed the Ramaswamy and Acton campaigns for comment on Friday morning. The commercial turned Acton’s childhood trauma into a defining issue in the race and drew condemnation from senior figures in both parties. Its completion may help Ramaswamy pivot toward policy, although a recent survey suggests the episode did more to repel voters than persuade them.
"For all of the discussion around 30-second ads, I would love, even for this final close, for this campaign to really be about policy," Ramaswamy told reporters before criticizing Acton for not debating him. His campaign maintained that the spot completed its intended rotation, rather than being withdrawn before the scheduled end of its television run. That explanation leaves an important question unresolved: the campaign had previously announced plans to put millions behind the advertisement, but it has not publicly established whether the controversy influenced the timing of its departure from the airwaves.
Police and court records show that Arthur lost custody of her children after her husband, Cledith Arthur, was arrested and charged with raping Acton. He pleaded not guilty, left the area while free on bond, and died without facing trial. Contemporary records also indicated that Cledith Arthur lived in a tent, supporting an element of the childhood history challenged in the original commercial.
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