Ramaswamy ad featuring Acton's estranged mother draws rare Republican rebuke in Ohio governor's race

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A campaign video featuring the estranged mother of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dr. Amy Acton has prompted an unusual split within Ohio's Republican Party, with Gov. Mike DeWine and two other statewide GOP officials publicly asking Republican nominee Vivek Ramaswamy to take it down, less than two weeks before the Nov. 3 election.

The video began circulating on social media the night of Monday, Oct. 19. In it, a woman identified as Donna Arthur, Acton's mother, says she loves her daughter but that "Amy has a serious problem," calls her a "liar" who "lies about her past," and tells viewers not to vote for her. The clip carried no disclaimer identifying who paid for it, as required under Ohio and federal election law for paid political communications, according to reporting by Columbus NPR affiliate WOSU. On Tuesday, Ramaswamy told reporters in Westerville that the video came from his campaign, calling it "legitimate" and saying Arthur had not been paid to appear in it.

A video with no disclaimer, and a dollar figure in dispute

Acton's campaign says Ramaswamy's campaign and its allied PAC, V-PAC: Victors, Not Victims, have put roughly $4 million behind promoting the ad since it began circulating, a figure the campaign disclosed in a press release posted to its official website. That claim has not been independently verified against state or federal ad-spending disclosures, and Ramaswamy's campaign did not confirm the figure in the reporting reviewed for this story. It would nonetheless mark a significant late addition to what was already a lopsided money race: as of campaign-finance reports covering the first half of 2026, Ramaswamy's campaign carried a $26.8 million war chest to Acton's $8.1 million, built largely on a $25 million personal loan he made to his own campaign, even though Acton had outraised him over the year, roughly $10.6 million to his $9.6 million.

Ramaswamy's campaign spokesperson, Connie Luck, did not deny producing the video or disavow its content. In a statement reported by ABC News, Luck called Acton "a serial fabulist who has some serious problems with the truth" and said that if Acton disputes the campaign's claims, she should agree to debate Ramaswamy, something Acton's campaign has so far declined to schedule.

A childhood of documented abuse, then decades of estrangement

Acton has spoken publicly for years about a chaotic childhood in Youngstown, where she says she endured years of neglect and, at times, homelessness — including one winter spent living in a tent — before her mother's second husband, Cledith Arthur, sexually abused her between roughly ages 9 and 12. Arthur was charged with raping Acton when she was 12; Acton says she testified against him, and the case stalled for years after he and her mother fled to Pennsylvania. According to court records provided by Acton's campaign and cited by WOSU, Arthur had previously faced an incest charge before he married Donna Arthur. He died in 2004, and Acton's mother remained married to him. Donna Arthur was later convicted of felony theft by deception, and lost custody of both of her children; Acton went to live with her biological father, Gerald Stearns, a shift she has said changed the course of her life. She went on to graduate at the top of her Youngstown high school class, attend Northeast Ohio Medical University, and serve as Ohio's health director from 2019 to 2020 under DeWine.

Acton told WOSU she last saw her mother at age 12, during divorce proceedings, when she went to give her mother a kiss on the cheek and her mother turned away. "It's even more incredible to see that my opponent has taken advantage of someone who's clearly not well," Acton said of Ramaswamy, according to WOSU's report of her remarks. Her brother, Philip Stearns, appeared in a response video released by Acton's campaign Tuesday and in a statement posted on the campaign's website, calling the ad "a desperate, disgusting attack" and saying of Ramaswamy, "He's not fit to lead."

Republicans break ranks

The sharpest Republican pushback came from DeWine, who has endorsed Ramaswamy's candidacy to succeed him. In a video statement circulated by Acton's campaign, DeWine said, "The ad on its face is deeply, deeply troubling," adding that once "you know that the husband of the mom was indicted by a grand jury" and that Acton and her brother "never saw her again," airing the video was "wrong." He said, "I would just urge the Ramaswamy campaign to take this down," according to the campaign's account of his remarks, which said the ad was still airing as of Thursday morning.

"The ad on its face is deeply, deeply troubling. ... So it's wrong to run this ad. I would just urge the Ramaswamy campaign to take this down." — Gov. Mike DeWine

U.S. Sen. Jon Husted and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, both Republicans, also distanced themselves from the video. "I would not have run that ad," Husted said, while LaRose said, "I probably wouldn't run an ad like that," according to a statement published by Acton's campaign that also said LaRose's office was reviewing complaints about the ad. Vice President JD Vance, who has campaigned for Ramaswamy, declined to weigh in on whether the ad was appropriate. CNN reported Republicans' criticism of the video independently, under the headline "Key Ohio Republicans criticize Ramaswamy's ad with Acton's estranged mother, even as Vance warned them not to" — a sign the intraparty breach extended beyond what Acton's own campaign was saying about it.

Acton's campaign spokesperson, Addie Bullock, said Republicans' public discomfort showed that Ramaswamy himself was "morally corrupt" for using the video, and separately accused him of having taken more than $100,000 in contributions tied to associates of Jeffrey Epstein, calling the ad "disqualifying." Those allegations have not been independently verified for this article.

A race already defined by personal attacks, with days left to vote

The governor's race, rated a tossup by both the Cook Political Report and the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, has been unusually personal for months. Ramaswamy-aligned outside groups have run ads blaming Acton for Ohio's 2020 pandemic-era shutdowns and the postponement of that year's primary election — claims DeWine has separately disputed, saying the shutdown decisions were his own. A pro-Ramaswamy ad featuring a Cincinnati woman who blamed Acton for her mother's death during a COVID-era nursing-home visitation ban was also fact-checked by local television stations, which found the timeline did not match the ad's implication. Ramaswamy's campaign pulled a separate ad in recent months after reporting revealed one of its featured speakers had a sex-offense conviction. For her part, Acton has focused her advertising on Ramaswamy's wealth and his biotech and pharmaceutical business record, and her campaign has cited "baseless lies about her and her family" as its reason for declining to debate him.

No Democrat has won the Ohio governorship since Ted Strickland in 2006, and public polling has shown Acton with a narrow, within-the-margin-of-error lead. Ohio's early in-person voting period opened Oct. 6 and runs through Nov. 1, meaning tens of thousands of voters have already begun casting ballots as the dispute over the video continues. The Husted-LaRose statement is notable partly because Husted is himself on the Nov. 3 ballot, defending the Senate seat he was appointed to after Vance became vice president, against Democrat Sherrod Brown — meaning Ohio Republicans up and down the ticket are now navigating how closely to associate themselves with their party's nominee for governor in the campaign's final stretch.

Neither Ramaswamy's campaign nor Donna Arthur could be reached through the outlets reviewed for this story to respond to the specific question of whether the video would be taken down following DeWine's request. As of Thursday, according to Acton's campaign, it was still airing.